Best Google Cloud IoT Core Alternatives
IoT Core, Google’s cloud service provider for securely connecting and managing Internet of Things (IoT) devices, has retired on August 16, 2023. If you use this service as a solution to manage your IoT system, such as smart home automation, it’s high time to look for an alternative and prepare for migration.
Even if you didn’t use Google IoT Core services for your project, it is essential to find a suitable replacement for the service provider. Fortunately, multiple options are available, and this article highlights the top solutions for your consideration. As a bonus, it will introduce you to a non direct competitor, but still an effective Google IoT Core alternative, represented by an MQTT broker.
What is Google Cloud IoT Core?
In short, Google Cloud IoT Core is a fully managed service on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that helps users collect and manage data from connected IoT devices. It uses the MQTT protocol to send Pub/Sub messages, ensuring smooth data transmission between connected devices and the cloud. Additionally, its architecture allows for easy scaling and deployment of IoT solutions to meet specific project requirements. This means it can integrate with other service providers for large-scale industrial applications and use cases.
What are the alternative solutions to Google Cloud IoT Core?
The layman’s way to discover the solution to replace Google IoT Core is to refer to peer-to-peer review platforms such as G2. However, the information there is generalized, based on ratings and feedback. Additionally, Google IoT Core has a list of partner-led solutions built on Google Cloud that meet the needs of IoT customers.
We utilized a more thorough approach to evaluate alternatives to Google IoT Core based on our expertise in this field, and recommend the following top IoT solutions:
- Microsoft Azure IoT Hub: A platform as a service acting as a message hub to manage communication between all the connected devices and an IoT app. With Azure IoT Hub, you can collect data from millions of sensors and even create your own SDKs to manage IoT.
- AWS IoT Core: Amazon’s cloud service that connects and manages devices and their interaction with each other and cloud apps. AWS IoT Core supports MQTT, WebSockets, and HTTP 1.1 protocols to connect IoT devices to AWS. Refer to this article to learn more about how to set up MQTT on AWS.
- IBM Watson IoT Platform: A cloud-hosted service that enables you to manage and analyze data from IoT devices. It utilizes the MQTT protocol and offers a simple interface for device management services, such as performing updates and running diagnostics.
- ThingsBoard: An open-source IoT platform designed for data collection, processing, and device management in IoT projects. It focuses on scalability, fault tolerance, and performance by enabling device connectivity via standard IoT protocols like MQTT and HTTP to ensure your data is secure.
- Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto™: A globally recognized MQTT broker offering premium features compared to its open-source counterpart. It provides high-availability configuration, persistent queueing, enhanced monitoring and security, advanced logging, and more to meet the needs of complex IoT applications.
All these options are IoT Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions represented by known names, providing scalability and reliability. However, they tend to be overpriced and lack flexibility in setup and customization.
Therefore, it’s wise to consider alternatives to Google IoT Core that utilize agile open standards and offer greater customization. The Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto, the world’s most used and high-performance MQTT broker, provides these advantages.
Can an MQTT broker be a worthy Google Cloud IoT Core alternative?
As a refresher, MQTT is a lightweight messaging protocol widely adopted for constrained devices and is the de facto standard protocol in IoT. All the mentioned Google Cloud IoT Core alternatives support MQTT to some degree but usually lack full compatibility with the official MQTT standard. Moreover, Google Cloud IoT Core acts as an MQTT broker to maintain communication between IoT devices in a secure cloud.
Simply put, paying for a PaaS like Google IoT Core often means paying for features and functionalities included out-of-the-box that you don’t necessarily use. Moreover, such services can lead to vendor lock-in, limiting your flexibility and control over your IoT solutions. To learn more about how customers like Thred overcome these challenges, check out this case study here. So, why spend money on them when you can use your resources and still get the same Service Level Agreement (SLA)? The Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto supports up to 99.99% SLA, maintaining the highest level of quality and responsibility. Let’s learn more about the Pro Mosquitto broker as an alternative to Google IoT Core.
Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto as the Google Cloud IoT Core alternative
You’ve likely heard of Eclipse Mosquitto, an open-source lightweight MQTT broker. It is considered the world’s #1 choice to ensure quick and reliable IoT data transmission between devices using the MQTT protocol.
With the Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto, you benefit from Mosquitto’s open standards that are compliant with both MQTT versions 3 and 5. The pro version offers High Availability, optimized performance, enhanced security, and other advanced features for both cloud and on-premise deployment options. Moreover, Roger Light, the creator of Mosquitto, leads the development of Pro Mosquitto, bringing his unique lifelong experience into the product. This ensures clients receive expert knowledge from a professional in the field.
Pro Mosquitto is a reliable replacement for Google Cloud IoT Core. In the managed version, it functions as an MQTT Platform-as-a-Service. Let’s explore the benefits you can get with this robust system MQTT broker.
Unmatched performance
The specific architecture of Pro Mosquitto is designed to deliver high performance, while reducing RAM and CPU strain. It enables more data to be sent on a single MQTT server node, which can maintain up to 1 million connected devices.
Enhanced reliability
Pro Mosquitto offers MQTT High Availability (HA) functionality through a fault-tolerant cluster system consisting of at least three MQTT broker nodes. In the Full Sync mode, if one node fails, only one of the three remains active and can automatically handle client connections. In the Dynamic-Security Sync mode, all three nodes can simultaneously handle client connections and seamlessly take over all MQTT broker operations. This ensures the smooth continuity of your services, maintaining high availability for both internal and external customers. Both can ensure failover is handled within seconds in the case of a node crash. This Kubernetes article will show you an example of how to deploy Mosquitto with High Availability.
