Why our customers choose Ably over Socket.IO
Ably is an enterprise-grade serverless WebSockets platform for pub/sub messaging at the edge. Our customers trust in Ably to power scalable and realtime online user experiences that will work anywhere in the world, without fail. We provide an elastic, hyper-reliable global infrastructure that also comes with the flexible building blocks needed for creating rich user experiences. Everything is offered via consistent and intuitive APIs.
Focus on building realtime apps that delight customers. We’ll handle the rest.
Ably is a serverless edge messaging platform designed to stream realtime messages at extreme scale to web, mobile, and IoT devices, over a fault-tolerant, autoscaling global edge network. We deliver 750+ billion messages to more than 300 million end-users each month.
As a managed solution, Ably enables you to:
Easily build high-performance realtime functionality that delights your users.
Reduce engineering and DevOps efforts - there's no complex realtime infrastructure for you to provision and maintain.
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Key Ably advantages vs Socket.IO
Features | Ably | Socket.IO |
|---|---|---|
SDKs Note: Only official SDKs were taken into account. | 25+ SDKs targeting every major language and development platform | 4 official client library (JavaScript) for browsers: |
Pub/Sub messaging | Yes, Ably provides Pub/Sub messaging. | Socket.IO provides Pub/Nub messaging, but with limitation |
Message queues | Yes, Ably provides message queues | No, Socket.IO doesn't provide message queues |
Guaranteed message ordering | Yes, Ably provides guaranteed message ordering | No, Socket.IO doesn't provide guaranteed message ordering |
Guaranteed message delivery | Yes, Ably provides guaranteed message delivery | No, Socket.IO doesn't provide guaranteed message delivery |
Native push notifications | Yes, Ably provides native push notifications | No, Socket.IO doesn't provide native push notifications |
Serverless functions | Ably is integrated with most serverless functions providers. We support AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, IFTTT, Cloudflare Workers, and Zapier. | No, Socket.IO doesn't provide serverless functions |
Built-in integrations |
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Robust features set to power delightful realtime experiences
Publish messages to millions of subscribers over Ably channels - named units of distribution that offer a way to implement Pub/Sub messaging and realtime data delivery.
Ably supports WebSockets, SSE, and MQTT, so you can choose the right protocol for your use case. We also support the Pusher and PubNub protocols, making the migration to Ably quick and simple.
No message is ever lost, delivered multiple times, or out of order, even if unreliable networks and brief disconnections are involved.
Subscribe to events when devices or users enter, leave, or update their state on channels. Essential for use cases like chat, multiplayer games, or collaboration tools.
Reduce the bandwidth needed to distribute messages to consumers by sending only the changes from the previous message instead of the entire payload.
Send push notifications over Ably channels, or deliver them directly to Android and iOS users with FCM and APNs.
Simple and powerful client library SDKs
All official Ably client library SDKs offer a consistent yet idiomatic API across every language. Regardless of your development environment or preferred language, Ably keeps things simple for you by providing consistency and predictability. You can quickly integrate our SDKs into your tech stack with a few lines of code, and start building realtime features in minutes.
Migrate to Ably from Socket.IO
It's very easy to migrate from Socket.IO to Ably. Explore our documentation to find out why.
Not sure Ably is right for you?
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Reach out to learn more about Ably: the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet.
For all the ways to get in touch with us, visit our contact page.
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