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Kaazing WebSocket Gateway vs Socket.IO

This Kaazing WebSocket Gateway vs Socket.IO comparison was created based on reviews from developers and our best attempts to perform analysis by looking at documentation and other publicly available resources.

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Kaazing WebSocket Gateway

Socket.IO

Getting started and developer experience

Time to "hello world"

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Ratings were given based on the average amount of time it takes to sign up to a new account and publish the first message.

2 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example
4 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example

Demos / Tutorials

A selection of online demos and tutorials so you can test and see the code in action.

Explore Ably's tutorials for our pub/sub messaging platform

Documentation

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's documentation for our pub/sub messaging platform
2.50 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

“The documentation is overall disappointing. The API reference, some comprehensive FAQs, and some decent writing for SDK-specific guides are noteworthy highlights. However, the rest is not great. There is no navigation sidebar; all the various sections of the docs are individual articles that are listed on a menu page. Furthermore, the sections are not organized in a logical manner; it’s unclear where to start, and often hard to understand how the topics connect.  There are only a few GitHub tutorials, with some brief steps, but certainly not enough details. Overall, you get the feeling the documentation fails to deliver relevant bits of information, and getting started with Kaazing was far from easy.”

4 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

"Much like the solution, the documentation is pretty lightweight. You have an excellent getting started guide that requires no prior Socket.IO or Node.js knowledge. There are tens of code snippets throughout the docs, which is fantastic. There are almost no tutorials (not official ones), but you do have a chat and a whiteboard demo that you can grab from GitHub. The quality of writing is good enough. Most of the time, things are clear. Navigating between documentation, demos, and the API reference is quite annoying. They could have done a better job linking these sections and having them displayed in a common ToC. Although lightweight and generally clear, the documentation seems to have some holes in it, based on the number of GitHub and Stack Overflow questions about Socket.IO."

Dashboard or dev console

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Sign up for free and explore Ably's pub/sub messaging platform
1 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

"Kaazing WebSocket Gateway does not provide a developer console or dashboard."

1 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

"Socket.IO does not provide a developer console or dashboard."

SDKs

Note: Only official SDKs were taken into account.

Explore Ably's 25+ SDKs for our pub/sub messaging platform

5 client SDKs

Including:

  • iOS

  • JavaScript

  • .NET

1 official Socket.IO server implementation (Node.js), and 4 official client implementations (JavaScript, Java, C++, Swift)

Note that there are also several community-made server and client implementations in other languages, such as Python, .NET, and Golang.

API structure

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

4 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

“Kaazing offers SDKs in several different programming languages, and for different operating systems. The naming conventions make the APIs reasonably intuitive and simple to understand, and the extensive API references help a lot. The APIs are mostly consistent at a class level, which makes sense, since the WebSocket ones are basically modeled around the standard WebSocket API. Note that the client SDKs also provide additional protocol capabilities, such as AMQP and JMS, which is quite useful.” 

5 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

"Socket.IO has a simple JavaScript-based API interface that has intuitive naming conventions. The API reference documentation is very detailed, with each resource described in detail, and with numerous code examples throughout. It’s easy to get started with both the Server and the Client APIs."

Kaazing WebSocket Gateway

Socket.IO

"Hello world" code example
// Create client
var client = UniversalClientDef('amqp');
// Establish connection
var connectionInfo = {
  url: 'wss://demos.kaazing.com/amqp', // URL to Kaazing's public sandbox for WebSocket testing
  username: 'guest',
  password: 'guest'
};
// Manage connection
var connectionInfo = {
  url: 'wss://demos.kaazing.com/amqp', // URL to Kaazing's public sandbox for WebSocket testing
  username: 'guest',
  password: 'guest'
};
// Subscribe
var subscription = {};

var onSubscribe = function(sub) {
  subscription = sub;
  log('Subscribed');
  ...
};

var onConnect = function(conn) {
  log('Connected');
  conn.subscribe(
    'getting-started',    // Topic to send messages
    'getting-started',    // Topic to receive messages
    onMessage,            // Callback function to process received messages
    false,                // noLocal flag - 'false' allows you to receive your own messages
    onSubscribe           // Callback function once subscribed
  );
};
// Receive messages
var onMessage = function(msg) {
  console.log('Received: ' + msg.message);
};
// Publish
subscription.sendMessage({ message: 'Hello, world!' });
var app = require('express')();
var http = require('http').Server(app);
var io = require('socket.io')(http);

