Drata VS Ably

Compare Drata VS Ably and see what are their differences

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Ably

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

Landing page //
2022-10-20

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. Ably’s Pub/Sub, Chat, and AI Transport products are unified by design, with developer-friendly APIs and SDKs that integrate across your stack.

Drata

Website: drata.com
Pricing URL: Official Drata Pricing
$ Details: -
Release Date: 2020 January
Startup details
Country: United States
State: California
City: San Diego
Founder(s): Adam Markowitz
Employees: 10 - 19

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Ably

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

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Drata features and specs

Automated Compliance Monitoring
Drata provides continuous, automated monitoring of a company's compliance posture, which helps ensure adherence to standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy.
Integration Capabilities
Drata integrates with a wide range of tools and platforms used by organizations, including cloud providers, identity management systems, and development tools, enabling seamless data collection and analysis for compliance purposes.
Real-Time Alerts and Insights
The platform offers real-time alerts and insights, allowing businesses to proactively address compliance issues and make informed decisions to maintain security and regulatory requirements.
User-Friendly Interface
Drata features an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, which simplifies the process of managing and understanding compliance requirements, especially beneficial for non-technical users.
Robust Reporting
With its comprehensive reporting tools, Drata allows organizations to easily generate and share compliance reports with stakeholders and auditors, facilitating transparency and accountability.

Possible disadvantages of Drata

Pricing Structure
For smaller businesses or startups, Drata's pricing could be considered expensive, making it less accessible for organizations with limited budgets.
Learning Curve
While the interface is user-friendly, some users may experience a learning curve when first getting acquainted with the platform and its extensive features.
Customization Limitations
Some users might find the customization options limited when trying to tailor the platform to specific compliance processes or unique internal requirements.
Dependency on Integration
Organizations heavily reliant on very specific or niche tools may face challenges if Drata does not support direct integration with those tools, potentially complicating the data collection process.
Service Reliability
As with any cloud-based solution, there may be concerns regarding uptime and service reliability, which can impact the ability to continuously monitor compliance in real-time.

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 Ably’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, Ably’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.

Analysis of Drata

Overall verdict

Drata is positively reviewed for its extensive features that simplify compliance management and its user-friendly interface. Businesses seeking to streamline their compliance processes and ensure ongoing adherence to security standards find Drata particularly beneficial.

Why this product is good

Drata is considered a good platform due to its automation of compliance workflows, real-time risk management, and integration with a wide array of tools, helping companies achieve and maintain security compliance more efficiently. It alleviates the manual processes associated with compliance and provides continuous monitoring along with a comprehensive overview of compliance status. The platform caters well to companies pursuing and sustaining certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more.

Recommended for

Tech startups aiming to achieve rapid SOC 2 compliance
Mid-size companies that need continuous compliance monitoring
Enterprises requiring integration with existing security and development tools
Organizations in heavily regulated industries like healthcare or finance

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

Drata videos

+ Add

Drata's 2021 in Review 🎉

Ably videos

+ Add

How to build a collaborative environment around your product

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Drata and Ably)

Drata

Ably

Governance, Risk And Compliance

100 100%

Governance, Risk And Compliance

0% 0

Developer Tools

0 0%

Developer Tools

100% 100

Security & Privacy

100 100%

Security & Privacy

0% 0

Realtime Backend / API

0 0%

Realtime Backend / API

100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Drata and Ably. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

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

Drata Reviews

Top 5 GRC Tools in 2026: A Practical Guide for Modern Risk & Compliance Teams

For teams whose primary need is audit efficiency, Drata is a reasonable option. For teams aiming to operationalize GRC beyond audits, it remains limited.

Source: www.getprobo.com

11 NetBox Alternatives

Drata is an application that provides its services to secure users' data to help them build trust with their customers and boost their sales with the help of its great features. By using this amazing application, you can be able to scale your business in front of the world securely and rank your website on the Google search engine so that customers can reach your store...

Source: www.justalternativeto.com

Ably Reviews

We have no reviews of Ably yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ably should be more popular than Drata. It has been mentiond 26 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.

Drata mentions (7)

Interested in GRC?
Have you had opportunity to apply any of the compliance automation tools like Drata in your work? Have you found them to be useful? Source: over 3 years ago
Seeking critique before soft-launching our B2B SaaS product: Website feedback wanted!
Have you got any experience from services like Drata (https://drata.com/)? Source: over 3 years ago
SOC Compliance for Hardware/Software business
Have a chat with the folks at https://drata.com/. Thier discovery and automated evidence gathering platform is pretty cool. Prepare for sticker shock though. Getting through any compliance process is a $30k ish annual expense. Source: over 3 years ago
Security and Compliance Considerations for the Public Cloud
Compliance tools like Vanta and Drata integrate with the major cloud providers and allow you to automatically monitor whether compliance criteria are being met. Because these tools can plug directly into the cloud provider APIs, they are able to pull relevant data automatically and send alerts when something is misconfigured. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago
The Developer's Guide to SaaS Compliance
Even if your organization has the practices down, you will still need to spend time maintaining and collecting evidence of compliance. Therefore, it’s beneficial to invest in automated software tools like Vanta or Drata that can speed up the evidence collection process. These tools help manage and record evidence of compliance practices via continuous monitoring of the application’s infrastructure and business... - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

Ably mentions (26)

AWS us-east-1 outage: How Ably’s multi-region architecture held up
During this week’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 40–50ms global median; this is... - Source: dev.to / 9 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 / 11 months ago
CometChat Alternatives – 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, we’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

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Drata and Ably, you can also consider the following products

Vanta - Automate compliance, simplify security.

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

Sprinto - SOC 2 security compliance for SaaS

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

Secureframe - Get enterprise ready with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance

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.