Your team is probably juggling multiple tools just to leave feedback on designs and code. Someone comments in Figma, another person uses GitHub, and external stakeholders send emails with vague descriptions. Design tool comments can unify this chaos by letting everyone pin feedback directly to what they're reviewing. But which is better: Liveblocks or Velt? We dig into a comparison to help you find the best solution that actually works across different types of content.

TLDR:

• Contextual comments pin directly to UI elements, code lines, and video timelines in one SDK

• You get 25+ collaboration components including voice huddles and AI-powered screen recording

• Self-hosting and on-premises deployment options meet enterprise compliance requirements

• Velt provides a JavaScript SDK with pre-built UI across React, Vue, Angular, and vanilla JS

What is Velt?

Velt is a commenting SDK that gives developers two dozen ready-to-use collaboration components for web applications. This SDK includes contextual comments that pin directly to UI elements, real-time presence indicators, screen and voice recording, in-app huddles, notification systems with @mentions, and AI features like automatic transcription and comment categorization.

Each component includes both backend infrastructure and customizable UI elements. Velt supports React, Angular, Vue, and vanilla JavaScript, with options for cloud-hosted or self-hosted deployment.

What is Liveblocks?

Liveblocks is a developer-focused SDK that brings real-time collaboration infrastructure to web applications. The service specializes in the backend plumbing needed for multiplayer experiences, offering presence detection, shared data synchronization, and storage layers that keep collaborative content in sync across users.

The toolkit includes pre-built UI components alongside its infrastructure. Developers use Liveblocks to add live cursors showing where teammates are working, presence indicators displaying who's currently active, and basic commenting functionality for content discussions. The architecture manages shared state, allowing multiple people to edit the same document or canvas simultaneously.

Liveblocks maintains a strong focus on React developers, with its core libraries and examples built around React hooks and patterns. This specialization makes it straightforward for React teams to implement features like collaborative text editing or real-time design tools, though teams using other frameworks may need additional adaptation work.

Comparison of Liveblocks and Velt

To compare these two tools and approaches, you need to consider the following:

• Contextual comments and annotation features

• Real-time presence and collaboration infrastructure

• Feature breadth and complete collaboration stack

• Pricing structure and scaling considerations

Contextual Comments and Annotation Features

Liveblocks delivers commenting infrastructure focused on React environments. The service provides a basic comment box component and threaded discussion support, but UI development largely falls on your engineering team. You'll need to build custom annotation tools, mention pickers, and comment pins to create a complete commenting experience as well as take care of the logic for dynamic anchoring and positioning.

Velt, on the other hand, includes pre-built commenting components that work across multiple content types. The SDK supports text annotations, design pins, spreadsheet cell comments, video timeline markers, and code line discussions through one unified API. Each commenting mode includes ready-made UI for threads, @mentions, and resolution workflows that anchor directly to your content. In addition, Velt takes care of dynamic anchoring and positioning automatically. That functionality is available out of the box.

Velt also integrates audio and video recording into the commenting system, with webhooks to automate collaboration workflows when comments are added or resolved. Users can record screen walkthroughs or voice explanations that automatically transcribe and summarize using AI. This creates richer feedback loops compared to text-only comments, particularly valuable for design reviews or complex code discussions where visual context matters.

Real-Time Presence and Collaboration Infrastructure

Liveblocks builds presence infrastructure for React applications. The service relies on CRDT-backed storage APIs and React hooks to manage shared state between users. You can track where teammates are working through presence data, though visual indicators like live cursors require custom UI components built on top of the provided hooks. The infrastructure runs in Liveblocks' cloud environment. Storage starts at 1GB on free tiers and scales to 8GB on paid plans. Private VPC deployment and regional data residency aren't available.

Velt, on the other hand, delivers presence infrastructure across React, Angular, Vue, and vanilla JavaScript. It also provides CRDT and Websockets infrastructure. Developers using Velt can take advantage of ready-made presence UI (live cursors, typing indicators, active user badges) and headless APIs for custom implementations. Our infrastructure supports cloud hosting, and self-hosting. Storage scales to 2TB by default with millions of WebSocket events handled monthly. Organizations in regulated industries can deploy Velt in their own infrastructure without losing features.

Feature Breadth and Complete Collaboration Stack

Liveblocks offers real-time infrastructure built for React developers creating custom collaboration experiences. The service added basic notification components and AI copilot features in 2024, though it lacks audio comments, video calls, or screen recording. Teams often underestimate the development work required to build polished collaboration workflows on top of infrastructure layers.

