PubNub offers a flexible platform for managing real-time messaging data with or without storing it within their infrastructure. Users can choose to store messages, history, and metadata with PubNub to access enhanced features like message persistence, metadata management, and insights through dashboards, which provide detailed analytics on user activity and application usage. The platform supports file sharing, allows for custom metadata storage, and offers serverless computing through PubNub Functions. For those opting not to store data with PubNub, real-time messaging features, global scalability, presence notifications, and security are still available. Additionally, PubNub provides a feature called Events & Actions, enabling data to be sent to third-party systems like Amazon SQS or Kinesis for further storage and analysis without writing code. The choice of whether to store data with PubNub or externally can be guided by the specific needs of real-time updates, data retrieval speed, and integration with external analytics or storage services.