Pusher
Leader in realtime technologies for developers
About Pusher
Pusher is a hosted realtime communication API that enables developers to add live features like notifications, chat, and real-time updates to web and mobile applications. With 40+ SDKs and a flexible pub/sub messaging model, Pusher handles WebSocket infrastructure so teams can focus on building features instead of managing connections.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extremely easy to integrate with 40+ SDKs across all major languages and frameworks
- Abstracts WebSocket complexity so developers can focus on features, not infrastructure
- Excellent documentation and developer experience with comprehensive tutorials
- 99.99% uptime SLA on paid plans with automatic failover
- Built-in security with encryption, authentication, and GDPR/HIPAA compliance
- Generous free tier for prototyping and small projects
Cons
- Pricing scales steeply for high-connection applications — less ideal for budget-constrained projects at scale
- Single data center selection per app can cause increased latency for globally distributed users
- Feature development has slowed since MessageBird acquisition in 2020
- Message size limited to 10KB which can be restrictive for some use cases
- No built-in message history or persistence — messages are fire-and-forget
Key Features
Channels
Pub/sub messaging API with public, private, and presence channels for organizing real-time data flows
40+ SDKs
Client and server libraries for JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java, .NET, and many more languages
Presence Channels
Track which users are online and subscribed to specific channels for collaborative features
End-to-End Encryption
Encrypted channels ensure message contents remain private between sender and recipients
Webhooks
Server-side notifications for channel events like subscription, unsubscription, and client events
Beams (Push Notifications)
Cross-platform push notifications for iOS, Android, and web with device interest and user targeting
Debug Console
Real-time event viewer in the dashboard for monitoring and debugging channel activity
Auto Reconnection
Built-in heartbeat and automatic reconnection handling with fallback to HTTP streaming
Pricing
- 100 max connections
- 200K messages/day
- Unlimited channels
- SSL protection
- 500 max connections
- Unlimited messages
- Unlimited channels
- SSL protection
- Support
- 2,000 max connections
- Unlimited messages
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- Priority support
- 10,000 max connections
- Unlimited messages
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- Dedicated support
- 20,000 max connections
- Custom SLA
- Advanced analytics
- Premium support
Best For
Live Chat & Messaging
Build real-time chat features for customer support, team collaboration, or social apps with presence awareness
Live Dashboards & Notifications
Push real-time data updates to dashboards, activity feeds, and notification systems without polling
Collaborative Editing
Enable multi-user collaboration features like live cursors, shared editing, and real-time document sync
Gaming & Interactive Apps
Power multiplayer game state synchronization, live scores, and interactive audience participation features
IoT & Device Communication
Stream sensor data and device status updates in real-time from connected devices to monitoring interfaces
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