Cloud pubsub services compared: Azure Web PubSub vs Ably

In this post, the author compares two cloud pubsub services, Azure Web PubSub and Ably, for developing a multi-user pixelart drawing application. The comparison covers features such as ease of use of SDKs/APIs, amount of code needed to add realtime capabilities, authentication, creating client-side connections, presence, publishing messages, and subscribing to messages. Both services offer similar pubsub feature sets, but Ably provides additional features like presence, message history, and transport selection. The author finds the Ably client-side API easier to develop with than the native WebSockets API and encourages readers to try out the collaborative pixel drawing application using either service.