PubNub Platform Services

PubNub was primarily used in my application for chat purposes, where I needed to create a custom one-to-one chat between two users, specifically a doctor and a patient.

I installed PubNub using the NPM package in my project. After installation, I needed to configure it and create an account at the PubNub site so that I could manage credentials for my application and manage the history through their platform.

For implementation, I installed the NPM package and then created an account to obtain the required access credentials and API key for project configuration. Once this was complete, PubNub provided basic methods such as retrieving the last chat history for a user and the last ten messages. Since a doctor could talk to multiple users at a time, I created a chat application that displayed the most recent chats and the last message. I implemented subscriptions for each user so that whenever a new message arrived for a doctor from any case, it would move to the top. I used PubNub methods to accomplish this, utilizing the subscription key and related features.

PubNub is a paid application, and the free version offers limited features. The great features include chat encryption, HIPAA compliance, and comprehensive management capabilities. These are valuable features for a production-ready application when you are prepared to pay for them. Overall, PubNub has performed well with encryption and managing chats, including the ability to manage chat history retention periods and obtain subscriptions.

HIPAA compliance was critical for my application since it operates in the healthcare industry and must follow HIPAA requirements. We opted for the paid mode of PubNub to ensure these compliances are present in our application. Regarding subscription capabilities, the SDK provided through the NPM package offers built-in methods to fetch history and other functions. I used these methods and created a subscription for each user.

PubNub saves development time because we do not have to create a complete chat backend and frontend from scratch. We can implement a plug-and-play approach where the logic is mostly ready. We only need to create wrappers on top of that functionality and customize cases according to our specific use cases. This approach saves time, effort, and money for the company.

One area for improvement would be optimizing resource consumption and reducing message size in the paid version, as this can directly affect your billing.

Since PubNub is a paid library, it may not be useful for everyone. As I mentioned, optimizing resource consumption is important. When building for large-scale purposes, there are limits on the number of channels and message size can be substantial, which can result in a hefty bill amount.

I have been using PubNub for my applications for more than one year.

Regarding development time, we were able to provide a proof of concept and integrate a production-ready app within a maximum of one week. If we had built it from scratch, it would have obviously taken us around six months to deliver a production-ready application. Even after that timeframe, there could be some edge cases that might have been overlooked. Considering compliances, that is another time-consuming process when you must follow different regulations. If building from scratch, you would need to design it so that it could be extended to other use cases as well. PubNub directly reduced that time. Regarding cost, while the company is primarily inclined toward that consideration, it saves considerable money for our client.

I have not used artificial intelligence with PubNub at this time, but I am confident that as we develop in a world where artificial intelligence is a fundamental consideration that everyone seeks to integrate into their applications, PubNub would perform well once integrated with artificial intelligence. The accuracy and reliability of the output would also increase with that integration.

I recommend that people using PubNub keep messages under a few kilobytes. Do not send large files or images directly through channels and groups, and throttle high-frequency events such as games or typing indicators to one per second.

As I mentioned, PubNub implements all types of encryption while storing data in the databases and messages. It is already secure and follows compliance standards, so it aligns with governance rules.

My review rating for PubNub is seven out of ten.

My main use case for PubNub is to provide a feature in a certain project where two people can communicate or chat. After searching quite a few options like Socket.IO and other SDKs, I found out that PubNub is the current most used SDK, and it is quite useful in terms of its benefits, which is why I picked PubNub for my use case.

In my applications, I used PubNub to implement a scenario where users can sign up with multiple accounts, allowing each user to send friend requests to each other. Once the friend request gets accepted, they build a connection via a pub-sub model created between them. Then I have a feature called chat, where they can communicate seamlessly through the available friends from that window.

I have used PubNub in a React Native application to implement real-time chat and messaging features, and my overall experience with the platform has been positive, especially for building scalable communication features with minimal back-end effort. One of the things I appreciated most about PubNub was the ease of integrating real-time messaging into the app, with clear SDK documentation. Setting up channels, message listeners, and presence tracking was straightforward, and I use it for one-to-one chat, message delivery updates, and online/offline user status. The performance was reliable, and message delivery was fast even with multiple active users. PubNub helped reduce development time as many real-time features were already handled by the platform. I appreciated features having message history and push notification support, which made the overall chat experience smoother for users, and the React Native integration worked well across both platforms, Android and iOS.

The best features PubNub offers, in my opinion, are one-to-one chat, as I mentioned in my review, and the great SDK documentation which allows for easy integration that does not take much time. Setting up channels, message listeners, tracking user status to determine whether users are online or offline, and ensuring reliable message delivery are all great features.

I find myself relying on all three of those features the most because the presence tracking is great, the delivery speed is superb compared to other SDKs, and the user status updates immediately pop up, which is significant. The integration is very easy, so any new developers can easily understand the integration process thanks to the clear documentation.

PubNub has positively impacted my organization as I have received numerous reviews and feedback stating that the chat works much faster and cleaner, and everyone appreciates it, saying it feels powerful.

After implementing PubNub, I noticed positive outcomes such as client feedback acknowledging that they enjoyed the chat features and found them much faster than in other applications, which I believe is very positive feedback for any organization.

I believe PubNub can improve in terms of pricing transparency, as I previously mentioned, since that is the only thing I think should be improved because for smaller projects or startups, estimating scaling costs can be challenging. However, from a technical perspective, the platform remains stable and developer-friendly.

I chose eight out of ten because there are two more points that need improvement: one is pricing transparency, and apart from pricing, I believe the community is not very large, which means it takes time to get support.

I have been using PubNub for almost two years.

I think people should use PubNub because it offers many benefits over other SDKs available in the market, even though the community is not very great in terms of knowledge sharing. People will appreciate the integration process and find the documentation helpful, so I would recommend everyone to use it wherever they can. My overall rating for PubNub is eight out of ten.