Other than parse.com what server backend tool can I use for a real time IOS chat mechanism?

For chatting apps - BaaS is not such a good option. You need to look at some XMPP based backends (or build your own). That is the technology that also powers other messaging services like WhatsApp

Agree with Dhruv above, you'll be much better off downloading a ready code sample from one of cloud communication platforms which are built specifically for that. Here are iOS and Android code samples using our QuickBlox SDK, hope it helps: http://quickblox.com/developers/SimpleSample-chat_users-ios http://quickblox.com/developers/Android_XMPP_Chat_Sample

For the Chat mechanism try Applozic https://www.applozic.com/No other backend tool required.Applozic provide developers with a MQTT based leaner, faster and scalable real time messaging SDK.Open source iOS client with ready to use and customizable UI toolkit: Sample Code : https://github.com/AppLozic/Applozic-iOS-SDK Documentation : https://applozic.readme.io/docs/ios-gettingstarted

Please see list below: https://www.back4app.com/en/ https://www.back4app.com/en/ is the hub for backend and APIs. Just focus on creating amazing user experiences and forget about complex infrastructure. You can build and host APIs for web, mobile and IoT apps, working up to 80% faster. back{4}app uses Parse Open Source framework to make it happen. We developed a http://blog.back4app.com/2016/03/01/quick-wizard-migration/ to Parse Users. Accengage it is the European leader in Push Notification Technology for mobile apps & websites. Available as a SaaS solution, Accengage has an intuitive user interface to set-up, launch, analyse and optimise your CRM Strategy on mobile devices and desktops. Over 300 international customers rely on the Accengage solution to communicate in a targeted, personalized, automated and synchronized way with their app & website users. Key figures: 60 Months of R&D, 500 Million installed apps with the Accengage SDK, 3 Billion push notifications sent per Month. AWS Mobile Hub - this is a direct Parse replacement that recently came out by AWS. Although this is in Beta, AWS is a well respected platform that supports many huge companies like Netflix and Yelp. BackAnd - a platforms that allows you to create an AngularJS ready backend for your app. Its really good of you are working on AngularJS web apps and your data is stored on Amazon RDS.CloudBoost offers Storage, Search and Real-time capabilities for your apps. Its perfect for building data-intensive applications and services.Firebase -  offers a great solution for real time communication and data storage. It's perfect if what you are doing is mainly data & realtime (chat, game, collaboration, etc...) but it's not very flexible for other things.Disclaimer, I´m a http://back4app.com founder.