Managed MQTT Broker Comparison — Product Packages and Pricing

What Is Managed MQTT Broker? What’s the Benefit? 

MQTT, “message queuing telemetry transport,” was created to solve problems of efficient use of the bandwidth of the low-speed data channel. Accordingly, server solutions (in particular messaging brokers) were needed to serve the operation of this protocol. 

Since cloud solutions are currently distributed in almost all areas of information technology, the corresponding cloud systems, or managed brokers, have appeared in the field of management and monitoring of the Internet of Things. 

Managed brokers don’t require you to set up anything on your server to enable MQTT communication. Managed broker services let you use their hosted brokers for your system.  Save your time on the operational overhead and focus on delivering business that matters.

Since the managed MQTT Broker is a cloud-native application hosted on the cloud that scales elastically with your workload, you get real-time observability at any scale with no upfront engineering or budget commitment; plus, usage-based pricing ensures you only pay for what you use.

Brokers I Choose to Compare

I choose the products from independent MQTT Broker vendors who focus on this area instead of other IoT fields. Compared to the comprehensive IoT platform like AWS IoT Core or Azure IoT Hub, the independent products are more flexible and avoid binding with particular cloud services.

Managed MQTT Brokers are usually the cloud implement of self-hosted MQTT Broker. 

This article will compare the differences between several managed MQTT Brokers in product terms of  packages and pricing aspects. 

Product Package Summary

EMQX Cloud and HiveMQ Cloud have various product packages set for different client scenarios. 

Free Package

HiveMQ Cloud free broker can set up to 100 device connections.  No uptime guarantees. You can't choose where the broker should be deployed.  Because of those limitations, the free broker packages only can be used for tests or personal projects.

EMQX Cloud offers 14 days free trial period. All the features and limitations are the same as the paid plans, except the connection limits (the connections of trial deployment are set to the lowest level).  However, it is not free all the time, but you can do most test work in 14 days.

ProEdition gives a free 14-day license. However, this is a shared instance regarding the number of messages sent and received in the management center.

Volume Based Package

HiveMQ Cloud provides a "Pay As You Go" mode. It is based on the number of sessions and data. There is a monthly limit of 1,000 sessions and 100 GB of data per month. PSYG guarantees 99.5% SLA. It is an affordable way to start if your business is small in devices and message size.

Hourly Billing or Monthly Billing Package

The Standard Plan of HiveMQ Cloud is designed for critical use. The price of the package is set to $1.5/per hour— connections up to 10,000 IoT devices, a significant amount that can accommodate most IoT scenarios. But the package is not flexible enough if you have 5,000 devices and want to pay half the price. The cluster can be deployed in AWS.

EMQX Cloud provides a more precise product package in hourly billing mode. The Standard Plan is designed for general IoT use, and the Professional Plan is for more advanced use involving data integration. You can choose the connection specification from 1,000 to 100,000 at the corresponding price. Another advantage of EMQX Cloud hourly billing mode is the cluster can be deployed in 17 regions across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Pro Edition's package pricing is a wide range, from S level (100 clients) to XL level (10,000 clients). And each level has a single cluster node or three cluster nodes to choose from. For small businesses and limited clients connections,

CloudMQTT offers four product packages, including one basic package and three advanced packages. At the same time, it provides rich availability regions in the cloud platform.

Prepaid Package

You can buy a whole year package usage of EMQX Cloud service in advance at 15% off from the normal price. This price model is especially for long-term use clients. 

Also, ProEdition offers 15% off if you buy the service annually.

Premium Package

All the premium packages are not available for direct use. The solution is customized to each client; pricing varies from client to client.   

Pricing Model Comparison

Price Comparisons

To compare different pricing approaches, I created four different scenarios based on the number of devices, message size, and message rate.

Scenario 1 —  Standard Connection of Use

Devices: 1,000; Message Size: 8KB; Message Rate: 2 messages/minute

Total Monthly Messages: 87,600,00; Total Data (GB): 668 (730 hours/month)

Scenario 2 — Large Message Size; Limited Number of Devices

Devices: 200; Message Size: 50KB; Message Rate: 2 messages/minute

Total Monthly Messages: 17,520,00; Total Data (GB): 835 (730 hours/month)

Scenario 3 — More Frequent Messages; Smaller Message Size

Devices: 5,000; Message Size: 4KB; Message Rate: 60 messages/minute

Total Monthly Messages: 13,140,000,000; Total Data (GB): 50,125 (730 hours/month)

Scenario 4 — More Connections; Smaller Message Size

Devices: 10,000; Message Size: 4KB; Message Rate: 1 messages/minute

Total Monthly Messages: 438,000,000; Total Data (GB): 1671 (730 hours/month)

We can see that the price varies from different product packages. However, in the last scenario, the prices are nearly the same. That allows me to compare the infrastructure in a fair approach.

Conclusions

All the managed MQTT broker products present various packages and pricing strategies to satisfy different levels of clients.

• If you need to learn anything about MQTT, HiveMQ Cloud’s free broker is a good choice. 
• Both EMQX Cloud and ProEdition provide a 14-days14-day free trial that let you get a better understanding of the services.
• EQMX Cloud and ProEdition packages are designed carefully, taking into account the needs of the customers. Meanwhile, high availability is available for the advanced scenario.
• CloudMQTT’s packages are relatively cheap, especially if there is large traffic; it saves you quite a lot of money.

The Price is not everything for an MQTT broker. Next, I will explore the features, performance, support, and more about all these products in the further series.