Websync: pros and cons?

Question

What is your experience working with Websync (comet framework)? Have you considered any alternatives before using it?

So far I can say that

Pros:

• Very straightforward and easy to use
• Does not require any server configuration

Cons:

• Expensive (turned out to save us tons of money on bandwidth, so not quite)
• Lack of documentation (there are still few gotchas with WebSync3, but documentation is very nice and comprehensive)
• Javascript framework is not flexible enough (turned out to be flexible enough, although it took a while how to do everything we needed with WebSync2 only to see it to become one of the typical usage scenarios in WebSync3 (authentication and such)

Conclusion: The framework is amazingly straightforward and flexible, and allowed us to use it in ways that authors never even thought of ;)

As for the price: it turned out to be totally worth the money. Plus the support is just beyond awesome.

Answer 1

I'll leave it to someone else to post their thoughts on their use of WebSync, but I figured I'd at least attempt to address the cons ;)

1) Relative to open source solutions, sure. But, what you pay in up front costs, IMHO, you'll easily make up for due to ease of use and time of implementation :). I don't think you'll find a comet solution that's faster or simpler to implement. Relative to other closed-source solutions, we're pretty darn cheap; some other comet solutions run 20k+ for a license and require support subscriptions.

2) Yeah, I know that one. The examples and documentation cover the basics, and it's enough to pull together a decent app, but doesn't go into enough detail for more advanced scenarios, etc. We're working on upgrading it.

3) I'd love to know what additional flexibility you'd like to see in the javascript framework; was there something in particular you were looking for? Drop a note in the comments!