Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Ably VS Google Cloud Platform

Compare Ably VS Google Cloud Platform and see what are their differences

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Ably logo Ably

The realtime platform that just works. We power more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform, serving over 2 billion devices monthly.

Google Cloud Platform logo Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud provides flexible infrastructure, end-to-security, modern productivity, and intelligent insights engineered to help your business thrive.
  • Ably Ably homepage
    Ably homepage //
    2024-08-05

We help teams deliver resilient AI UX and high-performance live experiences that stay fast and in sync worldwide. We provide the global realtime layer for AI agents, chat, notifications, live dashboards, and collaboration - engineered to handle peak demand without self-managed infrastructure.

Teams like HubSpot and Intercom use Ably to avoid the cost and complexity of building and operating realtime systems, while still getting predictable performance at serious scale, handling 2T+ API operations per month. Ablyโ€™s Pub/Sub, Chat, and AI Transport products are unified by design, with developer-friendly APIs and SDKs that integrate across your stack.

  • Google Cloud Platform Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02

Google Cloud accelerates every organizationโ€™s ability to digitally transform its business and industry by delivering enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Googleโ€™s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Ably

Website
ably.com
$ Details
freemium
Release Date
2016 January
Startup details
Country
United Kingdom
Founder(s)
Matthew O'Riordan, Dr. Paddy Byers
Employees
50 - 99

Ably features and specs

  • Scalability
    Ably is designed to handle a massive number of concurrent connections and messages, making it scalable for both small and large applications.
  • Real-time Messaging
    Ably provides robust real-time messaging capabilities with low latency, supporting use-cases like live chat, gaming, and real-time data streaming.
  • Global Presence
    Ably has a globally distributed network, ensuring low latency and high availability for users around the world.
  • Advanced Features
    It offers advanced features such as message history, presence, and push notifications, which can enhance the functionality of real-time applications.
  • Security
    Ably includes built-in security features such as TLS encryption, token-based authentication, and private channels to ensure secure communication.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The service provides extensive and well-organized documentation, making it easier for developers to integrate and utilize its features.
  • SDKs and Libraries
    Ably offers a wide range of SDKs and libraries for different programming languages and platforms, easing the development process.
  • Reliable Delivery
    It ensures reliable message delivery with features like message queuing and message de-duplication.

Possible disadvantages of Ably

  • Complexity
    Due to its wide range of advanced features, the initial learning curve can be steep for new users.
  • Cost
    For large-scale applications or extensive use of advanced features, the costs can add up, making it potentially expensive.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Relying heavily on Ablyโ€™s platform-specific features may result in vendor lock-in, making it challenging to switch to other services in the future.
  • Dependence on Internet Connection
    As a cloud-based service, Ablyโ€™s performance is highly dependent on the quality and reliability of the internet connection.
  • Third-party Integration
    While Ably offers various integration options, integrating certain third-party services may require additional custom development or may not be as seamless.

Google Cloud Platform features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Platform offers highly scalable services that can grow with your needs, allowing businesses to handle varying loads effectively.
  • Global Infrastructure
    GCP has data centers across the globe, providing low latency and high availability for users worldwide.
  • Advanced Security
    Google Cloud provides robust security features, including strong data encryption, identity management, and regular security audits.
  • Machine Learning and AI
    GCP offers advanced machine learning and AI platforms such as TensorFlow and AutoML, which facilitate the development of sophisticated AI solutions.
  • Cost Management Tools
    GCP provides tools like cost analysis, budgeting, and reporting to help manage and optimize cloud expenditure.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Platform

  • Complex Pricing Structure
    Google Cloud Platform's pricing can be complex and difficult to understand, which might lead to unexpected expenses if not monitored carefully.
  • Service Maturity
    Some of GCP's newer services are not as mature or feature-rich as similar offerings from competitors like AWS and Azure.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    For individuals and organizations new to cloud platforms, GCP can have a steeper learning curve compared to some other providers.
  • Support Costs
    Premium support tiers can be expensive, limiting options for smaller businesses or individual users seeking timely and efficient support.
  • Region Availability
    Not all GCP services are available in every region, which may be a limitation for businesses operating in specific geographic areas.

