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Django Channels vs Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Discover how Django Channels 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.

Django Channels

What is Django Channels?

Django Channels is an extension of the Django web framework that adds support for handling WebSockets, long-polling HTTP connections, and other protocols that require long-running connections.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

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.

Compare Django Channels and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Let’s compare Django Channels 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 Django Channels and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Django Channels 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

Django Channels

Partial

You can implement a pub/sub mechanism with the addition of the channels_redis extension.

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Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Yes

Pub/sub messaging is the core functionality of Microsoft Azure Web PubSub.

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Chat capabilities

Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels provides the foundation of realtime communication infrastructure that can be used to implement chat capabilities like 1-on-1 messaging and group messaging.

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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.

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Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking.

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels provides a real-ime communication layer that can be used to build applications with collaboration features like avatar stacks and component locking.

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.

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State sync capabilities

Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience.

Django Channels
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.

Django Channels

No

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.

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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.

Django Channels

No

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

No

Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Django Channels

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.

Django Channels

No

You would have to build message history storage and retrieval yourself, using Django's database (ORM) to store messages, and creating APIs to retrieve them.

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.

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels supports web push notifications with WebSockets.

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.

Django Channels

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.

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels can only be used programmatically.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Yes

There are multiple ways to configure Azure programatically; two of the most popular are Terraform and Azure Bicep.

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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.

Django Channels

Yes

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.

Django Channels

Django Channels is a free and open-source package that can be used without any cost. It's part of the Django ecosystem and doesn't have paid plans.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • Free
  • Standard
  • Premium
Read more
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.

Django Channels

Django Channels does not have any SDK. To use it, you must install it via pip as a Python package.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • JavaScript
  • C#
  • Python
  • Java
Supported realtime protocols

Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.

Django Channels
  • WebSockets
  • MQTT
  • Server-Sent Events (SSE)
Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • HTTP
  • WebSockets
  • Webhooks
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.

Django Channels

None.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • Azure Functions
Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Django Channels

Yes

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

No

Azure Web PubSub is not used for steaming and queuing. Other Azure services are available for these:

  • Queueing: Azure Service Bus & Azure Queues
  • Streaming: Azure Event Hubs
Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

Yes

Most CI/CD tools are supported on a Django project level rather than specifically by Django Channels:

  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI/CD
  • Jenkins
  • AWS CodePipeline
  • Google Cloud Build
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.

Django Channels

The scalability of a Django project using Channels depends your own design, implementation, and infrastructure choices.

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.

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Guaranteed message delivery

Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

Django Channels guarantees message ordering in all cases.

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Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Partial

Only available with Reliable JSON Websocket or Protobuf subprotocols.

Read more
Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Django Channels

No

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Partial

Only available with Reliable JSON Websocket or Protobuf subprotocols.

Read more
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.

Django Channels

None.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • Free/standard: 99.9%
  • Premium: 99.95%
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.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

No

Django Channels does not support multi-region data replication. It's a library for handling WebSockets, HTTP long-polling, and other protocols that require long-running connections in Django applications.

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.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

Unknown.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens.

Django Channels

No

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Yes

Token-based authentication

Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system.

Django Channels
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.

Django Channels

No

Django Channels itself does not natively support Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO is typically handled at the Django application level.

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.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

No

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.

Django Channels

No

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

No

Compliance

Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry.

Django Channels

There is no information on Django Channels compliance.

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • GDPR
  • There are many more certifications listed here.

Alternatives to Django Channels and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

While both Django Channels 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 Django Channels

Socketio logo

Socket.IO is a library that provides realtime, bi-directional communication between clients and servers. It allows the management of connections, sending and receiving messages, and more.

Pusher logo

Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.

Pubnub logo

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

Alternatives to Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Google-pub-sub logo

Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable messaging service that can be used to send and receive messages from applications or services.

Azure-signalr-service logo

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 logo

Amazon SNS is an AWS service for designed to distribute notifications from applications to subscribers via SMS, email, etc.

See more alternatives to Microsoft Azure Web PubSub

Discover how Django Channels and Microsoft Azure Web PubSub stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Django Channels 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

Ably has built reliable realtime infrastructure so you don’t have to. On our free plan you benefit from:

  • 6M monthly messages
  • 200 concurrent channels
  • 200 concurrent connections