Rocket Launch Numbers – Bridge (YC W11) Signs Up 1,000 Developers in First Day
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
1. Pay per message at Pusher/UrbanAirship to use their internal systems optimized for messaging.
2. Do it for free writing your own messaging stack using some combination of Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ / etc.
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I liken it either getting fully a written TCP/IP socket client and paying per connection (crazy!) or writing in your own bitstream and ensuring protocol compliance (also crazy! -- easy to get wrong, takes globs of time away from the actual app you want to write).
Using the base level protocol with RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ requires a great deal of design to even achieve something barely production-ready. What the folks here did was use their expert industry messaging knowledge and wrote a messaging protocol that takes care of all edge cases, protocol peculiarities, performance refinements.
The result is a beautifully crafted work of art that provides hyper efficient messaging.
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The part that sold me completely was the fact that these guys don't charge per message. Better than that, YOU get to control your own server. You handle uptimes, downtimes, and all things that come with owning your server. You don't get locked in.
The tradeoff of complexity + price + handholding goes as follows:
- Pusher / UrbanAirship (Charge per message)
- Bridge (Charge per core you run)
- Write your own Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ system (Free)
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I've been using Bridge's predecessor (Nowjs) for about 9 months now and I can unabashedly say I love Darshan and his team. Countless times they gave me invaluable advice for setting up a real time messaging system and ways to optimize it.
If you decide to use Bridge, rest assured, you will be in good hands.
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TLDR: This new service is magic. If you don't want to be charged per message and want full control over your messaging node, Bridge is at the cutting edge of cost structure + technology.
One thing to note:
"Bridge’s deepest competition will come from the legacy giants when Bridge starts working with large enterprise operations."
Yep, if you want to pick a fight, pick a fight with the biggest one guy in the room. Best of luck to this team!
I think i found an error in your example at https://www.getbridge.com/learn/examples
You can get started with both for free[1]. The benefit of Bridge Cloud is that you don't have to operate the actual Bridge server. This is great for people testing Bridge or startups that want to focus on their product. The downside is the latency of a cloud hosted Bridge server. Each message travels to our cloud first before going to your servers/clients. This is fine for most use cases - there's a startup that built a synchronous realtime mobile multiplayer game over 3G internet and there are no lag problems. The pricing for Bridge Cloud is to simply cover the cost of hardware and running the service.
The primary deployment model is the Bridge server itself. You can download a free version and run it on one server rate limited to 40k msg/min. That's a huge amount of messaging for free. As you grow, we'd like to provide commercial support and charge on a per-core basis.
Most startups and developers can use Bridge without paying a single dime. Large organizations whose only other alternative is to pay millions of dollars for bloated enterprise software from the 80s or hire an in-house team of messaging experts will find it cheaper and better to pay for Bridge.