Push notifications are a communication channel built into every mobile device sold today. Push notifications allow apps to reach out to users with short messages that users may respond to. A push notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device. App publishers can send them at any time; users don’t have to be in the app or using their devices to receive them. Push notifications look like SMS text messages and mobile alerts, but they only reach users who have installed your app. Each mobile platform has support for push notifications — iOS, Android, Fire OS, Windows and BlackBerry all have their own services.
What can you use push notifications for?
Push notifications can provide value to both end users and the business. Users can receive convenient updates in real time, such as weather reports, news updates or flight information. Businesses, on the other hand, can communicate directly to the user and encourage him or her to use the app via specific call-to-action messaging. Push notifications can increase click-through rates, promote products or offers and drive users to other marketing channels.
For app publishers, push notifications are a way to speak directly to a user. They don’t get caught in spam filters, or forgotten in an inbox — click-through rates can be twice as high as email. They can also remind users to use an app, whether the app is open or not. They can also be used to drive actions, such as:
- Promoting products or offers to increase sales
- Improving customer experience
- Converting unknown app users to known customers
- Sending transaction receipts right away
- Driving users to other marketing channels, such as social networks.
10 Best Mobile Push Notification Services of 2022
Push Notification Services came out ten years ago, so there’s a huge variety available on the market. The number of these platforms increases every day, and it is difficult to find the one that fits our needs best.
1. OneSignal
OneSignal is a Push Notifications Service company supporting multiple platforms. It can send both web and mobile Push Notifications and email. OneSignal was founded in 2014 and its founder is George Deglin.
Some of its features are:
- Provide Unlimited support on devices and notifications
- Allows A/B testing
- Provides Localization
- Facility for scheduled delivery
- Allows unlimited segmentation
- Complete API access
- Allows the import & export of data
- The standard account is free, the premium account is available upon request
- Trusted app
- Among its clients are Adobe, Slate, LINE, Cisco, UBER
Price: It is free but it also has a premium plan, if you want that.
2. Amazon SNS
Amazon Simple Notification Service has been on the market since 2010. It is compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows app’s owners to send app Push Notifications to several platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows Phone, etc. It’s also has a feature to send Push Notifications directly from the cloud.
Key features include the following:
- First million of notifications delivery is free, after that the price becomes $.50 / million
- Top level hardware infrastructure
- Simple APIs and easy integration with mobile applications
- Flexible message delivery over multiple transport protocols
- Inexpensive, pay-as-you-go model with no up-front costs
- Web-based AWS Management Console offers the simplicity of a point-and-click interface.
3. Pusher Beams
Pusher Beams is an API for mobile app developers to add Push Notifications sending capability to their apps. The tool developed by Pusher company was launched in 2011 in London, UK by Max Williams. The Beams tool provides a hosted service to manage the device token life cycle for iOS and Android applications and Insights to track delivery acknowledgment and open events directly on the device. A Debug Console helps developers troubleshoot issues in real-time.
Pusher Beams is used by more than 10,000 app developers, and notable companies like DraftKings, Dialpad, and VirginPulse. With Beams, over 90% of notifications are delivered in under 60 seconds, whether developers are sending them to one device or a million.
Features at a glance:
- Unified API to deliver push notifications to iOS, Android, and MacOS devices
- Hosted service to manage the device token life cycle for iOS and Android apps
- Android and iOS SDKs crafted to include the latest FCM and APNs updates
- Interests to deliver notifications using a flexible pub/sub model
- Insights reporting acknowledgment and open events directly from the client
- Debug Console featuring a real-time notification life cycle event log.
Price: Free account up to 2,000 monthly active users, Pro Plan – $100/month, Business Plan – $400/month, Enterprise plan – custom pricing.
4. Urban Airship
Urban Airship is a mobile engagement company, founded by Scott Kveton, Steven Osborn, Michael Richardson, and Adam Lowry in 2009 in Portland, US. The company platform’s functionality combines app push messaging, in-app messaging, location/proximity targeting and analytics. Urban Airship is focused on leading brands to facilitate their mobile strategy and help them to be efficient with a mobile channel. The range of business verticals, the company works with, includes retail, media & entertainment, sports, and travel & hospitality, companies like ABS News, Adidas, Virgin Galactic. Urban Airship manages to push 75 billion messages a month for 2 billion active app installs
Price: Urban Airship provides you a demo upon request. The prices are flexible which depends upon the needs of the user.