But, framework support shows clear limitations. Liveblocks focuses on React with dedicated hooks and components, while Vue and Svelte implementations wrap the low-level client without first-class support. Angular and vanilla JavaScript require additional scaffolding work. Organizations needing features beyond presence and commenting must build those capabilities internally or integrate additional third-party services, which compounds the productivity cost since knowledge workers already spend about 3 hours daily searching for information across fragmented platforms.

Velt, though, provides a complete collaboration stack with over 25 components in one SDK, including in-app notifications that integrate with email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Voice and video huddles function like Slack calls, allowing quick discussions without external meeting tools. Screen recording matches Loom's functionality with automatic transcription and AI-generated summaries. AI features automatically categorize comments as bug reports or feature requests, generate thread summaries, and include a contextual copilot for in-app assistance. Every component works consistently across React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, and vanilla JavaScript.

Pricing Structure and Scaling Considerations

Liveblocks pricing model is by Monthly-Active-Users (MAU). A user is anyone who connects to Liveblocks server atleast twice in a month. While this model provides the benefits of only paying for active users, not dormant or inactive accounts, scaling with growth, and avoiding overpaying when many users are inactive, it also has some downsides. It even charges for the user who might have connected to the server but did not perform any meaningful collaboration action. Also, for apps with spiky or high but unpredictable usage, MAU-based pricing can lead to large cost fluctuations.

Velt pricing model is by Monthly-Active-Collaborators (MAC). An active collaborator is a unique user who has performed CRUD operations on any Velt feature during the month. Velt charges for each user only once. There are a number of benefits to MAC over MAU:

• Some providers charge for all of your MAUs, even if your users are only connecting to their servers (rather than actually collaborating).

• MAC is a subset of MAU. Typically, about 15-20% of MAUs perform meaningful collaboration actions on average. So with MAC, you aren't getting charged for users that aren't actually using their system.

Industry research shows organizations increasingly look at collaboration tools based on total cost of ownership instead of base subscription fees. Velt's MAC pricing makes it easier to quantify the ROI based on actual usage rather than fluctuating users.

Why Velt is the Better Choice

Sure, Liveblocks provides real-time infrastructure for teams with React expertise and engineering resources to build custom collaboration experiences. Organizations comfortable with cloud-only hosting and lighter storage needs may find it suitable for basic presence and commenting use cases.

But, Velt delivers a complete collaboration stack that works across all major frameworks without requiring extensive custom development. With over 25 pre-built components including contextual comments, voice huddles, screen recording with AI transcription, and notifications, teams can ship production-ready collaboration features in days, not quarters. The flexible deployment options (cloud, self-hosted, or on-premises) meet enterprise compliance requirements, while framework-agnostic support avoids React lock-in.

Final thoughts on collaboration SDKs for web apps

If you want to implement code review comments and collaboration features across multiple frameworks, Velt saves you months of development time with pre-built components. You get everything you need to build real-time messaging and commenting features right out-of-the-box. You should choose the solution for your needs based on your engineering resources and how quickly you need to ship collaboration features.

FAQ

What is contextual commenting and how does it differ from regular comments?

Contextual commenting pins feedback directly to specific UI elements, design components, or code lines instead of existing in a separate discussion thread. This approach keeps conversations anchored to the exact content being discussed, eliminating confusion about which element or section a comment references.

How long does it take to implement a collaboration SDK in your application?

Implementation time varies by solution complexity. Infrastructure-only tools require weeks to months of custom UI development, while complete SDKs with pre-built components can go live in days. Teams using Velt typically ship production-ready collaboration features within a week, compared to quarters of development time when building from scratch.

Can I use collaboration features if my application isn't built with React?

Yes, though framework support varies by provider. Liveblocks focuses primarily on React with limited support for other frameworks, while Velt works natively across React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, and vanilla JavaScript without requiring framework-specific adaptations.

What happens when your monthly active user count exceeds your plan limit?

Most collaboration SDKs charge per monthly active user, counting anyone who triggers the SDK even once. This includes occasional reviewers and external stakeholders, which can quickly inflate costs. Velt's pricing counts only users who actively engage with collaboration features, making it more predictable for applications where a small percentage of total users participate in commenting or reviewing.

Do collaboration SDKs support deployment methods aligned with compliance requirements?

Deployment options depend on the provider. Cloud-only solutions like Liveblocks don't offer self-hosting deployment, which can block adoption in regulated industries. Velt supports cloud hosting and self-hosting while maintaining full feature parity across all deployment models.