Duolingo is well known for its unique usage of rich notifications, which, according to co-founder Luis von Ahn, are “one of the core drivers of Duolingo’s impressive daily user traffic.” This highlights how essential notifications are in keeping customers updated and connected to apps and products. However, designing an efficient notification system is not without its challenges.
“How to build a notification system?” is a common question on platforms like StackOverflow, Quora, and Reddit. The complexity of this process has led developers to seek notification platforms that simplify how notifications are integrated into apps so they don’t have to build from scratch. As such, this guide will provide developers with the necessary knowledge and considerations when choosing a notification platform. Let’s get started.
What are notifications?
Notifications are messages or alerts designed to inform or remind users about specific events or important updates related to an application or service. Different types of notifications are used in digital products, each serving distinct purposes. Some of the main types of notifications include web push notifications, in-app, email, and SMS notifications. Each of these will be explored in detail below:
Push notification
Push notifications are short, clickable messages sent directly to users’ devices from an application, even when they are not actively using it. They are typically popular, with Business of Apps reporting an overall opt-in rate of 60%. Some use cases of push notifications include usage by online retailers and E-commerce apps to alert loyal customers about sales and promotions or on social media platforms to notify users of new messages, likes, or comments.
In-app notifications
In-app notifications appear within the application while users are actively using it. They’re designed to improve the user experience or guide the user to a specific app action without interrupting their flow.
With a 75% open rate, in-app notifications perform better than push notifications. Some common forms of in-app notifications include onboarding tips in the form of modals, tooltips, banners, etc.
Email notifications
Email notifications are usually sent to a user’s email address. They are often more formal and provide more detailed information than other notification types.
Email notifications are especially beneficial for reaching users who may not actively use the app, service, or website but still want to stay informed. Examples of these include newsletters or order confirmations for customers.
SMS notifications
SMS notifications or SMS messages are text messages sent to a user’s mobile phone. They are mobile messaging typically used for urgent or time-sensitive alerts and provide a direct and reliable way to send messages that reach users regardless of their device or internet connection. Due to SMS’s non-reliance on internet connectivity, they are best suited for almost every user base. Use cases for this include sending verification codes, service alerts, etc.
Chat notifications
Chat notifications provide a direct, real-time way of communicating with users through popular messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Telegram. These notifications allow businesses and communities to reach users in the spaces where they’re already active, making communication seamless and engaging.
Examples:
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WhatsApp: Ideal for transactional messages, appointment reminders, and customer service, WhatsApp notifications allow businesses to maintain a personal touch and reach users directly on their mobile devices.
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Discord: Popular among gaming communities and tech-focused organizations, Discord notifications are perfect for community updates, event reminders, or server alerts.
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Slack: Frequently used by businesses for team communication, Slack notifications keep teams informed on project updates, system alerts, and urgent messages.
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Microsoft Teams: A preferred choice for corporate environments, Microsoft Teams notifications are excellent for meeting reminders, project updates, and real-time collaboration, seamlessly integrating with Office 365.
Telegram: Known for its high level of privacy and user control, Telegram notifications can be sent directly to individuals or groups, and it supports notifications from custom bots. These bots can send automated updates, alerts, or other messages, allowing organizations to engage large audiences efficiently and provide real-time information.
Each platform supports unique integrations, allowing notifications to be customized to the audience’s specific needs and preferences.
Next, we’ll explore notification platforms and how they work with the different types of notifications.
What are notification platforms?
Notification platforms are systems or services that enable implementing, creating, sending, and managing notifications. In simple terms, notification platforms are communication channels that facilitate the journey of the notification from creation to execution between the system (developer, business, application) and the receiver (user).
Here’s a typical notification flow facilitated by a service.
Notification platform showing integration with other services and notification delivery to users
Later, we will discuss some popular notification platforms, but first, let’s look at some critical features of notification platforms.
Key features of notification platforms
Notification platforms are equipped with features that improve the experience of the end user and the platform user, which can be the Developer, Business Manager, Analyst, etc.
