Tech stack for real-time apps (chat, live updates)?

By Reejan R Gopan · Software & Systems Engineer, Dubai, UAE

For live chat, notifications, dashboards or collaboration:

Managed: Supabase Realtime, Firebase or Pusher/Ably — easiest to run
Self-built: Node.js with WebSockets (Socket.IO), Redis pub/sub to share events between servers
Database: PostgreSQL for the records, Redis for presence and fast counters

Why: WebSockets keep a connection open so updates arrive instantly instead of the app polling every few seconds.

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