Scaledrone
Effortlessly add realtime capabilities to your apps
About Scaledrone
Scaledrone is a hosted realtime messaging service that adds pub/sub over WebSockets, user presence, and message history to web and mobile apps. Developers publish and subscribe to rooms through client libraries or a REST API instead of running their own WebSocket infrastructure. It suits live chat, activity feeds, live dashboards, location tracking, and multiplayer state sync.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Free plan covers 20 concurrent connections and 100,000 daily events with no credit card required
- Every feature, including presence and message history, is available on every plan
- Granular plan ladder from $19 to $599 per month lets you pay close to actual usage
- Exceeding plan limits triggers an email and a seven-day grace period instead of an instant cap
- Small API surface: connect, subscribe to a room, and publish in a few lines of code
Cons
- Go, Ruby, Python, and PHP clients are publish-only; subscribing requires a JavaScript, mobile, or Node.js WebSocket client
- Message history is still labeled beta
- Event counting includes every delivery, so one message to 10 users counts as 11 events and fan-out-heavy apps hit limits quickly
- Small vendor with few third-party reviews and a narrower feature set than Ably or PubNub
- Priority support and personal onboarding only start at the $149 and $249 tiers
Key Features
Pub/Sub messaging
Send messages from server to users, user to user, or user to server through named rooms.
Enhanced WebSockets
Uses WebSockets where possible and falls back to other transports automatically when a connection can't use them.
User presence
Tracks who is connected to a room, for online user lists, collaboration indicators, and live maps.
Message history
Lets clients fetch past messages from a room, useful for chat backlogs, scoreboards, and charts (currently in beta).
Access control with JWT
Set per-user access rules and integrate with existing authentication using basic or JWT authentication.
Client libraries and REST API
Pub and sub clients for JavaScript, Android/Java, Swift/iOS, React Native, and Node.js, plus publish-only clients for Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, and REST.
Debug tools
Dashboard tools to view users and rooms, inspect their data, and send test messages.
SSL-encrypted traffic
All traffic between clients and Scaledrone is SSL encrypted.
Pricing
- 20 concurrent connections
- 100,000 events per day
- All features included
- 100 concurrent connections
- 200,000 events per day
- All features included
- 500 concurrent connections
- 1 million events per day
- All features included
- 2,000 concurrent connections
- 4 million events per day
- All features included
- 5,000 concurrent connections
- 10 million events per day
- Priority support
- 10,000 concurrent connections
- 20 million events per day
- Priority support
- Personal onboarding
- 15,000 concurrent connections
- 40 million events per day
- Priority support
- Personal onboarding
- 20,000 concurrent connections
- 60 million events per day
- Priority support
- Personal onboarding
- 30,000 concurrent connections
- 90 million events per day
- Priority support
- Personal onboarding
- 30,000+ concurrent connections
- 90 million+ events per day
- Priority support
- Personal onboarding
Best For
Live chat
Build chat rooms with live user lists and message backlogs without running a WebSocket server.
Realtime dashboards and charts
Push live stats, sports scores, or price updates to connected browsers as they change.
Location tracking
Stream delivery or fleet positions to a live map for logistics and dispatch apps.
Multiplayer and collaboration
Keep game or document state in sync across users and show who is currently online.
Pusher replacement
Move existing pub/sub notification traffic from Pusher to a lower-cost hosted service.
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