Real-time application-building software helps in creating interactive and dynamic apps that provide instant updates to users. Real-time application-building software streamlines the development process in the creation of responsive applications.
Real-time application-building software helps in improving engagement as users enjoy instant responses. They assist in providing dynamic experiences and, improve efficiency.
Whether you are a business owner who wants to streamline your services online or an individual with a startup idea to build the next lively app that addicts your audience, Geekflare’s list of the best software to build real-world applications will automate the process for you.
- 1. Ably
- 2. ZEGOCLOUD
- 3. Pusher
- 4. PubNub
- 5. PieSocket
- 6. GetStream
- 7. MirrorFly
- 8. Solace
- 9. Redis
- 10. Hazelcast
- 11. Socket.IO
- Show less
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1. Ably
If you’re looking for a platform that can build real-time experiences for you, Ably is a perfect choice. You get a variety of APIs and SDKs to build and scale real-time applications.
Ably’s pub/sub infrastructure is what makes it perfect for both ends of the message delivery structure. The channel acts as a mediator here to receive and deliver data.
Live location in WhatsApp updates you on the exact whereabouts of your chat partner. With Ably, you can implement this by creating a channel between publishers and subscribers to talk in real-time, and the tool is so fast that it can route the data to the right client globally in as short as 60ms.
Ably Features
- Has a presence feature that allows you quickly create a chat room or an online multiplayer game as it tracks active people across devices.
- Employs Token authentication for reliability and role-based access.
- Provides 7 physical data centers and 385 edge acceleration points of presence to ensure high availability and speed.
- Is well-packed for B2C business models.
Ably Pricing
Ably has a free plan that has live chat and email support with no credit card details required. Once users are ready to commit, they get to choose from a Pay-as-you-go plan and a Custom plan.
2. ZEGOCLOUD
ZEGOCLOUD is a real-time communication cloud service vendor that offers one-stop audio and video chat solutions for over 100 application scenarios. With ZEGOCLOUD’s developer-friendly SDKs, you can quickly build real-time applications in minutes, using just a few lines of code, eliminating the need to start from scratch.
ZEGOCLOUD ‘s solutions cater to a wide range of industries, including social entertainment, online education, e-commerce, telehealth, gaming, and fitness.
As a leading-edge vendor, ZEGOCLOUD leverages advanced technologies such as AI denoise, video super-resolution, and virtual avatars, accumulating a staggering 3 billion call minutes per day.
ZEGOCLOUD Features
- New users enjoy a free trial of 10,000 minutes.
- API options available for different levels of needs: Scenario-based UIKits and low-level core SDK.
- Rich developer resources.
- Support 15,000+ end-user device models across all major OS platforms.
- Professional technical support is available 24/7.
ZEGOCLOUD Pricing
Zegocloud has various pricing depending on the users needs, like its voice call facility is $0.00/1000 participants, AI effects $350/2 platforms/month, etc. However, there is a free trial provided in most and In-app Chat is always free.
3. Pusher
Pusher is a cloud-based solution that delivers a powerful real-time experience for both mobile and web apps.
Pusher has truly mastered implementing multi-user gaming, collaborative editing, live tracking, and in-app messaging into your online businesses, closing more conversions. You have APIs whether to build a real-time application from scratch or want to extend real-time functionalities to the existing ones.
Slack, Datadog, and Sematext are popular tools that can integrate well with Pusher to leverage real-time messaging or alerting systems.
Pusher Features
- Websocket fallbacks for low latency and staying connected in any circumstance.
- Can manage really high volume, like I could say, billions of messages each month.
- SDKs and library support for all major programming languages.
- Flexible payment options for any scale.
Pusher Pricing
Pusher has a variety of pricing options with its Sandbox plan being free and the Starter plan for the Channel version being $49/month while the scalable Beam version’s Starter plan is $29/month.
4. PubNub
People don’t buy if you can’t show what they get from your offerings. PubNub uses this trick to attract potential developers and businesses to invest in them.
Want to explore the surface of the tool? Go to PubNub and scroll down until you see a collaborative drawing tool. Here, you can add your pencil marks to the same canvas where other active users across the globe are drawing.
By now, you should sense how responsive and real-time the tool is.
PubNub employs a publish-subscribe message communication system, in its terms called a Data stream network. That is, publishers can share real-time data instantly to any device subscribed to the stream via channels.
PubNub Features
- Utilized by Fortune companies like Hotstar, e-Bay, and Delivery Hero.
- Data transmission is under a quarter of a second.
- Easily integrate SDKs for custom apps.
- Data streaming services for IoT devices.
PubNub Pricing
PubNub provides a free version where users can test their code with up to 200 MAUs. Apart from that the Starter version is at $98/month with a Custom version available.
5. PieSocket
PieSocket is one of the leading app-making software developed to deploy fast, secure, and affordable real-time features into your app.
It employs WebSocket and WebRTC protocols for the real-time transmission of audio, video, and data between devices and over the web.
PieSocket Features
- Implements JWT authentication token for secured channels.
- You can download logs of all your messages into a CSV file.
- Daily reports with intuitive graphs and dashboards.
- It claims to be highly available with 99.999% of uptime.
- Flexible enough to support both client-client and server-client messaging.
PieSocket Pricing
PieSocket allows users to get started with $100 credits with its starting plan starting at $10/month.
6. GetStream
GetStream is a powerful cloud-based software for powering your apps with some real-time sense.
GetStream has a powerful and scalable API well-suited for two use cases, with real-time chat messaging being the first one and building social activity feeds being the other effortless task for this app maker.
