The EMQX/HiveMQ/AWS IoT alternative: a real MQTT broker (pub/sub, wildcards, retained, QoS 0/1/2, sessions) carried over WebSocket — PLUS your Air Pipe pipeline runs on every interface-shaped message (validate, enrich, store, republish). One vendor for transport, logic, auth and billing.
Open MQTT: clients connect with NO username or password and subscribe to a public topic for live data (sensors, transit, prices, status). EMQX/HiveMQ allow_anonymous model, but multi-tenant-safe — anonymous reaches only public interfaces, never private topics — and your pipeline runs on the public stream.
The simplest realtime: a PUBLIC WebSocket feed your website visitors subscribe to with NO auth — live scores, status, prices, announcements. Your backend publishes; every open browser gets it instantly. Ably/Pusher public channel, no keys in the browser, no broker to run.
The Ably/Pusher alternative: pub/sub channels, presence, history-rewind and retained state over WebSocket — with open, Air Pipe-issued, or bring-your-own-JWT auth, and your pipeline running on every message. No broker or Redis to run.