Analysis of Ably

Overall verdict

  • Ably is a reliable and efficient real-time messaging platform, well-suited for applications requiring high performance and scalability. It is generally well-regarded within the developer community for its ease of use and robust feature set.

Why this product is good

  • Features
    Ably provides a comprehensive suite of features such as pub/sub messaging, presence, and history.
  • Security
    It implements robust security practices including TLS encryption, token-based authentication, and private channels.
  • Integration
    Supports numerous protocols and provides SDKs for various programming languages, making it easy to integrate with different systems.
  • Reliability
    Ably offers high availability and low latency, ensuring messages are delivered in real-time.
  • Scalability
    The platform can handle millions of active connections and is designed for horizontal scaling.

Recommended for

  • developers building real-time applications like chat apps, dashboards, or multiplayer games
  • businesses in need of a scalable solution for live updates and notifications
  • teams looking for a platform with strong security and compliance credentials
  • organizations requiring integration with existing development workflows and tools

Analysis of Google Cloud Platform

Overall verdict

  • Google Cloud Platform is generally regarded as a strong contender in the cloud service market, suitable for businesses and developers looking for reliable, scalable cloud solutions.

Why this product is good

  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is considered good due to its robust infrastructure, global network, strong data analytics and machine learning tools such as BigQuery and TensorFlow, and a wide array of services catering to compute, storage, networking, and beyond. It also offers flexible pricing options, integration with open-source tools, and strong security features.

Recommended for

  • Businesses seeking scalable cloud solutions
  • Developers needing strong support for data analytics and machine learning
  • Companies that prioritize security and privacy
  • Enterprises looking for a global network infrastructure
  • Startups interested in flexible pricing models

Ably videos

How to build a collaborative environment around your product

More videos:

  • Demo - How to build an avatar stack with Ably Spaces
  • Demo - Ably 101: Serverless WebSockets at scale

Google Cloud Platform videos

Amazon Web Services vs Google Cloud Platform - AWS vs GCP | Difference Between GCP and AWS

More videos:

  • Review - Welcome to Google Cloud Platform - the Essentials of GCP
  • Review - Hosting a Website on Google Cloud Platform | Free Hosting
  • Review - Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - Beginner Series | Lesson #2 Learn all GCP products in 10 mins
  • Review - Benefits of Google Cloud Platform

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ably and Google Cloud Platform)
Developer Tools
30 30%
70% 70
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Realtime Backend / API
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Infrastructure
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ably and Google Cloud Platform

Ably Reviews

We have no reviews of Ably yet.
Be the first one to post

Google Cloud Platform Reviews

Database Management Systems (DBMS) Comparison: SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Oracle
Google Cloud shines as a comprehensive suite of database solutions, which include Cloud SQL, Firestore, Bigtable, and Spanner. It caters to a wide range of workloads, from analytics to enterprise applications. Its robust integration with Googleโ€™s ecosystem ensures seamless performance for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Source: blog.devart.com
10 Best Web Hosting Companies in India(December 2023)
Google Cloud consistently performs well in load tests, handling high traffic volumes with minimal impact on website performance.
Source: www.vikatan.com
Best Dedicated Server Providers for E-commerce Businesses in India
Big Data and Analytics: Using Googleโ€™s data processing resources, Google Cloud provides dependable big data and analytics solutions, enabling your e-commerce business to make data-driven decisions.
The Best Dedicated Server Operating System for UK-Based Business
Google Cloud offers automated backup and disaster recovery options and effortlessly connects with other Google services. Because of its affordable high-performance computing costs, businesses may continue to lead the way in technological innovation in the digital sphere.
Source: featurestic.com
The Best Dedicated Servers for Enterprise Businesses in India: Scalable and Reliable
The cutting-edge architecture of Google Cloud is one of its most distinctive features. Their dedicated servers are constructed on top-notch hardware, utilizing Googleโ€™s extensive network and technological know-how to provide great performance, stability, and reliability. Businesses may easily support their mission-critical workloads by relying on the infrastructure of Google...
Source: india07.in

