Hotsock review
AWS-installed WebSocket messaging with stored history and scheduled delivery.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Hotsock is a WebSocket messaging service installed into a customer’s AWS account with AWS CloudFormation. It is aimed at teams building real-time features for web and mobile applications that want channels, message history, scheduled delivery, and persistent channel storage alongside AWS services. Clients communicate over WebSockets; backend publishing can go through AWS Lambda or authenticated HTTP. A browser-based console provides views of connections, subscriptions, storage, and messages.
Its feature set is strongest for teams that need more than transient pub/sub. Hotsock supports private and presence channels with JWT-gated subscriptions, including HMAC, RSA, and ECDSA authentication. Messages can be stored and queried by channel and event, and delivery can be scheduled. Event fan-out to Amazon SNS and EventBridge, plus integrations with AWS API Gateway, Lambda, SQS, and DynamoDB, make it a fit for AWS-centered architectures. Teams seeking presence should evaluate whether its channel model fits their needs; the listed capabilities do not establish the depth of presence behavior.
The Free Tier is described as free forever with all features and standard support, but it has a monthly message cap. The vendor does not state a free-tier concurrent-connection allowance. Paid monthly service costs $99 per AWS account per month; the annual option costs $999 per AWS account per year. Both paid plans include unlimited messages, concurrent connections, and installations, all supported AWS regions, and premium support. AWS infrastructure charges are separate. Hotsock suits AWS teams that value stored, scheduled messages and are comfortable deploying into their own account; teams seeking a provider-neutral managed service or predictable costs including infrastructure may prefer another approach.
Hotsock pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Stores channel messages with history and queries by channel and event
- Schedules delivery and fans out events to SNS and EventBridge
- Supports JWT-gated channels and persistent per-channel storage
- Where it doesn't
- Requires an AWS account and AWS CloudFormation installation
- AWS infrastructure charges are separate from the license fee
- Free Tier has a monthly message cap
Hotsock fact sheet, pricing and score →
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