As already mentioned, Pro Mosquitto supports up to 99.99% SLA, maintaining only the highest level of quality and accountability. The MQTT broker guarantees security with high-standard authentication and encryption protocols. Moreover, you can change security settings easily and without having to reboot the system.
Improved security
Pro Mosquitto’s framework utilizes the native Dynamic Security Plugin for quick authentication and user access management based on groups and roles. It includes security features like Audit Trail, which records essential broker actions in an append-only log. The framework further enhances client security with features such as OAuth 2.0 / JWT Authentication, which utilizes token-based mechanisms, and LDAP Authentication, which utilizes directory-based mechanisms for authenticating clients.
Extensive integrations
Pro Mosquitto offers an extensive list of integrations, making it an excellent alternative to Google IoT Core. You can establish multiple broker connections via a Mosquitto bridge or forward information from a broker to a web service with an HTTP endpoint. Pro Mosquitto supports a wide range of bridges, including Kafka, MongoDB, Google Pub/Sub, Google AlloyDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, and more – allowing you to store and utilize MQTT data for real-time processing and informed decision-making.
Moreover, exporters like Prometheus Metrics and InfluxDB Metrics can further enhance Pro Mosquitto monitoring capabilities. This means you can always rely on broker metrics and historical data in external systems to ensure the broker’s optimal performance and respond quickly to abnormalities.
Transparency and dedication
As a Google IoT alternative, Pro Mosquitto stands out with its upfront, transparent pricing and product value, which are lacking in some competitors. Cedalo’s Pro Mosquitto eliminates uncertainty by providing stability and a reliable product that will remain in the market for the long haul.
The numbers speak for themselves: Mosquitto has 6.7K GitHub stars and 500+ millions of Docker pulls, including nearly 12 million monthly, making it the frontrunner in the MQTT broker product ecosystem.
Scalability
Even the best MQTT broker in the world would have difficulty competing with Google IoT Core and other PaaS in terms of scalability. Nevertheless, customers use 1,000,000 clients and more on Pro Mosquitto.
A single Pro Mosquitto node can support up to 250 Mbit/s of total traffic. The number of concurrent clients depends heavily on the message size, publication frequency, and the number of subscribers who will receive a published message.
Beyond that, Cedalo specializes in customer-specific setups, including clusters with several active nodes to scale beyond single-node capacity.
Persistent Queueing
Persistent Queueing allows Pro Mosquitto to store messages directly to disk, significantly increasing its storage capacity. This ensures message delivery even in environments with unstable networks or poor connectivity by retaining multiple terabytes of queued messages per client. Moreover, by offloading storage to disk, you can enable Pro Mosquitto to scale more efficiently with additional connections and higher message volumes.
MQTT Broker web UI
Pro Mosquitto integrates seamlessly with other services and has an intuitive and easy-to-follow interface. The Mosquitto Management Center (MMC) serves as a central point for managing broker instances, HA clusters, can easily define users, arrange them into user groups, and set accessibility controls (Role-Based Access Controls or RBAC).
Moreover, the Management Center’s REST APIs automate MQTT broker actions and operations, enhancing its integration capabilities. Other features available with Pro Mosquitto include Dashboarding, Cloud Backup, Stream Processing, Terminal view, and many others.
If you’re ready to experience these benefits and more, sign up for a free trial of the Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto.
Versatile deployment options
The Mosquitto MQTT broker can be hosted using various deployment options across cloud and on-premises environments. With support for cloud platforms like Google Cloud and AWS, you can choose the infrastructure that best suits your specific needs, ensuring smooth integration and optimal performance. For more information on configuring the Mosquitto MQTT broker on AWS, read this article.
Moreover, Pro Mosquitto supports on-premises deployments, including Windows, Docker, RPM, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. These options deliver secure and scalable operations for applications and services, particularly within containerized environments.
Professional support
With the open-source Eclipse Mosquitto, support requests are limited to questions on Stack Overflow or similar public platforms. In contrast, Pro Mosquitto offers different support levels depending on the subscription and professional services for additional features, from an online forum to email support and more. For example, Plans S through L offers one-business-day response times, email communication, and a standard ticketing system. The Enterprise subscription plan takes it further by providing customers direct assistance with developers and the product team, different modes of communication, extended onboarding, log analysis for specific issues, and more. Moreover, Enterprise customers can utilize the Helpdesk ticketing system to create tickets and monitor their status.
Start a free cloud or on-premises trial to test the functionalities of the Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto broker, including MQTT High Availability, and other advanced features.
How to migrate from Google IoT Core to Pro Mosquitto?
Most of you will agree that Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto is a worthy replacement for Google IoT Core. The next step is to migrate from one service to another. While this may seem like a piece of cake, migrations can be both smooth and complex depending on your goals and purposes. The biggest challenge is often authentication, since it differs significantly from IoT Core.
So, what are the first steps to start the migration journey? Begin with a free Pro Mosquitto trial and submit a contact form. Shortly thereafter, a Solution Engineer will get in touch with you and prepare a custom offer to make sure the migration happens as smoothly as possible.
About the author
Zakhar is a content manager at Coupler.io, tasked with the important role of ensuring that readers love and enjoy the content created by the company. With over 5 years of experience as a skilled writer in the SaaS industry, Zakhar can craft texts that resonate with the audience's queries.
Despite not being a developer, Zakhar sees this as an advantage in effectively explaining complex technical concepts to the readers using simple and accessible language. Zakhar's content expertise spans various areas, such as working with REST APIs, data automation, reporting and analytics, MQTT, email testing, and more.
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