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Product comparison: Sendbird Chat and Messaging vs. Layer

20180820 Send Birdvs Layer1
Jul 17, 2018
Alek Jeziorek
Alek Jeziorek
Staff writer
Supercharge your customer journey with custom AI chatbots!
On This Page
Supercharge your customer journey with custom AI chatbots!

When searching for an in-app chat and messaging SDK, you might compare Sendbird and Layer’s chat. Although Layer is an older company than Sendbird, their improvements in technology have not matched Sendbird’s. We recommend comparing Sendbird and Layer on several points including Sendbird’s premium messaging experience, the scalability and reliability of each solution, the availability of moderation tools, and other companies’ experience migrating from Layer to Sendbird.

Executive Summary

  • Sendbird is the premium messaging experience for your app. Whether 1 on 1 chat, group chat, or open channels, your users experience all the essential features that consumers expect from messaging.
  • Sendbird can scale to over a million concurrent connections in a single application. We support 1,000 users in our private Super Group chat, and more in a public channel.
  • We provide powerful moderation tools to ensure user trust and safety for your community of users
  • Sendbird has extensive experience migrating from other solutions. Companies that have had scalability, reliability, support, and implementation issues with Layer migrated to Sendbird

High-level Overview

  • Sendbird is a complete chat solution that specializes in real-time chat and messaging for mobile apps and websites. With the most scalable chat backend, client-side SDKs, and customizable UI to a user-friendly dashboard and moderation tools, Sendbird is the market leader in the chat and messaging API & SDK space. We are headquartered in San Mateo, CA and have raised $20M+ in funding to-date ($16M series-A in December 2017). We are trusted by Reddit, Virgin Mobile, SEGA, GO-JEK, Healthline, and more great customers. We have ISO27001 and EU-US Privacy Shield certification, and GDPR compliance.
  • Layer focuses on customer care chat with a templated UI using Atlas. Layer’s early efforts focused on startups and small to medium size business. They now market the same framework and technology to enterprises. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and have raised $29.5M funding to-date ($15M series-B in March 2017).
Case study Support mobile

Virgin Mobile UAE improved their CSAT with Sendbird Desk.

Sendbird’s Key Differentiators

  • Premium messaging experience
  • Highly Scalable and Reliable Infrastructure Built on Websocket Servers with Custom Protocol
  • Advanced Moderation Tools & Dashboard
  • Reliable Customer Migration

Premium Messaging Experience

In April 2018, the monthly active users (MAU) for messenger apps was 76% the world’s population. To stay engaged, consumers expect a messaging experience similar to popular messenger apps. Sendbird offers the same premium messaging that consumers experience everyday, and more, in your mobile and web applications, whether it’s 1:1, group, or open channel chat. Features include typing indicators, read receipts, user presence, @Mentions, encrypted media sharing, auto-thumbnail generation, public and private group and open channels. We also provide a premium experience for our client developers with our API and webhooks. They allow you to build custom features with real-time data, like a custom notification system or sentiment analysis.

Blog Messages Comparison
Blog Integrations Comparison

Layer recently deprecated user-to-user messaging to focus on customer support, so they offer a messaging experience below consumer expectations and cannot promise to keep up with innovations and trends in the messaging space.

Highly Scalable Infrastructure

SendBird is the world’s most scalable chat.

With our highly scalable product, you will be able to build the features you want now and in the future. Sendbird’s group chat and Super Group chat allow up to 100 and 1,000 users, respectively. Our open channels can support up to 2,000 users in each channel. Sendbird’s infrastructure can support over a million concurrent connections for a single application.

Blog Scale Comparison

Layer’s group chat caps your users at 25 and 250 for a web app.

Blog Sendbird vs Layer Comparison

Advanced Chat Moderation Tools

Sendbird’s moderation tools bring trust and safety to your messaging community. We have built chat moderation features for user safety and compliance with tools like user ban, user muting, admin announcement messages, freeze channels, profanity filters, and spam flood protection.

Blog Screen Comparisons

Layer does not offer chat moderation tools.

Blog User Moderation Comparison

Reliable Customer Migration

Sendbird has extensive experience in supporting migrations from past messaging solutions. Many companies migrate from Layer to Sendbird because

  1. They did not want to limit their product roadmap, if scalability became an issue in the future.
  2. Sendbird’s reliability gave them peace of mind
  3. Sendbird’s customer support is best-in-class

Sendbird Endorses Proof of Concept (POC) Comparisons with Layer

We understand that there’s no better comparison between Sendbird and Layer than the one your team will conduct. Although aspects like Sendbird’s customer support and reliability are clear winners here, we openly encourage you to compare our technology. Let us know if we can help you in this process.

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