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
   res.sendfile('index.html');
});

//Broadcasting events
var clients = 0;
io.on('connection', function(socket) {
   clients++;
   io.sockets.emit('broadcast',{ description: clients + ' clients connected!'});
   socket.on('disconnect', function () {
      clients--;
      io.sockets.emit('broadcast',{ description: clients + ' clients connected!'});
   });
});

http.listen(3000, function() {
   console.log('listening on localhost:3000');
});

//Handling broadcast events on the client side
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Hello world</title>
   </head>
   <script src = "/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
   <script>
      var socket = io();
      socket.on('broadcast',function(data) {
         document.body.innerHTML = '';
         document.write(data.description);
      });
   </script>
   <body>Hello world</body>
</html>

Kaazing WebSocket Gateway

Socket.IO

Realtime features

Pub/Sub messaging

Pub/Sub is a design pattern that lets any number of publishers (producers) push messages to channels (also known as topics). Multiple subscribers (consumers) can subscribe to a channel to consume published messages.

Explore Ably's pub/sub messaging implementation

Limited

You can use the rooms feature to broadcast events to a subset of clients, but this applies exclusively to the server-side (i.e. clients don’t have access to the list of rooms it has joined).

You can also use a Redis adapter to broadcast events to clients through the Redis pub/sub mechanism.

Message queues

A message queue is a form of asynchronous service-to-service communication. Messages are stored on a queue until they are processed. Note that each message is only consumed by one subscriber (consumer).

Explore Ably's message queues implementation

Presence

Presence enables you to track the online and offline status of devices and end-users in real time and to store their state. Essential for chat apps and multiplayer games.

Explore Ably's presence implementation

Message history

Message history provides a means to retrieve previously published messages. For this to be possible, message data must be stored (persisted) somewhere.

Explore Ably's message history implementation

Limited

You can configure Kaazing WebSocket Gateway to hold recent messages for a topic in a last value cache. However, you are required to use a JMS-compliant message broker, such as RabbitMQ.

Connection state recovery (stream resume)

In the case of unreliable network conditions, clients may suddenly disconnect.Connection state recovery ensures that when they reconnect, the data stream resumes exactly where it left off.

Explore Ably' s connection state recovery implementation

Guaranteed message ordering

Ordering ensures that messages are delivered to consumers in the same order that producers publish them.

Explore Ably' s guaranteed message ordering implementation

Exactly-once semantics

Exactly-once is a system-wide data integrity guarantee that ensures each message is delivered to consumers exactly-once.

Explore Ably' s idempotent publishing implementation

Message delta compression

Message delta compression enables you to only send the changes from the previous message to subscribers each time there’s an update, instead of the entire message. Useful for use cases where there is a significant degree of similarity between successive messages.

Explore Ably' s message delta compression implementation

Native push notifications

Native push notifications can be used to deliver messages even when clients are offline. Useful for geolocation updates or news alerts.

Explore Ably's push notifications implementation

Webhooks

Webhooks provide a mechanism to get messages and other types of events (such as clients entering or leaving channels) pushed to your servers over HTTP.

Explore Ably's webhooks implementation

Serverless functions

A serverless function is essentially an isolated, single-purpose piece of code that is only executed when it’ triggered by an event. For example, you can use serverless functions to send a welcome message to clients when they become present on chat channels.

Note that serverless functions are usually fully managed by cloud vendors.

Explore Ably's serverless functions implementation

Built-in integrations

Which popular services & systems are Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO integrated with?

Explore Ably's library of integrations

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Known limits and constraints

Find out practical limits, such as the maximum message size, or the maximum number of concurrent connections.

Explore the practical limits of the Ably pub/sub messaging platform

Publisher throughput 

Unknown

Maximum message size

Unknown

Maximum number of topics

Unknown

Maximum number of concurrent connections

Unknown

Throughput

Unknown

Maximum message size 

Unknown, but the default is 1 MB

Maximum number of topics

N/A

Maximum number of concurrent connections

Unknown

Supported development platforms, languages, open protocols and cloud models

Development platforms & operating systems

Which popular development platforms and operating systems do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support via official SDKs?

