Case Study: vFairs achieves 40x chat scalability and 75% dev-time savings with PubNub

vFairs Hosts Engaging, Interactive Virtual and Hybrid Events

vFairs is a virtual events platform that builds custom 3D environments—trade shows, conferences, university open houses and job fairs—designed to reproduce in-person networking online. As attendee engagement depended heavily on real-time chat and presence indicators, their in-house chat repeatedly hit capacity limits, required heavy maintenance, and risked failing as the business scaled (vFairs grew ~40x in 2020).

In 2018 vFairs replaced their self-managed backend with PubNub for real-time private/group chat and presence, keeping their own front-end UI. The move eliminated ongoing chat infrastructure work, cut developer time spent on chat by about 75%, eliminated outages, and provided reliable, instantly scalable messaging that handled the company’s rapid growth.

vFairs

Arfeen Godil

Director of IT