Some of these key features include:
- Customization and personalization
- Real-time analytics and reporting
- Scalability and reliability
- Multi-channel delivery
- Integration and compatibility
We’ll look at each and why they matter.
Customization and personalization
Notification platforms often offer robust configuration and sometimes white labeling options that enable businesses to customize, personalize, and notify target users based on brand voice, user preference, demographics, etc.
Customization and segmentation feature on a notification platform
This customization capability makes notification platforms versatile as they can be built once and reimagined per business to suit different use cases.
Real-time analytics and reporting
Robust real-time analytics are a crucial feature of notification platforms as they provide insights into notification performance by tracking key metrics like delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and user behavior.
This is particularly useful in A/B testing to experiment with different message formats to identify the most effective approach.
Scalability and reliability
Notification platforms are designed to scale effortlessly, allowing companies to handle large volumes of notifications without compromising performance.
This scalability ensures that businesses maintain effective communication as their user base increases while their notification implementation ideally remains the same.
Multi-channel delivery
As explored earlier, notifications can be of various types, and versatility is one of the core features every notification platform introduces into the build. This versatility is in multi-channel delivery, where multiple communication channels like push notifications, email, and SMS are supported. This ensures businesses can choose the different modes of message delivery as needed.
Integration and compatibility
Notification platforms easily connect with existing systems, applications, and third-party services through APIs and SDKs. This ensures flexibility in using the notification service or platform, including incorporation into existing workflows and systems.
These are all great features and characteristics; however, how do notification platforms benefit the business?
Benefits of using a notification platform
Here are ways notification platforms play a vital role for businesses and developers seeking to enhance user engagement and communication experience:
Improved user engagement
Notifications, among other functions, remind customers to interact and engage with a product. Through multi-channel delivery, users can receive notifications in a convenient format. This, combined with high relevance and customization, helps the business target, engage, and communicate with each user on a more personal level, leading to higher engagement.
Enhanced customer experience
Users turn off notifications or, in extreme cases, delete applications for various reasons, primarily when notifications are sent at inconvenient times or too frequently, leading to notification fatigue and frustration.
However, notification platforms provide valuable analytics on user engagement, such as the optimal time of day to send notifications and the most effective formats for different user segments. Marketing, Product, and Developers can leverage these insights to deliver value and drive engagement by ensuring timely, relevant, and well-paced notifications.
Increased operational efficiency
Notification workflows streamline repetitive communication tasks by automating them end-to-end, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention. Through seamless integration with business systems like customer relationship management (CRM) or marketing automation tools, workflows ensure that critical notifications are triggered automatically at precisely the right time.
For instance, when a new customer is added to the CRM, a notification workflow can automatically initiate a sequence of messages, such as a welcome email followed by onboarding tips, without requiring additional input from the sales or marketing team. This automated workflow not only reduces the workload on customer service teams but also ensures consistency, minimizes human error, and creates a smooth, responsive user experience.
Subscriber (recipient) management
Notification platforms simplify managing large numbers of subscribers by organizing them into specific segments, enabling precise targeting and personalization. Businesses can easily manage subscriber lists, track engagement, and customize notifications to ensure messages are relevant to each user segment, enhancing user satisfaction and engagement.
Multi-tenancy support
Multi-tenancy allows businesses to separate and manage notifications across various clients or brands within a single system, ensuring data privacy and control. This feature enables each tenant to maintain unique subscriber preferences and communication styles, making it easier to provide tailored messaging and achieve the specific goals of each organization while operating under one unified platform.
Better conversion rates
Many notification platforms offer A/B testing features, allowing businesses to experiment with different messaging strategies, formats, and timings. For example, companies can A/B test different subject lines for an email campaign to reveal which version leads to higher open and click-through rates, directly contributing to better retention rates and conversion outcomes.
