Creating a chat app is no small feat. The journey from idea to a fully functional, engaging, and reliable chat application is paved with numerous decisions that can make or break your project. One of the most critical decisions you'll face is choosing the right infrastructure to power your chat functionality.
In this blog, we'll explore the strengths and weaknesses of PubNub and Sendbird, comparing their features, performance, scalability, and ease of use to help you make an informed decision.
Sendbird overview
Sendbird offers a wide range of features and capabilities to help developers quickly create robust and engaging chat applications. With comprehensive SDKs, rich messaging features, and a customizable UI Kit, Sendbird provides everything needed to build a high-quality chat experience.
However, the recent shift in focus towards AI chatbots and omnichannel messaging solutions suggests a strategic diversification that could impact the future investment and support for the core chat product.
As Sendbird expands its product offerings, it remains to be seen how this will affect its commitment to advancing and maintaining its chat platform. Developers and businesses considering Sendbird should take these factors into account when making their decision.
Pubnub Overview
When considering PubNub for building your chat application, it’s essential to understand its primary focus and capabilities. Unlike Sendbird, which is a dedicated chat platform specifically designed to help developers create chat applications, PubNub is fundamentally a real-time infrastructure provider.
PubNub’s core strength lies in providing real-time data streaming solutions for a for a wide range of applications such as:
01.
Live streaming
02.
Data streaming for live dashboards
03.
IoT device control and management
04.
Real-time chat
While PubNub is used by some to build chat applications, its broad focus means that developers often need to invest significant time and effort to tailor PubNub’s SDK and platform specifically for chat use cases. Chat functionality in PubNub feels more like an add-on rather than a core feature, leading to potential challenges in integration and customization.
To address this, PubNub recently released a chat SDK built on top of its traditional JavaScript Chat SDK. This new SDK aims to reduce development time and simplify the process of building chat applications.
However, it comes with some limitations:
01.
The SDK is available only for JavaScript-based frameworks as it is written in TypeScript, limiting its usability for developers working with other technologies.
02.
Having been released just a year ago, this SDK is relatively new and not as extensively tested or proven as more mature solutions.
PubNub also offers minimal support for front-end development. Their chat UI components are available only for React and React Native. Developers using different technologies will need to create their UI components from scratch, adding to the development effort.
Therefore, careful consideration and thorough evaluation are necessary to determine if PubNub’s extensive real-time capabilities align with your specific needs and goals.
How are they different from each other?
Working model disparity: Pub/Sub vs. Chat-Centric
Pubnub operates on a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) model where publishers broadcast messages to channels, and subscribers interested in those channels receive the messages in real-time. While PubNub provides powerful SDKs and APIs, they are designed to handle a wide array of real-time data use cases. This makes them more complex and less intuitive for developers focused solely on building chat functionalities.
Sendbird is built from the ground up with a chat-centric model. This means that every aspect of its platform is designed with chat applications in mind.
Long Polling vs. WebSockets
PubNub employs HTTP Long Polling, a technique where the client continuously requests updates from the server. The server holds onto the request until there's new data, creating a persistent connection. While reliable, Long Polling can incur higher latency due to the constant polling and server load.
On the other hand, Sendbird leverages WebSockets, a more modern approach that establishes a persistent, two-way communication channel between client and server. This allows for real-time data exchange as soon as it becomes available, leading to a generally faster and more responsive experience.
Data center: Global network vs fixed data center
PubNub defaults you to all 15 of its data centers at all times. This means that users are dynamically routed to the closest data center.
In Sendbird’s case, users must select one data center from the nine options provided when setting up their service. Once this selection is made, it cannot be changed, potentially limiting flexibility.
Concurrency
PubNub does not impose limits on the number of concurrent connections. While PubNub offers unlimited concurrent connection, it is important to note that the platform's pricing model, which is based on the number of Active Monthly Users (AMU) and transactions, can be significantly higher compared to other chat infrastructure providers such as Sendbird.
Furthermore, there have been concerns regarding the reliability of PubNub at high volumes of concurrency, where performance issues can arise.
Sendbird enforces a 5% hard limit on concurrency across all their plans.
For businesses requiring higher concurrency limits, Sendbird offers custom solutions through their enterprise plan. However, this comes at an additional cost and requires negotiation, potentially adding complexity and expense to scaling your application.
Customization vs. Out-of-the-Box
PubNub prioritizes customization and fine-grained control over message delivery, presence management, and storage options. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of requiring more development effort to implement features like chat UIs.
Sendbird offers pre-built chat functionalities like UI components, message reactions, and typing indicators, allowing developers to get a basic chat application up and running quickly. This out-of-the-box approach reduces development time but might limit customization options for more complex use cases.
Choose PubNub if:
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You need a highly scalable and customizable solution for real-time data beyond chat.
02.
If your product requires other real-time modules such as streaming or feed along with integrated chat.
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You have the development resources to build custom chat functionalities on top of the Pub/Sub messaging system.
Choose Sendbird if:
01.
You prioritize ease of implementation and a quick time-to-market for a chat application.
02.
Your application has a large user base but doesn't require complex chat features.
03.
You value pre-built UI components and a user-friendly developer experience.
