When you need realtime messaging for your app, you face a fundamental choice: build collaboration features from scratch on top of messaging infrastructure, or use a platform that gives you everything ready to deploy. Most teams underestimate how much work goes into creating comments, presence indicators, and video features after getting the basic messaging layer working. If you're looking at an ably alternative that includes complete UI components alongside backend APIs, the development time difference becomes massive. Here's my take on how Ably compares to platforms offering full-stack collaboration solutions and which approach actually gets you to market faster.

TLDR:

• Ably provides solid messaging infrastructure but requires building all UI components and collaboration features from scratch

• Velt offers 25+ complete collaboration features with frontend components that can be integrated in as few as 10 lines of code.

• Pusher and Firebase work for basic realtime needs but lack advanced collaboration features

• PubNub handles enterprise-scale messaging but comes with complex pricing that's hard to predict

• Liveblocks focuses mainly on backend infrastructure requiring you to build and style most UI components yourself, leading to a longer implementation time.

Definition and Context

Ably is an enterprise-ready pub/sub messaging platform with integrated services to build realtime functionality, powering realtime chat, data broadcast, and collaboration features. Ably provides serverless infrastructure with high-performance APIs that allow companies to scale quickly and securely by using it as their tech foundation.

The platform serves developers building live experiences like notifications, dashboards, and collaborative tools where message delivery and connection reliability are critical. But most teams need more than just messaging infrastructure.

Modern applications require complete collaboration experiences with comments, presence indicators, video calls, and screen sharing. That's where development teams consider alternatives like Velt for more complete collaboration features that work out of the box.

Evaluation Methodology

Our ranking considers technical features, implementation complexity, feature completeness, pricing transparency, and developer experience. We looked at each platform based on the breadth of collaboration features, ease of integration, and total cost of ownership.

Ably's consumption-based pricing model charges for messages, channel time, and connection minutes, while alternatives offer different approaches to realtime infrastructure and collaboration. This review focuses on platforms that provide realtime messaging and collaboration features for product teams building user-facing applications.

The methodology puts solutions first that reduce development time while providing scalable infrastructure. After all, you want to ship features, not spend months building WebSocket infrastructure.

1. Best Overall Solution: Velt

Velt provides a complete collaboration layer that integrates into any JavaScript stack with 25 premium features including comments, live presence, video huddles, and screen recording. Unlike infrastructure-only platforms, Velt gives you complete UI components plus backend APIs.

Key strengths:

• Complete frontend SDK plus backend APIs that can be setup in just 10 lines of code

• Supports all major frameworks including React, Vue, Svelte, and Angular, and more

• Self-hosting options with GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, and HIPAA compliance

• Dedicated Slack channels for support with dedicated CSMs

• Scales to 200M comments and 2TB storage on base plans

The platform eliminates the need to build collaboration features from scratch. You get contextual comments, live cursors, video huddles, screen recording, and notifications ready to deploy.

Velt delivers 25+ premium collaboration features going far beyond competitors who typically offer a few features like basic commenting and notifications.

Bottom line: Velt delivers complete collaboration experiences out of the box. Check out our comparison guide to see how we stack up against other platforms.

2. Infrastructure-Only Platform: Ably

Ably powers chat, live dashboards, notifications, and collaboration features with APIs designed for rapidly launching realtime features. The platform powers more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform, serving over a billion devices monthly.

Key strengths:

• Proven scalability with global edge network infrastructure

• Strong message delivery guarantees and connection reliability

• Extensive documentation and developer resources

But Ably's model requires separate implementation of UI components, user management, and collaboration features on top of the messaging infrastructure. You'll need to build comment threads, presence indicators, notification systems, and user interfaces yourself.

That means weeks or months of additional development work before you have collaboration features users actually want. For teams that need complete solutions quickly, this approach doesn't make sense.

Bottom line: Strong messaging foundation but requires major development work. If you're looking for ready-to-use collaboration features, consider our instead.

3. Limited-Scope Tool: Pusher

Pusher offers hosted APIs for adding realtime functionality with bi-directional messaging infrastructure that handles complex messaging so developers can build faster. The platform provides over 40 SDKs supporting almost all tech stacks with flexible and scalable integration.

Key strengths:

• Simple API design with extensive SDK coverage

• Straightforward pricing model that's easier to predict

• Good documentation and getting-started guides

While Pusher is highly scalable, platforms like Ably are specifically architected and marketed for extreme reliability and message delivery guarantees at a massive, enterprise scale. The platform works well for basic realtime features but lacks the advanced collaboration features modern users expect.

You'll still need to build comment systems, presence indicators, video calling, and notification management on top of Pusher's messaging layer.

Bottom line: Suitable for basic realtime features but limited for advanced collaboration.