No-Code tools to manage notifications
With a no-code user interface (no-code editors), teams can adjust notification messaging, verbiage, and cadence without needing engineering support. This empowers marketing, product, and support teams to fine-tune notifications in real-time, ensuring messages are aligned with current campaigns, user feedback, and evolving engagement strategies, all without disrupting development workflows.
Improved timing with scheduling and delay functionality
Notification platforms enable businesses to schedule messages or introduce a delay, ensuring they reach users at the most effective times. For example, a platform can queue up messages to reach a global audience during their respective peak engagement times or delay notifications based on users' time zones and habits. This minimizes disruption and allows users to receive updates when they’re most likely to engage, reducing notification fatigue and increasing relevance.
Better user experience with digest functionality
Digest notifications consolidate multiple updates into a single message, preventing users from feeling overwhelmed by individual alerts. By grouping updates, notification digests enhance user experience and maintain a clean inbox while still keeping users informed. This functionality also benefits companies by keeping users more engaged over time, as they are less likely to opt out of receiving notifications.
Personalized communication through user preferences
Offering users the ability to set their notification preferences—such as which channels to receive updates on, preferred frequency, and specific types of notifications—gives them control over their experience. Platforms that integrate user preferences into their notifications create a more tailored experience, resulting in increased user satisfaction and trust, reduced churn, and a healthier relationship with customers by reducing unwanted alerts.
So far, we know why notification platforms are important and what to expect from the right service. Based on our needs, let’s consider some of the available notification services and providers that could be integrated into the notification platform.
Popular notification services and providers
Established services can significantly accelerate development, ensuring scalability and letting teams focus on core product enhancements. Here’s an overview of popular notification providers, each playing a unique role in a robust notification strategy.
Push notification providers
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
FCM is part of Google’s Firebase suite and provides a streamlined, cost-free option for sending push notifications to web and mobile apps. Best suited for developers already leveraging other Firebase tools, FCM ensures easy integration with Google’s ecosystem, enabling efficient, low-cost notifications. Top brands like Sony rely on FCM for its ease and reliability.
OneSignal is an all-in-one messaging solution offering push, in-app messaging, email, and SMS notifications. Ideal for multi-channel strategies, it provides features like A/B testing, segmentation, and personalized messaging. Its user-friendly interface makes managing and optimizing campaigns simple, allowing product teams to drive user engagement across multiple channels.
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon SNS, part of the AWS ecosystem, is designed for high-volume, secure messaging across SMS, email, and mobile push. Product teams in regulated industries find SNS particularly useful for its compliance-ready infrastructure, reliability, and scalability within AWS—making it ideal for apps needing robust security and compliance.
Airship focuses on mobile-first engagement, with services spanning push notifications, in-app messaging, and deeper analytics. It’s particularly suited for product teams aiming to improve mobile user retention and engagement through highly targeted messaging, making it a strong choice for mobile-centric applications.
Microsoft Azure Notification Hubs
Azure Notification Hubs offers a global push notification solution with support across Android, iOS, Windows, and Kindle. Compatible with Baidu for China, it’s an excellent choice for products requiring broad international reach within the Azure ecosystem, providing reliable scalability and performance.
SMS notification providers
SMS notifications are key for urgent, direct communication with users.
A leading choice for SMS notifications, Twilio provides extensive global coverage, developer-friendly APIs, and flexible pricing for businesses of all sizes. Its reliability and ease of use make it a favorite for teams needing scalable SMS integration in their applications.
Nexmo supports SMS, voice, and verification services, focusing on simplicity and high deliverability. Its developer-friendly platform is ideal for teams looking to implement reliable communication channels quickly and effectively.
Plivo offers cost-efficient SMS and voice solutions with a global reach. Designed for high-volume messaging, it provides transparent pricing and is a practical choice for applications needing affordable yet powerful SMS capabilities.
Sinch specializes in SMS and voice with rich media support, which is ideal for businesses seeking to send multimedia messages or engage users more interactively, especially for marketing or customer support use cases.
MessageBird supports SMS, voice, and chat APIs, making it suitable for multi-channel applications. With a strong API focus, MessageBird is ideal for global teams wanting seamless integration and wide-reaching SMS capabilities.
