What is Ably used for?

Ably is a realtime messaging platform offering pub/sub, presence and message history for developers building live features such as chat, notifications and collaboration. It is a good fit for live chat and notifications, and realtime dashboards and tracking.

Yes. Ably has a free plan, and paid plans start at $29 per month.

No. Ably is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Ably include Mercure, Centrifugo and Deepstream.io.

What are some alternatives to Ably?

Ably competes with Pusher, PubNub and Liveblocks. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Ably alternatives.

Ably: features, pricing and alternatives

About Ably

Ably is a commercial realtime infrastructure service that lets applications exchange messages instantly between servers and many clients. Developers publish messages to named channels and subscribers receive them over persistent connections, with the platform responsible for delivery, scaling and connection management.

Beyond basic pub/sub, it offers presence, which shows which users are currently connected to a channel, and message history so that clients can catch up after a disconnect. SDKs cover a wide range of web, mobile and server languages. Ably suits teams building live dashboards, chat, notifications or collaborative features who prefer to rely on a hosted service for the messaging layer.

Key features

Channel-based pub/sub messaging
Presence tracking for connected users
Message history for reconnecting clients
SDKs for web, mobile and server platforms
Managed delivery and connection scaling

Good fit for

→Live chat and notifications
→Realtime dashboards and tracking

Tags: realtime; pub-sub; messaging; presence; websockets; api; live-updates

Ably: questions and answers

What is Ably used for?: Ably is a realtime messaging platform offering pub/sub, presence and message history for developers building live features such as chat, notifications and collaboration. It is a good fit for live chat and notifications, and realtime dashboards and tracking.
Is Ably free?: Yes. Ably has a free plan, and paid plans start at $29 per month.
Is Ably open source?: No. Ably is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Ably include Mercure, Centrifugo and Deepstream.io.
What are some alternatives to Ably?: Ably competes with Pusher, PubNub and Liveblocks. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Ably alternatives.