Amazon SQS vs Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
Discover how Amazon SQS compares to Microsoft Azure Web PubSub, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
What is Amazon SQS?
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed messaging queuing service which enables decoupling and scaling of distributed systems. It is secure, reliable, and suitable for handling asynchronous communication between software components, which ensures that messages are not lost and are processed efficiently.
Suitable for:
- Scaling microservices
- Message processing
- Transaction processing
- Job queues
Not suitable for:
- Long message retention
- Large message sizes
Pros:
- Message locking
- Near infinite scalability
- Reliable delivery
- Dead-letter queues
- Reduced overhead
Cons:
- High cost at scale
- Vendor lock-in
- No support for routing
- Short message retention
What is Microsoft Azure Web PubSub?
Microsoft Azure Web PubSub is a fully managed service for real-time messaging using WebSockets and the publish-subscribe pattern. It handles up to 100,000 concurrent connections, managing scaling, encryption, and authentication. It's ideal for live broadcasts, IoT dashboards, and integrates with Azure functions. It provides APIs for managing clients and messaging.
Suitable for:
- Messaging
- Chat
- Dashboards
- Multiplayer games
Not suitable for:
- Apps that need message queues
- Apps that need presence
- Apps that need message history
- Integration with non Azure Serverless platforms
Pros:
- Part of the Azure ecosystem
- Many resources, since it's provided by Microsoft
- Key focus on security, with many compliance certifications
- Large customer base
Cons:
- No self-hosting option
- Fewer supported languages with libraries
- Fewer integrations
- Uptime SLAs are not the best available (99.9% for free/standard and 99.95% for Premium vs Ably's 99.999%)
Compare Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
Let’s compare Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub, looking at key dimensions such as their core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
Disclaimer:This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub. The content was last updated on 16 Aug 2024 for Amazon SQS and on 1 Aug 2024 for Microsoft Azure Web PubSub. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.
| Core features | |||
Pub/Sub messaging | Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps. | Amazon SQS No AWS SQS is a queueing system and not a pub/sub messaging system. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Amazon SQS No | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No Microsoft Azure Web PubSub and its SDKs do not have this functionality out of the box. It is possible to build a chat application, but you would need to build the functionality yourself. Read more |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Amazon SQS No | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No Microsoft Azure Web PubSub and its SDKs do not have this functionality out of the box. It is possible to build out collaboration functionality, but you would need to do it yourself. Read more |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Amazon SQS Partial AWS SQS can be implemented with AWS AppSync which supports real-time data synchronization using GraphQL subscriptions. This allows UI updates to reflect changes in the underlying data store (like DynamoDB or other databases) without the need for polling. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | Amazon SQS Partial Partially supported, requiring integration with other AWS services. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Partial Microsoft Azure Web PubSub doesn't offer presence out of the box, but can support presence when integrated with Microsoft Hubs and Groups. Read more |
Occupancy | High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular. | Amazon SQS No | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Amazon SQS No | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Amazon SQS Partial Amazon S3 can be used to archive past messages, while AWS AppSync can facilitate retrieving messages and syncing them with UI updates. However, managing message history may require additional custom development or integration. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Amazon SQS Partial Amazon SQS can be integrated with AWS SNS to deliver push notifications based on events. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No Microsoft Azure Web PubSub has no native push notification functionality. Microsoft has a separate service for this - Azure Notification Hubs. Read more |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Amazon SQS No | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS provides comprehensive APIs and SDKs for programmatic management of its services. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes There are multiple ways to configure Azure programatically; two of the most popular are Terraform and Azure Bicep. Read more |
| Pricing | |||
Free plan | With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan. | Amazon SQS Yes The Amazon SQS Free Tier offers up to 1 million requests per month at no cost for all customers for both standard and FIFO Queues. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes |
Pricing model | The pricing model should align with your project's expected load, usage patterns, and budget in order to be cost-effective and efficient. | Amazon SQS AWS SQS has a free tier and pay-as-you-go pricing model based on usage (number of queue requests and data transfer). Read more | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Amazon SQS
| Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Amazon SQS
| Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
