Push notifications – benefits of deploying the WINGS Notification Server
June 28, 2021
Companies looking to reduce SMS costs by implementing Push notifications have several options:
- In-house development;
- Find and deploy an off-the-shelf solution from a third-party developer;
- Resort to service providers.
In-house development
In-house development would require a dedicated team to handle Push issues on an ongoing basis. Or the company will have to put up with low delivery rates. Doing so means cutting costs slightly, instead of significantly as Push notification offers. After all, the higher the Push delivery rate, the lesser the SMS messages you would send and the greater your savings. But you must be prepared to face the fact that it will literally take you more than a year to reach the 90% delivery rate or pass it.
You'll also need a team to support Push notification, because it’s not enough to just improve your delivery rates only once. If at some point you stop improving the quality of your Push service, the delivery rate will eventually begin to drop without any alternative. The reason is simple – new devices are constantly appearing, new OS versions are coming out, and new features are being introduced into Push. It takes continuous work by your team to maintain Push's quality and high delivery rates.
In our opinion, this is the most unpromising option, because you'll have to commit significant resources for development and support. Besides, while the development and debugging are going on, you could save much by implementing an off-the-shelf solution. It makes more sense for the customer to focus on business tasks and not get involved in development and maintenance of such specific, niche software.
You'll also need a team to support Push notification, because it’s not enough to just improve your delivery rates only once. If at some point you stop improving the quality of your Push service, the delivery rate will eventually begin to drop without any alternative. The reason is simple – new devices are constantly appearing, new OS versions are coming out, and new features are being introduced into Push. It takes continuous work by your team to maintain Push's quality and high delivery rates.
In our opinion, this is the most unpromising option, because you'll have to commit significant resources for development and support. Besides, while the development and debugging are going on, you could save much by implementing an off-the-shelf solution. It makes more sense for the customer to focus on business tasks and not get involved in development and maintenance of such specific, niche software.
Third-party solutions
Apart from the WINGS Notification Server, there are other off-the-shelf Push notification solutions out there in the market.
They are mostly supplied by banking software developers. But for most of these vendors, message delivery rate is not their core target. That's why it's important to choose a solution that would provide high Push delivery rates (at least 90%). It must be able to make full use of fallback channels, else cutting SMS costs won't be possible. The solution should be able to provide industrial-grade performance and reliability.
It's also important to remember that an effective solution should have a server side and provide optimization on the mobile app side via SDK (library for embedding into mobile apps). Without this, you can't achieve high Push delivery rates. Most third-party solutions lack the Push SDK.
They are mostly supplied by banking software developers. But for most of these vendors, message delivery rate is not their core target. That's why it's important to choose a solution that would provide high Push delivery rates (at least 90%). It must be able to make full use of fallback channels, else cutting SMS costs won't be possible. The solution should be able to provide industrial-grade performance and reliability.
It's also important to remember that an effective solution should have a server side and provide optimization on the mobile app side via SDK (library for embedding into mobile apps). Without this, you can't achieve high Push delivery rates. Most third-party solutions lack the Push SDK.
Service providers
When you resort to service providers, you'll have to pay for each Push message, and this will significantly reduce your savings from using the free Push channel. It also compromises data security (most relevant for financial organizations) since messages with sensitive information would have to pass third-party servers, which can (and should) be excluded from the chain.
An additional risk is that you get dependent on such a Push provider, as it will be extremely difficult to change a provider to a more profitable one due to non-standard integrations.
An additional risk is that you get dependent on such a Push provider, as it will be extremely difficult to change a provider to a more profitable one due to non-standard integrations.