At Velt, we have spent hundreds of hours talking with product teams that add real-time features to their apps. Much of that time was spent reviewing the Liveblocks SDK next to our own comment SDK and other tools on the market. This article gathers the hard-won lessons, measurements, and user stories so that engineers and PMs can choose the right path without burning months on trial and error.

TLDR:

• Liveblocks delivers a solid real-time engine and basic React widgets, but leaves the building of most UI and collaborative experiences to you.

• Liveblocks' prices scale by monthly active users and storage (only 8GB on free tier), which surprises teams once reviewers and occasional guests pile in.

• Their support beyond React is light, and there is no self-hosted option for regulated industries.

• Velt offers full-stack collaboration that is framework-agnostic, includes notifications, and data can be in your cloud or ours, priced only by users who use the collaborative features.

• If you only need Google Docs style comments inside a text editor, Tiptap's native commenting module works well. For anything broader, a purpose-built SDK like Velt saves time and headache.

What Is Liveblocks?

Liveblocks is an SDK that lets developers add presence, shared state, and a handful of collaboration widgets to web apps. The company started in 2021 with low-level data sync primitives and only recently in 2024 started to add ready components such as a simple comment box and a collaborative text editor.

At its core, Liveblocks offers:

• Presence APIs for online status and cursors.

• A CRDT-backed storage API for shared data.

• React hooks that wrap both services.

• Starter UI for comments and a playground text editor.

This foundation can be a start for small projects, solo devs, weekend warriors, or teams that want to build the bulk of the UX themselves. But many product leaders find the “build the rest later” model risky once deadlines, compliance, and scale enter the picture.

Where Liveblocks Works

• Flexible state sync: You can map almost any JSON-like structure to Liveblocks storage and have it mirrored to every client in real time.

• Low friction for React teams: Hooks such as useOthers and useStorage slip neatly into existing components.

• Decent free plan: Up to 100 monthly active users and 1 GB storage for side projects or prototypes.

Where Liveblocks Falls Short

• Limited ready-made Features: Outside of the core comment box and experimental text editor, front-end work is on your plate. Threaded comments that pin to frames, video timestamp notes, or a notification center are not supplied.

• React only for serious builds: The Vue and Svelte examples wrap the low-level client but lack first-class hooks or components. Angular and plain JavaScript require even more scaffolding.

• No self-hosting: Data lives in Liveblocks’ cloud. If your legal team mandates a private VPC or regional residency, Liveblocks will not pass review.

• MAU pricing: Every user that triggers the SDK in a calendar month counts against your allowance. Thousands of occasional reviewers can push costs far beyond the budget for core editors.

• Expensive after low storage limits: Costs can skyrocket after you hit their 8GB storage limit.

• Support tiers: Slack with engineers is reserved for enterprise contracts. On lower plans you file a ticket and wait.

Questions to Ask Before Committing to Liveblocks

1. Stack alignment: Is your front end React?

2. Infrastructure: Are you willing to change your backend and re-wire your infra?

3. UI budget: Do you have weeks to build end-to-end experiences like comment threads and mention pickers? Liveblocks is API first and you own the rest.

4. Growth curve: How many listeners, reviewers, and external sign-offs will touch the feature each month?

5. Compliance: Do you host sensitive data and want to store it yourself?

6. Support speed: Who fixes production issues at 2 AM, your team or the vendor?

7. Feature roadmap: Are notifications, audio comments, video calls, or screen recording part of your vision? If so, who will build them?

Teams that answer “yes” to React-only scope, in-house UI time, and relaxed compliance can ship with Liveblocks. Others keep searching.

We've noticed that most customers want comments + notifications!

Liveblocks Alternatives in 2025

Velt Comments SDK: Best for Full-Stack Collaboration

Velt comment and collaboration SDK covers the entire workflow: embeddable UI components, WebSocket backend, in-app/email/webhook notifications, presence, live cursor trails, huddle voice rooms, and screen recording attachments. It runs on React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, or vanilla JavaScript with ease. For security-sensitive clients, you can host your sensitive data yourself.

Key points:

• One import, many surfaces: Text ranges, design pins, spreadsheet cells, video timelines, and code lines all use the same API.

• Freeform theming: Every color, icon, and layout is exposed through props or headless mode.

• Aligned pricing: Pay only for users who use commenting features.

• Generous default scale: 2 TB storage and millions of WebSocket events per month.

• Direct Slack support: Engineers answer questions in minutes, not days.

• Adaptable: Velt fits into your existing infra with its framework agnostic SDKs.

• Compliance ready: GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, and HIPAA audits passed, with yearly pen testing and optional self-hosting.

The result is launch speed measured in hours, not quarters, with no surprise rebuilds when requirements grow.

Tiptap Comments: Text Editor Focus

Tiptap’s comment extension shines inside rich-text editors. If your app is a document editor and nothing more, Tiptap offers intuitive inline threads that move with text. Outside the editor, you supply your own storage, presence, and notification stack.

Firebase, Ably, and Friends: The DIY Route

Building from primitives offers total freedom, but teams underestimate the hidden cost:

• Data model design

• Real-time conflict handling

• UI polishing for every new surface

• Security rules and audits

• On-call duty for outages

Our research shows a minimum of three engineer-months for a basic launch, with constant upkeep after

Knock: Notification Add-On

Knock is a fine service for multi-channel notifications only, and lacks support for comments. Velt ships its own notification center, so extra integration is optional.

Commenting SDK Feature Table

Here is a small feature comparison. We've written a lot more about whether you should build or buy, along with a full breakdown of the best commenting SDKs of 2025 list that takes into account everything from implementation, security, cost, customization and more. We're of course a little biased, but give them a read if you're interested.

Final Thoughts

Liveblocks brings polished docs and a flexible real-time core that hobby projects and React-first tools may love. Yet as products mature, the missing UI pieces, MAU pricing spikes, and lack of self-hosting turn into real blockers. Velt solves those pain points with a complete layer that plugs into any stack, scales to millions, and keeps compliance teams happy.

If you want your users talking in context tomorrow instead of next quarter, start with the Velt Comments SDK and see how fast a modern collaboration feature can land in production.