Serverless functions | Enables integration with third-party cloud providers by facilitating the execution of custom code against messages to perform business logic like on-the-fly translation. | Amazon SQS None natively; serverless functions are available through integration with AWS Lambda. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No Azure Web PubSub is not used for steaming and queuing. Other Azure services are available for these:
|
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Amazon SQS Partial AWS SQS provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes |
CI/CD tools | Makes it possible to provision and configure service infrastructure as part of a CI or CD pipeline, enabling repeatable and reliable deployments. | Amazon SQS Yes Supports:
| Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
| Quality of Service | |||
Scalability | Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance. | Amazon SQS No published metrics are available. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Azure offers different unit sizes to meet customer requirements. Metrics on performance are provided by the Azure platform for rightsizing resource requirements. Read more |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS SQS provides robust support for guaranteed message delivery, ensuring that each message is reliably delivered to its intended recipient. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Guaranteed message ordering | Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication. | Amazon SQS Yes For AWS SQS FIFO Queues, messages are delivered in the exact order they are sent, following a strict First-In-First-Out (FIFO) sequence. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub |
Exactly-once message delivery | Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages. | Amazon SQS Yes When using AWS SQS FIFO Queues, messages are delivered exactly once with no duplication. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub |
| Performance & availability | |||
Uptime Guarantee | An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime. | Amazon SQS 99.9%. Read more | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
Global edge network | By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Multi-region data replication (message durability) | By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another. | Amazon SQS Partial AWS SQS provides high message durability within a single AWS region by replicating messages across multiple Availability Zones. But it does not natively support cross-region replication. For multi-region data replication, you can use additional strategies, such as using AWS services like AWS Lambda or AWS Data Pipeline to replicate messages from SQS queues in one region to SQS queues in another region. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes It is possible to set up multi-region primary/secondary resources with geo-replication. |
No single point of failure or congestion | Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load. | Amazon SQS Yes Messages in AWS SQS are distributed across various availability zones in a region, ensuring high availability and scalability. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Partial Depends on architecture. It is possible to deploy to multiple regions with failover, and each region uses Availability Zones. Read more |
Latency | Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience. | Amazon SQS Latencies for SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, and DeleteMessage API requests range from tens to low hundreds of milliseconds. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Amazon SQS No AWS SQS does not directly support token-based authentication. Instead, AWS SQS relies on AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for authentication and authorization. | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes Microsoft Azure Web PubSub supports JWT and ephemeral tokens. |
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication | SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes Microsoft Azure Web PubSub supports Microsoft Entra ID. |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes Supported through Azure RBAC. |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | Amazon SQS Yes | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Yes Data in transit encryption is enabled by default. |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS SQS supports encryption at rest using AWS KMS (Key Management Service). | Microsoft Azure Web PubSub No |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Amazon SQS
| Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
|
Alternatives to Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
Whilst both Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub are worth considering as options for realtime experiences, they aren’t without their limitations. We suggest evaluating them against the following alternatives to make sure you find the right solution for your needs.
Alternatives to Amazon SQS
RabbitMQ is the open-source message broker supporting multiple messaging protocols.
ActiveMQ is an open-source message broker with support for multiple protocols, offering high availability and scalability for enterprise messaging.
Apache Kafka is an open-source real-time data streaming platform.
Alternatives to Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable messaging service that can be used to send and receive messages from applications or services.
Azure SignalR is an Azure-hosted, fully managed realtime framework built on top of an open-source software library for Microsoft ASP.NET.
Amazon SNS is an AWS service for designed to distribute notifications from applications to subscribers via SMS, email, etc.
Discover how Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon SQS and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
Try Ably for free to discover the benefits for yourself
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- 6M monthly messages
- 200 concurrent channels
- 200 concurrent connections