5. Braze
Braze, formerly known as AppBoy, is a marketing automation company, founded by Mark Ghermezian, Bill Magnuson and Jon Hyman in 2011 in NY, US. Helping app owners to solve app abandonment problem, increase engagement and reduce churn. Appboy features a sophisticated user profile system, advanced customer segmentation, and multi-channel messaging (email, News Feed, Push Notifications, in-app messages), all these tools allow brands to be efficient at cultivating relationships with their customer base. Among the company’s clients are clients like iHeart Media, Gannett, Urban Outfitters, Epix, and Shutterfly. During 2011-2014 period the company went through 4 funding rounds and secured $22.5M in total.
Key Features
- Data collection from any system into one CRM
- Automated messages across devices
- Optimize your mobile app campaigns
- Follow your users’ behavior with analytics
- Build relationships with your customers and grow your brand
- Send mobile push notifications that engage your audience
- Share your growth stories with other marketers in the community
- A variety of different packages to suit you
- Web and mobile SDKs
- Build email campaigns with multichannel marketing.
6. Kumulos
Kumulos is a platform for mobile app and software development companies. Mobile marketers can send a Push Notification Service with its dashboard and easily manage campaigns, as well as reports on the results.
Kumulos offers features that can be turned into services to help you generate monthly recurring revenue and help you deliver a better service to your clients.
The features include: Push Notification Services, Crash Reporting, Industry Leading mBaaS, App Store Optimization, Crash Reporting, Analytics, Agency Console, Client Portal and much more.
The Kumulos push notification service allows you to:
- Schedule Push Notification Messages which are localized to time zone
- Build effective segments, filters, and channels to reach the right audience at the right time
- Send background data with your notifications to make changes to the app
- Reach the right audience based on location using the Kumulos Geo-fencing capabilities
- Use the Kumulos API to automate push notification messages based on events in the app.
- Track results directly in the white label push notification dashboards. View delivery and open rates are broken out by time and platform.
Pricing: It has three plans: The Startup Plan,The Enterprise Plan and The Software Development / Mobile App Agency Plan.
7. SWRVE
SWRVE is one of the top mobile marketing automation companies. Its highlighted feature is its WYSIWYG mobile screen editor. It also has a personalization feature regarding sounds and alerts. It also provides banners on locked screens and analytics. It has a high-profile client list such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Samsung and HTC.
SWRVE is designed to track user’s behavior and purchases, conduct A/B testing, deliver push notifications and in-app marketing campaigns. The platform aims to increase the business of your mobile app by building a more profitable relationship with your users and does it by tracking segmentation, KPIs, conversion rates, engagement, and monetization.
Price: Prices are fixed upon request.
8. Catapush
Catapush is a web and app Push Notifications company, founded in April 2015 in Italy. Catapush’s platform empowers corporations with the 2Way communication system, which sends data-driven transaction related Web and Push Notifications, each sent message is assigned a real-time status – sent, delivered, read. The company’s competitive advantage over its competitors is that it offers developers and businesses a real-time communication channel with their customers.
Price: Its price depends on the number of recipients:
- Up to 100 recipients – free
- Up to 2,500 recipients – 29 euro/month
- Up to 12,500 recipients – 129 euro/month
- Up to 25,000 recipients – 249 euro/month
- Above 25,000 recipients – a custom pricing.
9. AdPush
Adpush is a US-based push notification sending platform. Its mission is to help companies to bring their visitors back on their site and (or) mobile app.
Features:
- Allows to send Push Notifications whenever a new post on an RSS feed is published
- Provides real-time tracking to see how Push Notifications perform
- Offers to target based on geo-location, signup URL or time zone.
Price: Adpush offers free trial with three paid plans – The Starter Plan,The Professional Plan and The Enterprise Plan. The prices are ranged from $16/month for 5000 subscribers to $300/month for 500000 subscribers.
10. Mapp
Mapp Digital is a global marketing technology company, formerly known as Teradata’s Digital Marketing division. Next, to push notifications, Mapp offers a variety of in-app plugins to provide app publishers with additional ways to interact with their customers. These include a Message Inbox, Customer Feedback form, and an Offer Wall. The Mobile Push module is part of the Mapp Customer Engagement Platform which is designed for multi-channel campaign execution (Email, Mobile Push, SMS, Social Media, Web). In addition, Mapp also offers a Data Management Platform (DMP).
With the rapid growth of location-based apps, push notification technology becomes the key instrument in communication with customers and app users in general. Mobile games developers have been taking advantage of this technology for a number of years and so the bottom line is, that it’s really hard to imagine modern mobile apps without push technology powered features.
Push Notifications, if done right, can be marketers’ best friend. It can uplift retention rate and boost engagement (and sales), but they can easily go wrong if users are annoyed with constant messaging and alerts (it’s actually the number one reason why people uninstall apps). It’s all about figuring out which kind of notifications users want to receive and making them attractive and useful. There’s a large number of tools available, so don’t hesitate to try them to find the best option for your business!