Email notification providers
Email notifications are crucial for transactional, marketing, and engagement communication.
SendGrid is known for its high deliverability and robust APIs, supporting both transactional and marketing emails. With advanced analytics, it’s favored by teams seeking to optimize user engagement and gain insights into email performance.
Amazon SES (Simple Email Service)
Amazon SES is a cost-effective email solution within the AWS ecosystem. With easy scalability and high deliverability, it’s ideal for applications needing large-scale, budget-friendly email capabilities in the cloud.
Mailgun offers a developer-focused API with advanced analytics, making it a strong choice for teams needing customized email flows and insights. Its flexibility supports complex email strategies tailored to user behavior.
Postmark specializes in transactional email, prioritizing speed and reliability. It’s particularly suited for critical communications like password resets and verification emails, ensuring fast delivery and optimized uptime.
SparkPost combines reliable deliverability with data-driven insights, providing a solid choice for teams focused on maximizing email engagement through real-time analytics.
Chat notification providers
Chat notifications allow for real-time user engagement on familiar platforms.
Slack API is perfect for internal team alerts and notifications, allowing developers to integrate system messages directly into Slack channels or DMs, enhancing team awareness and response times.
WhatsApp via Twilio enables secure, engaging communication for updates like order status and appointment reminders. This is ideal for teams needing a reliable, globally popular channel for direct customer engagement.
Facebook Messenger offers a popular real-time communication channel within the Facebook ecosystem. It’s especially useful for customer support and instant notifications.
Telegram provides secure, customizable notifications to individual users or groups, making it ideal for platforms with a privacy-focused user base or those that value security.
Discord API supports direct and channel-based notifications, making it perfect for community-driven platforms and teams needing effective real-time updates for collaborative environments.
In-App Notification Providers
In-app notifications allow teams to engage users directly within the application, enhancing user experience and driving interaction without disrupting the user journey.
Novu is an open-source, in-app notification solution offering ready-to-use components that simplify implementation and boost user engagement. With customizable notification feeds, preference centers, and real-time delivery, Novu allows teams to quickly deploy tailored in-app notifications that enhance user experience without the overhead of custom development. Designed for flexibility, Novu’s SDKs and workflows ensure seamless integration, giving teams complete control over notification appearance and behavior.
Airship
In addition to push notifications, Airship offers in-app messaging designed to enhance user engagement within mobile apps. Airship’s in-app notifications are customizable, providing detailed analytics and targeting capabilities. This makes it a strong choice for product teams focused on personalized messaging that aligns with users’ in-app behavior.
Firebase In-App Messaging
Firebase In-App Messaging allows product teams to send targeted messages to active app users. It’s particularly effective for guiding users through the app, promoting features, or highlighting special offers. Best suited for teams already using Firebase, it offers easy integration with other Google tools, providing a seamless way to enhance the in-app experience.
Supabase
Supabase provides real-time database capabilities, making it well-suited for event-driven in-app notifications. Through database triggers and real-time APIs, Supabase allows developers to send notifications based on specific user actions or data changes, creating an interactive, responsive user experience.
OneSignal
While primarily known for push and SMS, OneSignal also supports in-app messaging, making it a flexible option for multi-channel engagement. Its in-app messaging features are customizable and can be integrated alongside other notification types, ideal for teams seeking a single platform for all messaging needs.
In summary, while these other notification platforms offer unique functionalities, Novu encompasses their capabilities and provides a comprehensive solution for developers looking to implement robust notification systems.
How do you choose these notification platforms? Let’s find out.
Choosing the right notification platform
Selecting the right notification platform is a critical decision that can significantly impact an application's success. A notification platform is a centralized, end-to-end system (or infrastructure) that empowers product and development teams to manage, deliver, and optimize multi-channel notifications across in-app, email, SMS, push, and chat channels.
To make an informed choice, I recommend you consider several essential factors to verify that they align with your specific needs and goals.