Explore the development platforms supported by Ably
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET

Languages

Which popular programming languages do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support via offical SDKs?

Explore the programming languages supported by Ably
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala

Open protocols

Which popular open protocols do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support?

Explore the open protocols supported by Ably
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks

Cloud models

Which popular cloud models do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support?

  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
Global and reliable edge service

Edge messaging network with latency-based routing

Latency-based routing ensures that clients are always routed to the nearest datacenter and point of presence.

Explore Ably's routing mechanism that mitigates network and DNS issues

N/A

N/A

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

Multi-region data replication (storage) protects against single points of failure and ensures message data durability.

Learn how Ably ensures message durability

N/A

N/A

Uptime SLAs

Here’s what the most common SLAs amount to in terms of downtime over a calendar year:

99.999% SLA = 5m 15s downtime per year

99.99% SLA = 52m 35s downtime per year

99.95% SLA = 4h 22m 58s downtime per year

99.9% SLA = 8h 45m 56s downtime per year

99% SLA = 3d 15h 39m 29s downtime per year

Source: https://uptime.is/

N/A

N/A

Quality of Service

What QoS guarantees do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO provide natively?

Explore Ably's availability and uptime guarantees for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
Security

API key authentication

The simplest way to authenticate. Involves using private API keys that you can usually create and edit via a dashboard. Recommended to be used server-side, as private API keys shouldn’t be shared with untrusted parties.

Explore Ably's implementation of API key authentication

N/A

Token-based authentication

Which popular token-based authentication mechanisms do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support?

Note that token-based authentication is usually the recommended strategy on the client-side as it provides more fine-grained access control and limits the risk of credentials being compromised.

Explore Ably's implementation of token-based authentication
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs

Configurable rules and permissions

Which types of configurable rules and permissions do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support?

Explore Ably's configurable rules and permissions
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights

Message encryption

Which types of message encryption do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO support?

Explore Ably's message encryption mechanisms
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption

Formal certifications

Which formal certifications are Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO compliant with?

Explore Ably's security and compliance for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
Pricing & Support

Free package

What do the free packages offered by Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO consist of?

Explore Ably's free package for our pub/sub messaging platform

N/A

Socket.IO is a free & open-source solution.

Pricing model

How are the Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO pricing models calculated?

Explore Ably's pricing model for our pub/sub messaging platform

N/A

N/A

Enterprise package

What benefits do the Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO enterprise packages offer?

Explore Ably's enterprise package for our pub/sub messaging platform

N/A

N/A

Community

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's community support channel for our pub/sub messaging platform
1.50 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

“Kaazing is present on a few platforms, such as StackOverflow, Gitter, and GitHub. However, all discussions and GitHub issues seem to date back from 2018. All in all, there’s nothing to indicate Kaazing has an active and thriving community. There only seem to be a few projects made by the community, and almost no community-made content (blogs, tutorials).”

5 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

"Socket.IO is the most popular open-source WebSocket solution. It has a large and very active community. Client SDKs in several different languages? All of them community-made. Troubleshooting and support questions? The community will sort you out, almost always. As you’d expect, Stack Overflow and GitHub are very busy, with tens of thousands of questions, views, and responses about all things Socket.IO."

Support

What types of support options and response times do Kaazing WebSocket Gateway and Socket.IO offer?

Explore Ably's support options for our pub/sub messaging platform

There is only one level of support - Platinum Level, available 24/7.

Support channels

Chat, email, phone, self-service web portal, documentation

Response time

Within 1 hour for urgent / high severity issues

Within 1 business day for normal severity issues

Within 5 business days for low priority issues

General support options

Technical documentation, Slack, Stack Overflow, GitHub.

Enterprise support

N/A

Response time

N/A

Disclaimer: The information presented for Kaazing WebSocket Gateway was last updated on 31 March 2021 and on 3 December 2020 for Socket.IO. It is possible that some details may now be out of date. If you think that’s the case, please let us know so we can update them. In any case, you should not rely solely on the information presented here and must check with each provider before deciding to integrate or buy any of these two solutions.


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