This article provides a quick overview of key details about Push Notifications, including the different types available, its performance and capabilities, various functionalities, and much more.
Performance and Capability
Countly Push Notifications features a powerful push notification sending mechanism that allows you to send thousands, or even millions, of notifications to all users of one or multiple apps.
Internal optimization algorithms distribute the load across available CPU cores and adapt to the network bandwidth of a specific server, while managing various use cases and common issues related to APN, FCM, and HMS services.
Depending on the server's resources and APN/FCM/HMS availability, Countly can send 10,000-100,000 notifications per second. Push rate on small virtual servers (e.g., 1-2 cores) is usually in the 2,000-10,000 messages-per-second range and highly depends on MongoDB performance.
Contact us if you need more than 100,000 notifications per second, and
we will
collaborate with you to build a scalable infrastructure.
Applying Push Notifications
Typically, push notifications are one component of a product’s broader user engagement strategy.
Ideally, push notifications should be implemented in addition to, rather than in place of, emailing users and displaying in-app messages.
Unlike e-mail marketing campaigns, push notifications are intended to be short and succinct, as opening a notification directs the user to the promoted content (e.g., an alert about a breaking news story sends the user to the app screen where the full story appears).
Types of Push Notifications
Note: Recurring and Multiple Days Notification Types
will be available soon!
One-time Notifications are a type of message that you can set up
and send for campaigns or information for which you would like to
communicate with your users once. This is a one-time setup that allows
you to communicate with a group of identified users, carrying any
unique message required. These can be set up in minutes and sent
out right away or scheduled for later delivery.
Automated Notifications are similar to one-time notifications in
their setup, but differ in their scheduling. You can set up and maintain
automated notifications to go live when a user meets a specific behavior
or activity. With automated notifications, you do not need to repeatedly
set up a notification every time a group (such as a specific
cohort)
refreshes. You can simply target the group so that users receive
the notification whenever they interact with the group in a specific
manner (enter the group, exit the group, and so on).
Recurring notifications are types of messages that you can send to
users on a regular, scheduled basis. These notifications are typically
used to remind or inform users about specific events, tasks, or updates
that occur repeatedly over time.
Multiple days type push notifications allow you to schedule messages
to be sent on multiple dates and times. This versatile notification
type is invaluable for a wide range of applications, from event reminders
and subscription services to personalized greetings and marketing
campaigns. By allowing you to precisely target when your notifications
are delivered, you can engage with your audience at the most relevant
moments, ensuring that your messages reach them when it matters most.
API (Transactional) Notifications are a type of message triggered
by an API request sent from an external server. It is generally used
to build loyalty and increase user engagement by setting up push
notifications triggered by events or any user properties provided
by external servers or databases. For example, send push notifications
to users when a new message is received from other users, a new payment
is received, credit card limit is over.
The above five types of notifications can further be categorized into two formats:
Message: This is a notification that contains content, images, video, and audio, as per your preferences, and is seen by the user. The way they receive notifications can be customized by notification type and your preferences.
Silent (Data-only): With this format, users do not see any message or get any notification sound when the notification is received by the user app. These push notifications are designed to keep your app's data "up-to-date" by providing a way to "wake up" the app to refresh the data in the background.
Push Notifications Features
The following graph offers an overview of the basic features of Countly Push Notifications, including some of the advanced messaging capabilities, such as, but not limited to:
Basics of Push Notifications
Latency of Push Notifications
Sometimes it might take a second for a notification to be delivered,
sometimes it takes longer. Latency mostly depends on device networking
and Apple or Google services' health and throughput.
Types of Media that Can be Sent
iOS supports video, animated image, (still) image, and audio files.
Android only supports images. File size limitations for iOS is 10Mb
for images, 5Mb for audio, and 50Mb for video. Android doesn't have
hard limits; however, we strongly suggest that you limit file sizes
based on iOS.
Using Buttons in Push Notifications
Countly supports up to 2 buttons per notification for iOS and Android.
Sending Rate
As mentioned above, the sending rate depends on your server CPU and
RAM configuration. On a small server with 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores,
both Android and iOS push sending rate is 1500 messages per second.
Increasing RAM and CPU also increases this rate.
Character Limit for Single Messages
The message size can be 4,096 characters for Android and 2,048 characters
for iOS.
Basic Terms
When using Push Notifications in Countly, you will often come across specific terms. Let's jump into these terms and their meanings:
Total app users
Total number of users of the app
Push-enabled users
Number of users who agreed to receive push notifications, which is
the
number of users with iOS or Android tokens stored in the database.
Icons
Mobile Push Icons are set within your mobile app. Android Mobile
App
large icons can use external resources. iOS only uses the main app
icon.
Badge
Notification Badges that show on app icons refer to the little dots
that
show up on your mobile app icon and are meant to help capture a response
from the user.
On-click URL (CTA URL)
Default URL or deeplink that opens when a user taps a message in
the
notification. If the notification body was clicked, the on-click
URL
is opened. If an action button is clicked, the action button URL
is opened.
Large Icon
Optional for Android, the large notification icon will show up to
the
left of the notification text on Android 4.0.3 - Android 6.0 devices,
and shows on the right for Android 7.0+ devices. If it is not set,
the
small icon is used.
Payload Size
Payload size refers to the limitations of the notification. The maximum
payload size can be 4,096 characters for Android and 2,048 characters
for iOS. (From iOS: For Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) notifications,
the maximum payload size is 5 KB (5,120 bytes). For all other remote
notifications, the maximum payload size is 4 KB (4,096 bytes) Source:
click
here).
You can simply copy and paste the emoji you want into the message
or
title. We recommend keeping your messages clear and short. Here are
our
recommendations:
Platform
Title
Body
iOS
~25 - 50 (Same for Subtitle)
~150
Android
~50
~150
Media
These are large images, videos, sound files, or animated GIFs that
appear
with the notification. Note that there are a few restrictions depending
on the platform, so we recommend you check the
type and size of media
that can be sent to iOS and Android. Here are our recommended Media
sizes:
Android
IOS
FileTypes
jpg, jpeg, png*
jpg, jpeg, png, gif
Resolution
Recommendations: 2:1 aspect ratio landscape
Max Width: 2000 pixels
Min Width: 300 pixels
Common sizes:
512x256px
1440x720px
Recommendations: 2:1 aspect ratio landscape
Max Width: 2000 pixels
Min Width: 300 pixels
Common sizes:
512x256px
1440x720px
*GIF image animations are not supported on Android mobile apps.
Push Notification Feature Layout
Now that we have a better understanding of what Countly Push Notifications can do, let's look at the layout of the Push Notification feature in the Countly dashboard.