Social engagement infrastructure built for your product
PubNub gives teams real-time infrastructure to build messaging and social features from the ground up. social.plus delivers those capabilities as a complete social engagement layer that integrates directly into your product. Activity feeds, chat, communities, events, and commerce from day one, letting your brand focus on the user experience, the data, and the entire user journey.
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What social.plus delivers beyond real-time infrastructure
Complete social engagement layer built for your product
social.plus gives your product a complete social engagement layer from day one, with activity feeds, chat, communities, events, and follow graphs, plus algorithmic ranking, aggregation, and notifications built in. Your team focuses on the user experience instead of building foundational social features from scratch. PubNub provides the real-time infrastructure beneath these experiences, offering messaging primitives for teams that want full architectural control.
Full-stack SDKs with ready-to-use UI components
social.plus provides pre-built SDK and UIKit components for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and Web so your brand can ship social experiences quickly. Every component is fully customizable from colors to complete white-label control. PubNub offers SDKs across platforms, including IoT and gaming, with UI components for chat only. For other social features, teams build and maintain their own front end, which suits those wanting full control over every interface.
Monetization built into every surface
social.plus turns every surface of your app into a potential revenue touchpoint. Product catalogues, cross-surface tagging, shoppable livestreams, and sponsored content capture high-intent signals right where users are already engaged. PubNub's focus is real-time messaging infrastructure, so teams looking to add commerce capabilities would source and integrate those separately.
AI-powered analytics and insights across the full engagement stack
social.plus provides real-time, AI-powered analytics on what drives engagement, growth, and retention. Agentry lets teams ask their data questions in plain language inside Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants. PubNub's analytics focus on messaging delivery and channel performance, a different layer of the stack than social engagement intelligence.
Social engagement infrastructure that grows with your product and team
social.plus offers modular components so your team can start with what you need and grow from there. Built-in moderation, analytics, and management tools let every stakeholder operate and optimize live experiences. PubNub's real-time infrastructure handles scale at the transport layer, with moderation and management tools focused on messaging, so teams expanding into broader social engagement would build or source those operational capabilities separately.
The full comparison
Compare what social.plus can do by choosing a feature category.
| Capability |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Social | ||
| Activity feedsTimeline, aggregated, and ranked feeds | Yes | No |
| For You feedPersonalized relevance-ranked feed | Yes | No |
| StoriesEphemeral visual content | Yes | No |
| ClipsShort-form video content | Yes | No |
| User profilesSocial profiles with post timelines | Yes | No |
| Groups and forumsGroup management, discovery, categories | Yes | No |
| EventsScheduling, RSVP, event discovery | Yes | No |
| Polls and reactionsPolls, emoji and sticker reactions, threaded replies | Yes | Reactions in chat only |
| Chat and video | ||
| Real-time chat1:1, group, threads, reactions, presence, push | Yes | Yes |
| LivestreamingRTMP ingest, HLS playback, large-scale audiences | Yes | No |
| File sharingText, image, file, video, and audio messages | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | ||
| Product catalogue and taggingProduct database with tagging across posts, feeds, and livestreams | Yes | No |
| Shoppable livestreamsProduct discovery during live broadcasts | Yes | No |
| Sponsored contentPlacements for partners across your content | Yes | No |
| Sponsored groupsOfficial partner groups as a revenue stream | Yes | No |
| Analytics and moderation | ||
| AnalyticsRetention, activity distribution, content performance | Yes | Messaging metrics only |
| AI insightsTopic detection, trend identification | Yes | No |
| AgentryAsk your engagement data questions in Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants | Yes | No |
| Sentiment analysisReal-time sentiment tracked by segment and topic | Yes | No |
| AI moderationPre and post moderation across text, images, and video | Yes | AI moderation for chat |
| Developer experience | ||
| SDKsiOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter | Yes | Yes |
| SDKs for IoT and gamingUnity, Unreal, Raspberry Pi, FreeRTOS | No | Yes |
| APIDirect API access for custom integrations | Yes | Yes |
| UIKitPre-built, fully customizable UI components | Yes | Chat components only |
| MCP serverAI-assisted development workflows | Yes | Yes |
| AI agent governanceVise provides guardrails for AI coding agents | Yes | No |
| Admin consoleNon-technical operations and management | Yes | Yes |
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FAQ
How does migration from another provider work?
The social.plus team provides migration support for brands moving from other engagement infrastructure providers. The admin console gives non-technical team members a way to manage the transition without relying solely on engineering.
What capabilities are unique to social.plus compared to PubNub?
social.plus includes capabilities PubNub does not offer: algorithmically ranked activity feeds (including a personalized For You feed), Stories, Clips, communities and events, product catalogues with cross-surface tagging, shoppable livestreams, sponsored content, sentiment analysis, and Agentry for querying engagement data in AI assistants. social.plus also provides pre-built UIKit components across all social features, not just chat.
Where does PubNub have capabilities that social.plus does not?
PubNub offers SDKs for IoT devices and gaming engines, covering use cases beyond mobile and web. PubNub also provides real-time presence infrastructure and event-driven messaging primitives that support a wider range of real-time application types beyond social engagement.
How is social.plus different from messaging infrastructure?
Messaging infrastructure provides the transport layer for real-time communication: message delivery, presence, and channel management. social.plus includes real-time chat as one part of a broader social engagement layer. Activity feeds, communities, events, commerce, AI analytics, and moderation tools are all part of the same infrastructure, designed to work together and managed through a unified operational layer.
Can social.plus handle real-time messaging at scale?
Yes. social.plus includes a full real-time chat infrastructure with 1:1 messaging, group channels, threads, reactions, read receipts, push notifications, and file sharing. The infrastructure is designed to scale with your user base.