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Cloud Platform should be more popular than Ably. It has been mentiond 210 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Ably mentions (26)

  • AWS us-east-1 outage: How Ablyโ€™s multi-region architecture held up
    During this weekโ€™s AWS us-east-1 outage, Ably maintained full service continuity with no customer impact. This was our multi-region architecture working exactly as designed; error rates were negligibly low and unchanged throughout. Any additional round trip latency was limited to 12ms, which is below the typical variance in any client-to-endpoint connection, and well below our 40โ€“50ms global median; this is... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Real-Time Sync Alternatives: Vaultrice vs. localStorage, DIY, Firebase, Pusher
    Services like Pusher and Ably are experts in real-time messaging. They provide robust APIs for pub/sub channels, allowing you to broadcast events to clients reliably. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • CometChat Alternatives โ€“ Comparing the Top 10 Competitors
    Ably is a real-time infrastructure platform that focuses on delivering low-latency, reliable messaging across global distributed systems. It's designed for developers building event-driven applications, including chat, but also supports broader use cases like live dashboards, GPS tracking, and collaborative tools. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Real-Time Authorization in a Chat Application with Permit.io and WebSockets
    For our web socket-based application, weโ€™ll be using Next.js and Ably, a service that allows us to easily integrate and manage real-time capabilities in our apps powered by web socket. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Curiosity: Using Ably.io Realtime Messaging as a Lightweight Database
    Ably offers various solutions for developers, with their most popular being realtime messaging based on the pub/sub model. When you publish a message to a channel, all devices connected to that channel receive it instantly. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Google Cloud Platform mentions (210)

  • Why AI Apps Fail in Production (And How Google Solved It)
    A Safe, Live Data Layer: Instead of testing in a vacuum with fake data, developers bootstrap ideas using Google AI Studio templates. These hook into a secure Google Cloud proxy server that grants pre-authenticated, read-only API access to live components - like playlists, videos, and channels. You get technical accuracy without any risk of polluting or crashing core databases. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to Stream Live Forex Rates to Google Sheets API: A Complete Guide
    For sheets that need to move in real time, pair our WebSocket feed with a small bridge running on a Google Cloud function. Our WebSocket candles guide shows a reconnect-safe pattern in Node.js, and the low-latency forex dashboard use case covers the same idea end to end. WebSocket access begins on the Plus plan. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • 7 Free Tools for Managing Secrets and Environment Variables in Web Projects
    Google Cloud Secret Manager and Azure Key Vault offer equivalent capabilities for applications on those platforms, with similar integration into the respective container and serverless runtimes. If your application is already running on a cloud platform, the native secrets manager is usually the right choice before evaluating a self-hosted alternative. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • This is Cloud Run: A Decision Guide for Developers
    Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless platform on Google Cloud that runs containers. You give it code, it gives you a URL. No clusters to provision, no nodes to manage, no load balancers to configure. You bring the code; Google handles everything else. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • ๐Ÿฆž I Self-Hosted OpenClaw on AWS for $0 โ€” No Open Ports, No SaaS, No Compromise (Using TailScale)
    One thing worth knowing: Google Cloud gives you $300 in free credits when you create a new account. If youโ€™re just experimenting and testing things out, this is genuinely useful โ€” you can run Gemini at full capacity for weeks without paying a cent. Just go to cloud.google.com, create an account, and the credits are much higher. Well worth setting up before you start. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ably and Google Cloud Platform, you can also consider the following products

Pusher - Pusher is a hosted API for quickly, easily and securely adding scalable realtime functionality via WebSockets to web and mobile apps.

Amazon AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Socket.io - Realtime application framework (Node.JS server)

Microsoft Azure - Windows Azure and SQL Azure enable you to build, host and scale applications in Microsoft datacenters.

PubNub - PubNub is a real-time messaging system for web and mobile apps that can handle API for all platforms and push messages to any device anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second without having to worry about proxies, firewalls or mobile drop-offs.

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.