Ask HN: Is building a realtime web application hard (for a startup)?

[kevinpiac]

I've been struggling during the past months building a realtime mobile application that scales.

We started with Firebase which is great to kickstart a project, but after a couple of months we needed to create our own socket-based realtime infrastructure.

It was really tough, especially for our small team.

I wonder if it's a problem that you've ever faced?

[david927]

Have you thought of using one of the many open source Firebase alternatives?

[kevinpiac]

Thanks for your answer :)

I didn't, actually, we were in a rush and we started building something with socket.io which I guess is (one of) the easiest way to start. And then we had to scale the backend accordingly and it was a pain in the neck.

To be honest, I'm wondering if there's a space for a SAAS product around realtime...

[david927]

I would think the opposite -- that's it's too popular a space. But I'm still surprised at how many services don't have it and need it, so maybe I'm wrong.