WebSockets vs Server-Sent Events (SSE) — Lessons from the Real World

by Abdul Ahad, Developer at Inovum Solutions, August 2025

Recently, I had the chance to dive deep into WebSockets and SSE while implementing live notifications in a web application. Initially, I went with WebSockets — it offered full-duplex communication, and everything worked perfectly across all major browsers, desktops, and even mobile devices.

Until we tested it on a Smart TV browser.

• The live notifications just wouldn’t arrive.
• Everything else worked.
• And the kicker? We had no access to browser dev tools on the TV to debug the issue.

I even built a custom WebSocket test page for the client to run directly on the TV. That test passed — confirming the connection could be established — but for some reason, our app’s WebSocket-based notifications still didn’t show up.

At this point, I had to rethink the approach.

The key realization:
We only needed server-to-client communication. The client didn’t need to send messages back. That’s when I switched to SSE (Server-Sent Events) — a simpler, one-way push mechanism over standard HTTP.

The results:

• Implementation was incredibly fast — I rewrote everything in under 2 hours
• Worked flawlessly on the Smart TV
• No special protocol upgrades
• Native reconnection, retry support, and easier debugging
• Still real-time — just over plain HTTP

When to consider SSE over WebSockets:

• If your use case is server-to-client only (like live notifications)
• If you’re dealing with restricted environments (e.g., Smart TVs, proxies, firewalls)
• If you want simplicity, speed of implementation, and scalability with HTTP

Quick note on SSE limitations:

• It’s text-only (no binary support)
• It’s one-way (server → client only)
• Browser support is good (except IE), but not as universal as WebSockets
• No built-in authentication — must be handled at the HTTP level (e.g., headers, tokens)

Despite these, SSE turned out to be the perfect fit for this use case — and a reminder that sometimes the simpler tool is the better one.