Ably vs Pusher deep dive: SSO, compliance, SLAs, and enterprise security compared

• SSO: Ably supports any SAML-compatible identity provider with SCIM provisioning on Enterprise plans. Pusher supports Okta only.

• Compliance: Ably holds SOC 2 Type II certification and signs HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) for Committed Use customers. Pusher holds ISO 27001 certification via MessageBird and is GDPR compliant; HIPAA is achievable without a BAA.

• Uptime SLA: Ably's 99.999% SLA is contractually backed on Enterprise plans with up to 100x rebate. Pusher's SLA is 99.95%, permitting roughly 4.4 hours of downtime per year versus Ably's approximately 5 minutes.

• Network security: Ably Enterprise includes private link/VPN and configurable DDoS protection with custom rules. Pusher provides platform-level DDoS mitigation via AWS Shield, but has no private link option.

The identity management gap between the two platforms shows up at three levels: which providers are supported for SSO, whether the user lifecycle can be automated, and how granular channel-level access controls are. 

Ably supports SSO via any Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) compatible identity provider (IdP) on Enterprise plans, with strict enforcement available, so all users must authenticate through the configured IdP. System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) provisioning is also included, automating user lifecycle management so access is deprovisioned through the identity provider when someone leaves.

Pusher supports SSO with Okta only, on Enterprise plans. Teams on Azure AD, Google Workspace, or any other SAML provider cannot use SSO with Pusher without a workaround. No SCIM provisioning is documented.

Ably provides two layers of access control. At the account level, users are assigned roles: Owner, Admin, Developer, or Billing. At the channel level, Ably's token authentication system allows granular capability restrictions per channel or namespace - publish, subscribe, presence, and history operations can each be granted or withheld independently, scoped to specific client identities.

Pusher's access control operates at the channel subscription level. Access is either granted or denied based on the authentication response from the developer's server, with no mechanism to restrict individual operations within a channel.

The compliance certifications available from each platform differ in scope, verifiability, and practical relevance to US versus European regulated industries.

• Ably: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for Committed Use customers.

• Pusher: ISO 27001:2013 (via MessageBird), GDPR (via Bird DPA).

• Ably signs Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) - a contractual requirement for vendors handling protected health information under US law - for Committed Use customers.

• Pusher does not appear to offer BAAs. HIPAA compliance instead requires sending PHI only on private-encrypted channels, so Pusher never has access to the data.

Note: Pusher's compliance documentation has moved to docs.bird.com/pusher since the Bird acquisition. Some documents are available only on request.

• Ably Enterprise allows teams to route and store data regionally to meet local compliance requirements, including EU and US data residency options.

• Pusher offers nine public cluster locations, with dedicated clusters available for some Enterprise customers on request. However, regional data routing is a fixed configuration choice: once an application is created on a cluster, it cannot be moved. There is no dynamic regional routing, and data residency controls are limited to the initial cluster selection rather than being enforceable on an ongoing basis.

A 99.999% SLA with Ably and a 99.95% SLA with Pusher sound similar. The difference is roughly 4.4 hours of permitted downtime per year versus 5 minutes.

For teams where realtime availability is tied to revenue, support, or patient outcomes, this distinction matters. So does whether the SLA is contractually backed, and what remediation looks like when it is breached.

Ably's 99.999% uptime SLA applies to Enterprise plans and is contractually backed with up to 100x service credit rebate. Free, Standard, and Pro plans operate under a service level objective rather than a contractual SLA: the guarantee only becomes a binding commercial commitment at Enterprise. The 99.999% figure reflects Ably's actual operational record. Ably has delivered over seven years of 100% uptime - and confirms this through transparent incident reporting at status.ably.com.

Pusher's uptime SLA is 99.95% for Channels. This permits roughly 4.4 hours of unplanned downtime per year. StatusGator has tracked over 432 Pusher outages since 2015, with 6 incidents in a recent 90-day window at a median duration of 1 hour 8 minutes. A notable September 2024 incident prevented WebSocket capacity additions to the US2 cluster, leaving the majority of clients unable to connect via WebSocket.

