Top SendBird Alternatives for Your Real-time Communication Needs
SendBird is a well-known messaging-as-a-service provider, offering client SDKs, chat APIs, and a robust backend for applications needing real-time communication among their users. While SendBird is powerful, various reasons might lead developers and businesses to seek a SendBird alternative, such as specific feature requirements, pricing models, platform compatibility, or the desire for open-source solutions. This article explores some of the best alternatives available.
The Best SendBird Alternatives
Whether you're building a new app or looking to migrate an existing one, finding the right real-time communication platform is crucial. Here's a look at top contenders that offer compelling features and flexibility.
Stream Chat
Stream Chat provides powerful chat React components, SDKs, and UI kits, enabling product teams to integrate chat functionality into web or mobile apps with minimal code. As a commercial SaaS platform, it's designed for scalability and offers features like integrated chat, messaging, a messaging-SDK, Android development, chat bots, encrypted chat, Flutter SDK, group chat, in-app chat, live chat, private and public group chat, React support, and real-time capabilities with a simple setup. It's an excellent SendBird alternative for those seeking comprehensive UI kits and robust SDKs.
MongooseIM platform
MongooseIM platform, by Erlang Solutions, is a massively-scalable XMPP/Jabber mobile messaging platform for mobile and web. It stands out as a free and open-source SendBird alternative, supporting Mac, Linux, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. Key features include chat, chat history, social network integration, voice call, voice chat, and comprehensive XMPP support, making it ideal for developers looking for an open and highly customizable solution.
Applozic
Applozic offers a white-labeled mobile native SDK that allows businesses to add WhatsApp-like instant messaging capabilities to mobile apps and websites quickly. As a freemium platform available on Android and iPhone, it serves as a strong SendBird alternative for its ease of integration. Its features include chat, messaging, and real-time communication.
Qiscus
Qiscus helps businesses enable conversations within any app, primarily through its chat SDK. It provides end-to-end solutions for businesses and is a commercial platform supporting Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, iPhone, and Chrome OS. Features include group chat, delivery reports, in-app chat, integrated chat, live chat, on-premise development options, online consultation, private messaging, real-time collaboration, SaaS, video calling, and video chat, making it a versatile SendBird alternative.
MirrorFly
MirrorFly is a multiplatform messaging solution allowing businesses to build their own online chat applications for Android, iOS, and Web. It provides a powerful Chat API and is a commercial offering for Mac, Windows, Android, and iPad. Features include video conferencing, chat, call recording, channels, group chat, group voice chat, in-app chat, integrated chat, live broadcasting, mobile SDK integration, push notifications, push to talk, real-time capabilities, screen sharing, team messaging, customization, messaging, real-time collaboration, video calling, and voice call. This makes MirrorFly a feature-rich SendBird alternative for custom app development.
Contus Fly
Contus Fly is an enterprise messaging app from Contus designed for internal communication within organizations. This secured network-based app provides low latency and high customizability. As a commercial platform supporting Web and Android, it serves as a secure and customizable SendBird alternative for enterprise-grade messaging needs.
QuickBlox
QuickBlox offers a cloud communication and data backend that supports chat, video calling, push notifications, and data APIs for iOS, Android, Javascript, and Windows. It's a freemium platform available on Mac, Windows, Web, Android, iPhone, and Android Tablet. Key features include backend services, chat, database, developer tools, messaging, a messaging-SDK, push notifications, video calling, video chat, and WebRTC support, positioning it as a comprehensive SendBird alternative for diverse communication needs.
Cometchat
CometChat provides a Facebook-style footer chat written in PHP and MySQL for websites, enabling real-time user interaction. As a commercial web platform, it's a direct SendBird alternative for web-based chat. Features include chat, mobile SDK integration, PHP support, and a REST API.
Pusher
Pusher is a hosted API for securely adding scalable real-time functionality to web and mobile apps quickly and easily. As a commercial platform available on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, iPhone, Android Tablet, and iPad, it focuses on real-time event publishing rather than a full chat SDK. While not a direct chat SDK like SendBird, its Websocket streams and web development features make it a powerful underlying technology for real-time applications.
Skygear Chat
Skygear Chat is an open-source chat backend offering Chat SDKs (iOS, Android, and JS) and messaging APIs for developers to quickly build or add chat features. As a freemium platform supporting Mac, Android, iPhone, Apple Swift, JavaScript, Java, and Objective-C, it's a flexible and developer-friendly SendBird alternative, especially for those looking for open-source options.
The landscape of real-time communication solutions is rich and varied. While SendBird offers a strong product, these alternatives provide diverse options in terms of pricing, features, platform support, and open-source availability. We encourage you to explore these options further to find the best fit for your specific project requirements, ensuring your application delivers seamless real-time experiences to its users.