Phoenix channels is similar to socket.io, except we multiplex the channels with their own events, vs socket io that creates a single bidirectional "channel" with events. So you can think of channels as namespaced socket.io, with the server side allowing isolated and concurrent message handlers to live.

The channel docs give a solid overview of the server side, and we have a listing of third-party channels clients for most platforms here:

https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/1.6.0-rc.1/channels.html#client-l...