Ably Enterprise provides documented escalation response times: general guidance within 24 hours, product impaired or down within 1 hour, and business-critical escalation within 15 minutes. Enterprise plans also include a dedicated customer success manager, 24x7x365 on-call engineering coverage, and proactive incident detection and traffic management.

Pusher does not publicly document specific response time commitments. Security reviews are available for Enterprise customers with a security engagement included in their contract, but details require a sales conversation.

On private connectivity and DDoS protection, the two platforms sit in meaningfully different positions.

Ably Enterprise includes private link and VPN connectivity, enabling teams to connect to Ably's infrastructure without routing traffic over the public internet. This is a requirement for some regulated industries and enterprise security policies where all vendor traffic must traverse a private network path.

Pusher has no documented private link or VPN connectivity option. All connections to Pusher Channels use public internet routing.

Ably Enterprise includes configurable DDoS protection with custom security rules, allowing teams to define specific policies appropriate to their traffic patterns and threat models.

Pusher provides platform-level DDoS mitigation via IP-layer rate limiting, monitoring, and integration with AWS Shield. This is baseline infrastructure protection rather than configurable, customer-specific policy. Teams requiring custom DDoS rules or fine-grained traffic controls will find Pusher's offering less flexible.

The two platforms differ substantially in terms of their operational visibility and compliance auditing offering.

Ably provides a live observability dashboard with channel and connection inspectors, realtime log streams, historical log search by timestamp and event type, and usage statistics. Enterprise customers can also integrate with Datadog, receiving over 100 statistics metrics streamed every 60 seconds.

Pusher's dashboard shows basic connection and message activity, and metrics can be exported to Datadog or Librato. There is no equivalent to Ably's channel inspector, realtime log streams, or historical log search.

Ably's existing observability tooling, including the dashboard log search and Datadog integration, provides operational visibility. Teams where purpose-built audit logging is a current procurement requirement should verify current availability directly with Ably before making a decision.

Pusher has no documented audit logging capability.

Ably and Pusher both encrypt data in transit. The meaningful differences are in at rest encryption and what Pusher's lack of data persistence means for data security.

Ably encrypts all data in transit using TLS by default, and provides AES-256 encryption for data at rest using customer-managed private keys. When channel encryption is enabled with a private key, no one, including Ably, can read message content without that key.

Pusher encrypts all data in transit using TLS. Pusher's Channels product is architecturally ephemeral — data is not stored by default, so encryption at rest does not apply. For private-encrypted channels, Pusher provides E2E encryption where only authorized subscribers can decrypt the data field. Because Pusher doesn't store data, there is nothing to replay, recover, or audit after the fact.

For teams where SSO provider breadth, compliance certifications, or contractual SLAs are mandatory requirements, the comparison is largely concluded before reaching a technical evaluation. For teams building a realtime feature where enterprise security is not yet a requirement, Pusher's simpler offering is adequate.

If you are building something where these requirements are relevant, start building on Ably for free, or talk to an engineer about your enterprise requirements.

No. The 99.999% SLA is a contractual commitment available on Enterprise plans only, backed by up to 100x service credit rebate. Free, Standard, and Pro tiers operate under a service level objective rather than a binding SLA. Teams requiring a contractual uptime commitment need to be on an Enterprise plan.

Pusher does not appear to offer BAAs. HIPAA compliance on Pusher requires sending PHI only on private-encrypted channels, so Pusher never has access to the data and no BAA is needed. Ably signs BAAs for Committed Use customers, which is a simpler and more direct path.

Ably provides SOC 2 Type II audit reports on request, available via security.ably.com, and will supply a summary copy of current audit reports to customers under confidentiality. HIPAA BAA agreements are available for Committed Use customers. The Data Processing Addendum is publicly available at ably.com/data-processing-addendum.

Based on Pusher's current documentation, SSO is supported with Okta only. Organizations using Azure AD, Google Workspace, OneLogin, or other SAML providers should verify current SSO support directly with Pusher before making a purchasing decision, as this may have changed since this page was last updated.

Ably operates active traffic management as part of its enterprise offering. Engineers actively monitor and reroute traffic in realtime during adverse events, and can place customers onto a dedicated cluster during widespread disruption. Pusher's single-datacenter model means that if the chosen cluster experiences an outage, there is no equivalent automatic or manual rerouting mechanism.