MQTT Brokers: Choosing the Right One for Your IoT Solution

Do you need help to ensure reliable message delivery for your IoT devices, even when faced with unreliable connections? Look no further than the MQTT protocol in IoT.

MQTT brokers come as a solution by guaranteeing the delivery of messages to their intended recipients. Yet, with so many MQTT protocols available, choosing the right one for your specific IoT project can be challenging. But no worries, that’s what today’s post is for.

As a leading software development company, WebbyLab has extensive experience developing and implementing IoT solutions with MQTT brokers. In this article, we’ll dive into MQTT protocols and share our expert advice on choosing the most suitable for your IoT ecosystem.

 Using EMQX MQTT broker dashboard for monitoring device-to-device communication.

MQTT Broker Use Cases

MQTT is a universally accepted Internet of Things (IoT) industry standard. It’s a lightweight, machine-to-machine communication protocol for IoT devices and applications with limited resources like low bandwidth, power, and memory. Let’s look at some possible use cases of MQTT:

• MQTT IoT devices. The protocol helps to connect and exchange data between IoT devices, like smart home appliances, industrial sensors, and wearables. If you are interested in the latter, make sure you read our recent article: Wearable IoT Trends: Personal and Business Use in 2023.
• Car-sharing applications. Using the protocol in apps like ShareNow allows users to reserve, locate, and unlock cars via a mobile application.
• Industrial automation. The protocol allows real-time monitoring and control of machinery and equipment. For example, a manufacturing plant can track its production line status using MQTT and adjust the process accordingly.
• Healthcare monitoring. MQTT can connect medical devices and sensors, allowing healthcare providers to monitor patients’ health in real time and receive alerts if any vital signs fall out of range.
• Entertainment systems. The protocol can help manage smart TVs, speakers, and game consoles. For instance, Netflix uses MQTT to certify devices that can use its software.

These are just several use cases of MQTT brokers for IoT and other industries. Yet, given its lightweight, low bandwidth, and reliable messaging capabilities, it is a universal solution for various applications.

Core Types of MQTT Brokers

There are various types of MQTT brokers, so discover the core ones to make an informed choice for your IoT project.

• Open-Source vs. Paid Brokers

Open-source MQTT brokers are free to use, and their source code is available to the public, allowing for customization and modification. On the other hand, paid brokers come with more features, support, and reliability guarantees.

Examples of open-source MQTT brokers include Mosquitto, EMQX, and Eclipse Mosquitto. Paid ones include AWS IoT Core, Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, and IBM Watson IoT Platform.

• Self-Hosted vs. SaaS Brokers

Self-hosted MQTT brokers are installed on local machines or servers for you to supervise them, while SaaS brokers are hosted in the cloud and managed by third-party providers.

Self-hosted MQTT brokers examples include Mosquitto, RabbitMQ, and HiveMQ. AWS IoT Core, Google Cloud IoT Core, and HiveMQ Cloud are some of the most common SaaS brokers.

• Standalone vs. Cloud Brokers

Standalone and cloud MQTT brokers differ in terms of hosting. The first ones are deployed on a single server, while the latter are distributed across multiple servers and data centers, providing high availability and fault tolerance.

Some popular standalone MQTT brokers are Mosquitto and RabbitMQ. Examples of cloud brokers include EMQX, AWS IoT Core, and Google Cloud IoT Core.

The type of MQTT broker best fit for a particular use case depends on several factors, such as the deployment size, the level of control and customization required, and the organization’s technical expertise. By understanding the different kinds of MQTT brokers available, you can choose the one that best fits your requirements.

Features to Consider Before Choosing the Best MQTT Broker for IoT

When choosing an MQTT broker, compare various options based on their features to find the best fit for your IoT project. Here’s what to look for:

• Scalability

The MQTT broker’s ability to scale is critical to handle a growing number of IoT devices and messages. Choose the MQTT protocol that can scale following your requirements without sacrificing performance or reliability.

• Security

Network security is a critical consideration when dealing with IoT devices, and MQTT brokers should have robust IoT security features, such as encryption, authentication, and access control. An MQTT protocol that delivers top-notch data protection is a must to eliminate any cybersecurity threats.

• Resilience

The MQTT broker should be resilient and able to handle network failures and message loss without losing data or disrupting communication. Ensure you select the broker that can recover from these issues quickly.

• Agility

MQTT brokers should be agile and adapt quickly to changing requirements and use cases. Choose an MQTT broker that can support different message formats, protocols, and communication patterns to follow the evolving needs of your IoT solution.

• Observability

Observability is critical for troubleshooting, monitoring the MQTT broker’s performance, and identifying any issues. So opt for MQTT providing detailed metrics, logs, and monitoring tools.

• Availability

MQTT brokers must also be able to manage high-traffic loads without experiencing downtime. Thus, a decent option would offer load balancing and failover mechanisms.

Ensure you evaluate the available MQTT brokers based on the above features to choose the one that suits your IoT system best.

Examples of MQTT Brokers for IoT

You can find various MQTT brokers, each offering different specifications and capabilities. Take a look at the most common ones to explore the options for your business.

• Mosquitto

Mosquitto is an open-source MQTT broker designed to be lightweight, fast, and easy to use. Written in the C programming language, it supports MQTT protocol versions 5.0, 3.1.1, and 3.1. It also features SSL/TLS encryption, authentication, and access control.

• RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is a general-purpose message broker that supports multiple messaging protocols, MQTT client included. It’s written in the Erlang programming language and features message queuing, routing, and delivery guarantees, making it suitable for projects that require high reliability and scalability.

• EMQX

EMQX is a highly scalable, distributed, and secure IoT MQTT broker that can handle many connected devices and IoT applications. It offers flexible deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid solutions, and provides enterprise-grade features such as message persistence, data compression, and advanced security options.

• VerneMQ

VerneMQ is a high-performance MQTT broker that supports clustering and vertical and horizontal scaling. It also features message queuing, routing, TLS, and MQTT 3.1.1 and suits projects that require low latency and increased reliability.

WebbyLab’s Thoughts on Choosing the Best MQTT Broker for IoT

We at WebbyLab always use IoT best practices to deliver projects of top-notch quality. Leveraging our many years of development experience in the Internet of Things industry, we’ll share tips for choosing the best IoT broker.

The MQTT broker is the basis of numerous MQTT IoT platforms. WebbyLab has been building IoT applications around MQTT for several years, and we’ve been using EMQX solutions for that purpose. This broker offers the most features compared to its alternatives, and we consider it the best fit for any IoT project.

When it comes to choosing the best MQTT broker, we recommend you give preference to ready-made solutions. Of course, you can write your own broker, but a ready-made one will be sufficient for most tasks and business requirements. Even if you select an enterprise-level MQTT broker with a monthly fee, it will be much cheaper than developing a full-featured MQTT broker yourself.

We chose EMQX long ago and continue to use it because it meets many vital criteria for IoT projects. Here are some parameters you should pay attention to when selecting an MQTT broker:

• Price

Depending on the type of your business and available resources, you should consider available packages and ways to use the ready-made solution. Modern brokers usually offer several usage options: a free version with most of the required functionality out of the box and extension capabilities at a specific price. Large projects that need more features can opt for pro/enterprise MQTT broker versions with additional tools and SLAs from provider companies.

• Deployment options

It’s critical to understand the format of using a broker. It can be a stand-alone solution on a local PC or microcontroller, a cloud MQTT broker on a private server, or a ready-made SaaS solution supported by third-party providers. Depending on your requirements, you should consider whether the MQTT broker supports your desired hosting option.

In addition to the MQTT broker server and usage format, you should pay attention to the OS supported for deployment, like Windows, Linux, etc.

• Scaling

You should consider the scaling capabilities of your chosen MQTT broker. For example, a single EMQX 5.0 cluster can support up to 100 million MQTT connections simultaneously.

• Speed of work

Review the broker’s capabilities of real-time communication. Another parameter to consider includes clustering.

• Compatibility with different versions of MQTT

Ensure your chosen broker supports the latest MQTT versions, including 5.0. 

• MQTT security

A decent MQTT broker must feature TLS/SSL, access control, authentication, authorization, and blacklist.

• Monitoring tools

Check if your MQTT broker offers built-in device assessment and monitoring tools and the availability of integrations into monitoring systems.

• Support and management tools

A good MQTT broker features user and role management, device management, backups, restores, access to system logs, and zero downtime updates.

• Solution activity and community

It’s also critical to consider whether your chosen MQTT solution gets constant updates, developments, and support and if there’s a community where you can discuss issues with other developers.

• Integration tools

Your chosen MQTT broker must offer tools for downloading data and receiving it through other systems or for working with data for its analysis.

• The availability of options for customization and expansion

Customization options are beneficial to have in an MQTT broker.

EMQX Use Cases and Features: WebbyLab Experience

As for the tech stack that WebbyLab uses, it’s an open-source version of EMQX. In particular, we leverage this broker in the IoT home automation stand-alone installation 2Smart, the public cloud solution Propuskator, and other private cloud solutions for our clients.

Our team has experience in different deployment options of the EMQX broker: both directly on the server and in the docker. We also leverage TLS/SSL to ensure secure device-to-probe communication and for client applications and system services to communicate with EMQX. On top of that, we actively use broker authorization mechanisms for each client and device and limit access for clients to specific sets of topics using ACLs.

Beyond the EMQX functionality, we leverage a plugin for collecting metrics in Prometheus to monitor the broker’s status. And for some minor settings and monitoring, we use the built-in admin panel from EMQX.

Using Prometheus and Grafana to monitor the EMQX broker status.

In addition to EMQX, we worked with a plugin for the HomeBridge microservice, a custom MQTT broker for integrating devices into various third-party systems, such as Google Home.

We also practice using Aedes to create our service for proxying data from devices to the main EMQX broker and transforming the structure of topics from one format to another. With the help of Aedes, our specialists solved the problem of transferring the convention of MQTT-supported devices to the format we required.

For example, we reformatted devices that supported the open-source conventions of the Home Assistant automation system into our convention. Thus, we seamlessly integrated ready-made devices into our system without interfering with the device’s original firmware.

Another critical feature of EMQX is that this broker provides persistent online data storage. Most messages are published with the attribute retained and stored in the broker. We mainly store data in the historical database, but the last value is stored in the EMQX broker. It allows our experts to obtain information on sensors and device parameters quickly.

Select the Right MQTT Broker with WebbyLab

MQTT brokers are critical in connecting IoT devices and enabling real-time communication. Given the numerous options available, you might be confused about which one will suit your project best.

We hope that today’s article has clarified the aspects and parameters to look for in the MQTT brokers. Yet, if you need help selecting the perfect fit for your IoT ecosystem, you can contact WebbyLab experts for a detailed consultation.