4. Database-Dependent Solution: Firebase

Firebase provides scalable infrastructure built on Google Cloud Platform with real-time database functionality and serverless backend features. The platform started as a realtime database and now offers multiple services using WebSockets for transport.

Key strengths:

• Integration with Google Cloud ecosystem

• Built-in authentication services and serverless backend features

• Real-time database synchronization features

• Strong mobile SDK support

But Firebase creates vendor lock-in issues and potential hidden costs that can mount up, especially as user bases grow. The platform has limitations for building chat-focused applications and requires major custom development for collaboration features.

Firebase works best as a backend database with realtime sync, not as a complete collaboration platform. You'll need to build all user-facing collaboration features yourself.

Bottom line: Good for Google-centric teams but costly at scale.

5. Enterprise-Focused Platform: PubNub

PubNub specializes in realtime messaging for sending and receiving messages from devices, supporting 1-to-1 or 1-to-many communication. The platform handles a high volume of monthly calls with strong availability and enterprise-tier uptime.

Key strengths:

• Solid SDKs for multiple programming languages and additional features like presence, storage and playback

• Strong enterprise support and SLA guarantees

• Advanced security and compliance features

However, PubNub can be prohibitively expensive for large scale applications with usage-based pricing that makes it difficult to predict costs for rapidly growing applications. The platform focuses on messaging infrastructure rather than complete collaboration experiences. You'll end up having to build most of it yourself.

Like other infrastructure-only solutions, you'll need to build UI components, commenting systems, and collaboration features on top of PubNub's messaging layer.

Bottom line: Powerful for enterprise messaging but complex pricing model. For complete collaboration features, check out our in-app recording SDK guide.

6. Backend-Only Infrastructure: Liveblocks

Liveblocks provides backend infrastructure for AI copilots, comments, and multiplayer editing with APIs designed for developer experience. The platform positions itself as collaboration infrastructure focusing on real-time data synchronization, user presence, and storage.

Key strengths:

• Integration with Yjs backend for editors with document storage and version history features

• Focus on developer-friendly APIs for collaboration infrastructure

• Good documentation for technical implementation

• Designed for collaborative applications

Liveblocks claims they have a lot of frontend components ready to go, but in reality, it's limited. It requires teams to handle user authentication, build UI components, create notification systems, and manage permissions while having feature gaps for complete collaboration tools. You get backend APIs but will end up building most frontend experiences yourself.

This approach works if you have dedicated front-end developers for collaboration and want full control over UI design. But most teams prefer solutions that provide complete collaboration features ready to deploy.

Bottom line: Solid infrastructure but demands major frontend development. Read about Cord customer migration or check our Liveblocks migration guide.

Feature Comparison Table

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the main difference between Ably and Velt?

Ably provides messaging infrastructure that requires you to build all UI components and collaboration features yourself. Velt gives you complete collaboration features including comments, video calls, screen recording, and presence indicators that work out of the box with just 10 lines of code.

Can I self-host these realtime platforms?

Velt offers self-hosting options for compliance-sensitive customers. Ably, Pusher, Firebase, PubNub, and Liveblocks are cloud-only solutions. Self-hosting is important for teams with strict data residency requirements or enterprise compliance needs.

Which platform is most cost-effective for growing applications?

Velt offers predictable pricing with generous base plans (200M comments, 2TB storage) while consumption-based platforms like Ably and Pusher typically require weeks or months of development, while toolkits like Liveblocks can shorten that but still require significant frontend integration work.

How long does implementation typically take?

Velt only requires 10 lines of code to get collaborative features up and running, with little more work to customize it to match your product's look and feel. Infrastructure-only platforms like Ably, Pusher, and Liveblocks typically require weeks or months of additional development to build UI components and collaboration features.

How to Decide the Best Realtime Platform

Choose based on your team's development capacity and feature requirements. If you need complete collaboration features quickly, select a platform that provides both frontend components and backend infrastructure. For basic messaging needs with dedicated development resources, infrastructure-only solutions work well.

Consider total implementation time beyond just the messaging layer. Consumption-based pricing models can become complex as usage scales, while fixed-feature pricing offers more predictability. Check support quality, especially for mission-critical implementations where dedicated channels matter more than email-only support.

Teams building collaboration-heavy applications should focus on platforms offering complete feature sets rather than assembling multiple services. The decision often comes down to whether you want to focus on core product development or spend months building collaboration infrastructure and experiences from scratch.

Most successful teams choose solutions that eliminate development overhead while providing enterprise-grade reliability and compliance options.

Final thoughts on choosing the right realtime collaboration solution

You can skip months of infrastructure work with a complete collaboration SDK. Velt fundamentally changes how teams add multiplayer features: instead of building basic pub/sub messaging, you get 25+ production-ready components that work across all frameworks. Our Ably alternative handles everything from live cursors to video huddles in as little as 10 lines of code.