Different ways to receive notifications
Published the 24/09/2026
Why do we need push notifications ?
When dealing with notifications, some may wonder why do we have to deal with 3rd party services for push notifications, if it is possible to get notifications without.
We can use a triangle to compare the different ways to receive notifications. The notification solution can have 2 of the 3 following features:
- Instant, fast enough to not miss important events
- Efficient, battery, network data and RAM wise
- Standalone, without involving a 3rd party service
And depending on the application, other solutions than push notifications work well.
when the app requests its server every N minutes or hours. They are efficient and standalone.
They are useful when the information can be delayed by an hour. For example, this is a good solution for emails, or software updates.
Another solution very closed to this one is the Scheduled jobs: when you know exactly when you will have an event to process.
when the app stays connected to its server. They are instant and standalone.
That’s a good solution when the users don’t have any 3rd party push service, or if they don’t want to use it.
Even if an application can be pretty efficient, having tens of them using 2% of your battery a day will lead to an avoidable battery drain. And that’s worse if you have many of them, because, even if the system can handle a few constant connections efficiently, it can’t “sleep” correctly if they are too many.
For example, it may be implemented to receive instant messages, calls, or emergency alerts, when there isn’t any push service available.
when the app relies on a 3rd party push service. They are efficient and instant.
That’s the way to go if you need “instant” events and the user has this kind of service.
As for the constant connections, it may be implemented to receive instant messages, calls or emergency alerts.
Note: with UnifiedPush, the content of the notifications shown to the user is not the data sent to the push server. It can contain encrypted data that can be used for that, or may be a simple message (“ping”) to inform about available notifications on the server.
Many notifications don’t need to interrupt the user, and should be displayed only when the user intends to. And that’s a good efficient and standalone solution.