GetStream Features
- You have SDKs of your choice available in numerous languages and frameworks like React, React Native, Android SDK, Angular SDK, and you name it.
- Pre-built chat messaging and activity feed UI kits.
- The average API response is as short as 9 ms.
- Extensive tutorials to building feeds and chats with its API.
GetStream Pricing
GetStream has three pricing plans from Chat Messaging, Video & Audio to Activity Feeds. Users are able to get started for free.
7. MirrorFly
MirrorFly makes real-time video, audio, and chat communication less complex with its APIs and SDKs.
One of the cool features of MirrorFly is you get to add chat APIs to your applications in just 30 minutes, and the best part is it’s a lifetime free. Build a custom feature-packed face-face chat experience via its video calling APIs and SDKs for Web and Mobile apps.
MirrorFly Features
- 150+ video chat features for seamless collaboration.
- You have a 21-day free trial to test the video-calling API at no risk since it doesn’t require you to fill in the credit card details.
- Flexible pricing based on active users and required features.
- Provides developer-friendly pre-built SDKs for effortless development or integration.
MirrorFly Pricing
MirrorFly’s sales team needs to be contacted for their pricing details.
8. Solace
Solace PubSub+ platform implements event-driven architecture to design, share, and manage events across cloud and IoT environments based on the pub/sub model.
Moreover, Solace PubSub+ event brokers will efficiently move your information across applications and devices all over the world, making Solace a perfect middleware technology.
Solace PubSub+ Features
- Design and develop event-driven real apps faster.
- Solace PubSub+’s mission control makes it flexible to deploy and manage event brokers anywhere on the cloud or on-premise and connect to the mesh.
- Event portal to visualize and optimize the event flow of your ecosystem.
- Event management, event streaming, and event monitoring are all in one place.
- Perfect for large and modern enterprises.
Solace PubSub+ Pricing
Solace PubSub+ has a free trial but for its pricing users need to contact Solace’s sales team.
9. Redis
Redis is a perfect software that’s a game changer for developers with less and simple code solutions allow architects to boost performance and scalability and make scaling from code to production a breeze for the DevOps team.
To reduce the complexity of building and managing real-time applications, Redis Enterprise has streams to collect data, PubSub for data distribution, JSON for storage, and Redis search for indexing. Redis is the trusted choice of over 10000 companies that rely on this platform for building real-time customer experiences.
Redis Features
- It claims to have a database that’s as fast as a caching system.
- Built for speed and simplicity.
- Microsoft, FedEx, Adobe, and Groww are among the top-tier brands to trust Redis.
- It can be deployed both on-premise and cloud.
Redis Pricing
Redis has three pricing plans, Essentials, Pro, and Annual. However, for the annual plan, the user would have to contact the sales team for the pricing.
10. Hazelcast
Businesses used to run batch jobs on the data and wait for insights until the job was done, but today’s world demands processing data and getting responses parallelly. Thanks to Hazelecast, it is here to address this core functionality, data processing in real-time with instant responses.
Hazelcast is a distributed computing platform for storing and processing a high volume of data in real-time. The platform allows you to quickly build and deploy real-time applications at any scale.
Moreover, Hazelcast supports jupyter notebooks, python, and other MLOps tools used by data scientists/Engineers to integrate and manage ML models in real-time.
Hazelcast Features
- Seamless access to data at rest and data in motion.
- You can perform SQL querying for accessing in-memory storage.
- Uses WAN replication for multi-cloud deployments.
- Hazlecast enterprise cluster automatically shifts to disaster recovery clusters to avoid disruption in case of an outage.
Hazelcast Pricing
Hazelcast provides a free trail. Users interested in knowing about their pricing plans need to contact their sales team.
11. Socket.IO
Another popular software that builds real-time applications and is used by top-tier brands like Microsoft, Trello, and NASA is Socket.IO.
We call it a library that implements WebSockets to build a minimal overhead communication channel between clients and servers. In case the WebSockets are down, it automatically turns to HTTP protocol for a reliable and continuous connection.
Socket.IO Features:
- Documentation is more like a tutorial that helps you to build applications from scratch.
- Socket.IO’s unique APIs for both server-side and client-side implementations of several languages and frameworks.
- Huge community, meaning you get free help for many blocks.
- It can create multiple rooms and namespaces, and clients can subscribe to their preferred ones.
Socket.IO Pricing
Socket.IO has a quotation-based pricing model, and so users would have to get in touch with the sales team.
Final Words
I know it can be challenging, either if we have tons of options to choose from or no choices at all. But not to worry, I’ve done the research for you and marked the best real-time app-building software programs in this list, with their unique features and use cases.
More Tools to Build Apps
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EditorJoy R Bhamre is an Editor at Geekflare who brings to the table a unique blend of language and technical expertise. Being an English Literature Honors Gold Medalist, Cambridge-certified Business English Communications Trainer, and the author of ‘Apocalypse’ she knows the value each word brings to a piece. This with her 15-odd years of corporate experience ranging from copywriting to academic publications, accounting, pharmaceuticals, technology, and finance is what set her apart as a language artist building brands through words.
As a Google-certified Digital Marketing Specialist, Joy enjoys crafting content to suit reader engagement and semantic writing principles. When she’s not glued to her laptop, you’ll find her working towards breaking her next running personal record or in a meditative mood contemplating whether the pen/keyboard is mightier than AI (hint: there still needs to be a brain behind the prompt!). 😉
Education: English Literature Hons, The Maharaja Sayajirao University
Expertise: Digital Marketing Strategy, Privacy, Crypto, B2B and B2C Technology Solutions