Here’s a closer look at some of these factors:
Ease of integration
When choosing a notification platform, one of the first considerations should be how easily it can be integrated into an existing tech stack. A platform like Novu has a straightforward integration process, well-documented APIs, and support resources that can save the development team time and reduce the risk of implementation errors.
Here are some other common things to look out for:
- Clear and comprehensive documentation
- SDKs and libraries for the preferred programming languages
- Examples and tutorials for common use cases
- Availability of technical support or community assistance
For instance, Novu provides all of these, allowing for easy integrations.
Cost-effectiveness
Cost is a key consideration, especially for startups and small businesses with limited budgets. It’s important to weigh the price against the platform’s value for the project. Each platform’s pricing differs, so be sure to check that and consider any rate limits that may apply.
Novu offers three pricing tiers, ranging from free to enterprise, that cater to a variety of needs, from open-source projects and startups to large-scale enterprise solutions.
Feature set
The feature set of a notification platform determines its ability to meet specific goals. It is best to draw a plan of the project goal and use this to determine the feature set to look for.
Novu, for example, supports a diverse range of features, including multi-channel support and real-time analytics.
Scalability
Scalability is vital so the platform can grow alongside the business without compromising efficiency or risking downtimes. In this regard, when determining the scalability of a notification platform, check for the following:
- The platform’s ability to handle large volumes of notifications during peak times
- Load balancing and failover mechanisms to provide consistent performance
- Support for global delivery, especially if the user base is international
A notification platform like Novu supports scalability using microservices and Kubernetes, which ensures the platform can support growing requests through horizontal scaling (adding more servers or nodes).
Security and compliance
Security and compliance are paramount, especially when handling sensitive user data. Checking reviews and case studies can provide insights into the platform’s reliability and security track record. Beyond that, also look out for the following:
- End-to-end encryption for data in transit and at rest
- Access control and audit logs for monitoring usage and permissions
- Regular security updates and vulnerability management
Novu puts security at the core of its operations, strictly adhering to industry standards for data protection and complying with relevant regulations.
To make the best decision, thorough research is necessary, including subscribing to the notification platform of choice and testing it against the business’s functional and non-functional requirements.
After choosing the right platform, you get to design the system. Here are some best practices to follow when considering notification design.
Best practices for notification design
Designing efficient and user-friendly notifications requires balancing user, business, and legal rules.
Respecting user preferences
Respecting user preferences enhances user satisfaction and reduces the risk of notification fatigue, where users become overwhelmed and may choose to turn off notifications altogether. To avoid this, make sure users can customize their notification preferences to select the type of notifications they receive, the delivery channel, and the delivery frequency.
In cases where users cannot choose the delivery frequency, analytics from the notification platform can reveal the number of times users are most likely to read notifications. This information can help you better time your notifications.
Maintaining compliance with regulations
Compliance with regulations avoids legal repercussions and builds trust with users, who are increasingly concerned about how their data is used. To enforce this practice, always obtain explicit consent from users before sending notifications.
Ensuring data security
Data security protects users and organizations from potential breaches, data theft, and the associated legal and reputational damage. To counter this, implement end-to-end encryption for notifications, ensuring that data is protected in transit and at rest. This is especially important for sensitive information such as account alerts or transactional messages.
Regular security assessments and audits should also be conducted to identify potential vulnerabilities in the notification system.
Providing opt-out options
Providing opt-out options is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and critical to maintaining a positive user experience. For instance, users might choose to receive email notifications but opt out of push notifications or even choose to opt out of all notifications completely. As a result, ensure users can easily opt out of all or a few notifications.
Wrapping up
Using established notification platforms is often a simpler and more efficient alternative to building an in-house solution. However, choosing the right notification platform is a tough decision and can impact the business for better or for worse.
This guide covers some critical points in choosing an effective notification platform. Novu stands out for its modern, open-source approach, which provides developers with flexibility and control.
Sign up for Novu for a cost-effective, customizable notification solution with a strong focus on end-user and developer experience.
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