Cometchat: A better alternative to Sendbird and Pubnub
CometChat is a centralized real-time communication platform designed specifically to power real-time chat across text, voice, and video. The sole focus of CometChat is to help businesses foster meaningful in-app conversations through extensive innovation and research. In addition to essential chat and calling features, CometChat supports various messaging formats that enhance engagement and make your chat app a critical part of business operations, nudging users to take action and be hooked to your app.
CometChat stands out as a superior alternative to Sendbird and PubNub, offering several unique capabilities:
01.
Best-in-Class UI Kits
Out-of-the-box, WhatsApp-like features make for quick and easy integration of CometChat. This provides a faster time to market with a familiar and intuitive user interface.
02.
Text, voice, and video
all under one roof. There's no need to engage with multiple vendors or navigate various dashboards, as CometChat provides a single solution for all real-time communication needs.
03.
Reliability and Scalability
Global servers, low latency, and support for 1 million+ concurrent connections ensure your platform remains smooth and responsive, regardless of the number of users.
04.
UI kits and SDKs for popular front-end frameworks, along with comprehensive documentation, sample apps, and tutorials, make integrating CometChat easier. Users can leverage APIs for user and admin management and extend chat app functionality with webhooks.
05.
Go beyond core chat
Interactive messages drive user engagement and business operations. Schedule consultations, collect leads, conduct surveys, and more within the chat interface, transforming chat from a communication tool into a business powerhouse.
06.
Unmatched Support
White-glove implementation assistance and global support coverage guarantee a smooth onboarding and ongoing success.
Direct Comparison of PubNub, Sendbird and CometChat
| Feature | PubNub | Sendbird | CometChat |
|---|---|---|---|
UI Kits
| PubNub doesn't offer pre-built UI kits and instead relies on SDKs for integration. However, it does not support popular frameworks like Flutter, Vue.js, or Angular.
| Offers pre-built UI components for React, React Native, iOS, and Android. However, unlike cometchat, it doesn't offer UI Kits for Angular, Flutter, Vue, and other platforms
| CometChat offers pre-built UI kits to most of the popular frameworks like React, React Native, iOS, Android, Flutter, Angular and Vue.
|
Core chat features
| Requires significant development effort to implement features like user profiles, search, and presence.
| Sendbird offers chat, in-app calling, and video calling as separate products. To use both chat and in-app calling, you will need to purchase each service individually.
| Cometchat offers chat, in-app calling, and video calling as a unified product. You gain access to all three features without needing to pay separately for each.
|
Development effort
| Easier for experienced developers familiar with SDK integrations.
Cons: Requires building the chat UI from scratch unless you use third-party libraries. Might involve additional work for developers with SDKs like Flutter, Vue, Angular.
| Relatively easier compared to PubNub as they provide both UI kits and SDKs. However, UI Kits are not as comprehensive as that of CometChat’s.
Might still require some customization to match your app's design.
| Offers the fastest development due to pre-built UI kits that replicate popular messaging apps like Whatsapp. Extensive documentation and SDK support is available for various platforms.
|
Custom messages
| PubNub primarily focuses on real-time data streaming. While you can send custom data objects, they might not be directly integrated into the chat experience and would require additional development to display as custom messages.
| Sendbird does not offer custom messages as a feature and if you want to deliver any non standard messages inside chat, it will require significant development effort.
| Provides a dedicated "Custom Message" feature. This allows you to send any data structure as a message, similar to PubNub. However, CometChat offers additional functionalities like message metadata and tags, which can be used for easier identification and categorization of custom messages.
|
Moderation
| Offers basic moderation tools like user blacklisting and message filtering based on keywords.
Requires additional development to implement more complex moderation workflows (e.g., reporting system, reviewing flagged messages).
| Provides built-in moderation tools like user banning, muting, and message filtering.
Less development needed compared to PubNub for basic moderation, but may require additional work for advanced workflows.
| Includes user moderation tools like banning, muting, and blocking. Also offers functionalities like chat history retrieval and message deletion for moderation purposes.
|
Notifications
| Offers basic push notification functionalities through platform integrations (Firebase Cloud Messaging for Android, Apple Push Notification service for iOS).
| Provides built-in push notification support for various platforms (Android, iOS, Web). Allows for some customization of notification content.
| Includes built-in push notification functionalities for various platforms (Android, iOS, Web) with support for different notification types (text, in-app, etc.). Apart from push notifications, they also provide Email and SMS notifications.
|
Analytics and insights
| PubNub's core strength lies in real-time data delivery, but its built-in analytics are limited. It offers basic data on message volume, user activity, and channel usage.
| SendBird provides built-in analytics for key metrics like message counts, active users, and channel engagement. It also offers basic user behavior insights.
| Similar to SendBird, CometChat offers built-in analytics for core chat metrics and basic user behavior insights.
|
Pricing
| The pricing plan is not transparent. In order to know the pricing, you must contact sales.
| Tiered pricing based on MAUs and concurrent connections, overage costs unclear.
| Offers a combination of free and subscription-based plans.
|
AI features
| PubNub currently doesn't offer built-in AI features for chat functionalities. However, its real-time messaging capabilities can be leveraged to integrate with external AI services like chatbots or sentiment analysis tools.
| endBird offers some basic AI-powered features like message translation and keyword filtering. These features can enhance communication accessibility and potentially moderate content.
| CometChat offers AI chatbots in some of its higher-tier plans. These chatbots can handle basic customer support interactions or answer frequently asked questions.
|
Aarathy Sundaresan
Content Marketer , CometChat