TalkJS as an alternative to Cometchat

When searching for a chat or a messaging solution, you might compare TalkJS to Cometchat. This article pinpoints the core differences between the platforms and presents TalkJS as a Cometchat alternative. It also provides a thorough overview of both pricing and features.

Table of contents:

• Feature comparison
• Pricing comparison
• Key differences
• Bottom line

Feature comparison

TalkJS and Cometchat support core messaging features like one-on-one chat, group chat, file uploads, push notifications, etc. As well as enterprise features like on-premises installation and uptime guarantees (SLA).

TalkJS is a complete chat solution, providing you with the infrastructure as well as a pre-built chat UI that’s highly customizable. It also offers advanced features like email-chat sync and real-time translation.

While Cometchat excels in voice and video chat, and by providing a moderation tool. They also support some interesting features like bots, collaborative whiteboard, and screen sharing.

Pricing comparison

Both platforms have a wide range of pricing plans. Cometchat offers two products, the Cometchat GO, for small businesses and startups, and Cometchat PRO, a chat API intended for larger companies. The TalkJS chat API is suitable for small companies as well as enterprise customers. Let’s dive in and compare the pricing.

The Cometchat and TalkJS pricing is based on the number of monthly active users (MAU). You pick the plan with the features and the number of MAU you need, and from there, the pricing scales with MAUs. The key difference is in the overages, the number of users you have to pay for when you exceed the MAU or concurrent users (CCU) limit.

Here’s the comparison on overages:

• Cometchat MAU overage on all plans: 0.05$
• TalkJS MAU overage for BASIC: 0.04$
• TalkJS MAU overage for GROWTH: 0.03$

Take notice of the limits on concurrent users (CCU). Cometchat draws the line at 5% of MAU, which means that for 10k users, there can only be 500 concurrent ones without overages. TalkJS, on the other hand, doesn’t have a hard limit on concurrent users. They typically consider fair usage for max concurrent connected users to be around 10% of MAU. They won’t immediately ask you to upgrade if you go over the limit sporadically, only if it’s a regular occurrence.

Key differences

Voice and video chat

This is the core differentiator between the platforms with regard to conversation features. While TalkJS doesn’t support voice or video chat, Cometchat uses plugins to deliver chat features like:

• Voice Only Calling & Conference
• Voice & Video Calling & Conference
• Voice & Video Broadcasting

Chat UI

Cometchat provides a backend-as-service on top of which the developers have to build the chat UI. To help customers with the design, they offer a UI design kit for Sketch. With Cometchat, you have to create the chat UI, use the Cometchat designs or create your own, and do the testing before going live.

TalkJS, on the other hand, provides a complete chat solution, frontend and backend, in a single package. You get the infrastructure, the code, and a fully functional chat with highly customizable UI, including the design. The UI is forward compatible, so the chat will keep working on future devices, new features, or future browser bugs.

With TalkJS Themes you can customise the TalkJS user interface. From quick tweaks to fonts and colours, to completely changing the markup in certain areas. You could have a light theme, a dark theme, but you might also have themes with UI elements that you only show to a particular subsection of your users.

And it's not all about styling — it's about functionality as well. You can create a Theme that works great for your Slack-style app, mobile messenger, and even a live comment section next to a video livestream.

Support staffed with developers

The entire TalkJS support team is staffed with developers. And that is something few companies can boast about. Any time you contact support via website chat or by email, you are talking to one of our developers.

“This is the best customer service and support I’ve received in a long time, and that goes a long long way for being happy with a company 🙂

There’s bugs with software some times no matter who you use, but you’ve been very receptive to hearing about them and fixing them which is great! Very impressed with the quality of the chat though and the service you’ve been providing. “

—— Dan, JiffyTask

We’re not sure that Cometchat support is fully stacked with developers. When looking at the product reviews, we saw many people not that satisfied with the support they received.

Bottom line

If you need voice or video chat and moderation tools, then Cometchat is an obvious choice. But bear in mind that you’ll need to create a chat UI basically from scratch. But If you want to have your chat up and running in a few hours with a fully functional chat UI, then TalkJS is the better option. Also, consider how both providers scale pricing according to the number of MAUs to understand future API cost better.

Ready to start coding? TalkJS is free for development and testing. You’ll have plenty of time to customize and integrate your chat. You pay when you decide to go live. Try it out!