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Advice on Pusher, Socket.IO, and SocketCluster
Needs advice
on
AblyAblyPubNubPubNub
and
PusherPusher

I am building an IoT application that will utilize connected air quality sensors to provide real-time indoor air quality in offices. I want to be able to share this data with a few different databases, etc.

Wondering if anyone has any advice on which real-time streaming API would be best for this sort of application, or even how I should think about it?

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Replies (2)
Ben Gamble
Recommends
on
AblyAbly

For IoT, we support MQTT along with websockets and SSE. The pattern you're suggesting that involves harvesting data from devices and soaking into a database is easy to achieve with one of the Ably integrations (Serverless functions/webhook) . Here are some tutorials to do things like this: https://ably.com/tutorials/reactor-event-zapier#step2-mqtt-ably

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Philip Rossen
Recommends
on
PusherPusher
at

We use Pusher at www.justlearn.com. It works fine. When you reach more users, Pusher gets expensive. We use Pusher for live chat between users. Their software is easy to use. We have had issues with auth on Pusher.

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Needs advice
on
ApolloApolloFirebaseFirebase
and
Socket.IOSocket.IO

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

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Replies (3)
Timothy Malstead
Junior Full Stack Developer at Freelance · | 7 upvotes · 487.8K views
Recommends
on
FirebaseFirebase

I would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.

The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.

Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.

Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.

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Recommends
on
AblyAbly

Hello Noam 👋,

I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.

Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase

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Recommends
on
8base8base

Hey Noam,

I would recommend you to take a look into 8base. It has features you've requested, also relation database and GraphQL API which will help you to develop rapidly.

Thanks, Ilya

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Pros of Pusher
Pros of Socket.IO
Pros of SocketCluster
  • 55
    An easy way to give customers realtime features
  • 40
    Websockets
  • 34
    Simple
  • 27
    Easy to get started with
  • 25
    Free plan
  • 12
    Heroku Add-on
  • 11
    Easy and fast to configure and to understand
  • 9
    JSON
  • 6
    Happy
  • 6
    Azure Add-on
  • 5
    Support
  • 4
    Push notification
  • 219
    Real-time
  • 143
    Node.js
  • 141
    Event-based communication
  • 102
    Open source
  • 102
    WebSockets
  • 26
    Binary streaming
  • 21
    No internet dependency
  • 10
    Large community
  • 6
    Push notification
  • 5
    Ease of access and setup
  • 1
    Test
  • 12
    Cluster mode is awesome
  • 8
    WebSockets
  • 7
    Scalability
  • 4
    Security
  • 4
    Real-time
  • 4
    JWT based Authentication
  • 3
    Pub-Sub API
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Client Libraries

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Cons of Pusher
Cons of Socket.IO
Cons of SocketCluster
  • 11
    Costly
  • 12
    Bad documentation
  • 4
    Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated
  • 3
    Doesn't work on React Native
  • 2
    Small community
  • 2
    Websocket Errors
    Be the first to leave a con

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    - No public GitHub repository available -
    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Pusher?

    Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

    What is Socket.IO?

    It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

    What is SocketCluster?

    SocketCluster is a fast, highly scalable HTTP + realtime server engine which lets you build multi-process realtime servers that make use of all CPU cores on a machine/instance. It removes the limitations of having to run your Node.js server as a single thread and makes your backend resilient by automatically recovering from worker crashes and aggregating errors into a central log.

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    What are some alternatives to Pusher, Socket.IO, and SocketCluster?
    PubNub
    PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.
    SignalR
    SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.
    Firebase
    Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
    Chat by Stream
    Chat API and SDK. With a beautiful UI Kit, easy to use React Components and powerful API. Add Chat to any application in a matter of hours. The tech uses Go, RocksDB and Raft. By the creators of Stream, the API that powers activity feeds for more than 300 million users.
    Twilio
    Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs.
    See all alternatives