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app push notifications

What's the Best OneSignal Alternative?

Angela Stringfellow

Last updated on

Push notifications are a common method for application developers and businesses to communicate with users. They have become so crucial for many businesses that they can impact the customer experience. An effective push notification strategy is also one of the best marketing strategies, as it boosts user engagement, increases traffic and can improve customer retention by keeping your users up to date with your latest promotions and products.

With many push notification services available, it's critical to have a robust and affordable push notification system in place. One of the most popular is OneSignal, but what are your other options?

In this guide, we'll review a better choice: MagicBell. We'll look at the service’s best features and why it stands out from the other notification services. By leveraging MagicBell’s features and capabilities, you'll maintain an edge over your competitors.

OneSignal vs. MagicBell

OneSignal is a popular notification software that provides in-app messaging and push notifications for mobile and web. They offer an accessible and ready-to-use API to support high volumes of messages across various platforms. But many users, especially newbies, have reported difficulty in setting it up, and there are also fewer design choices and a less interactive dashboard than some of the other options.

That's where MagicBell comes into play.

MagicBell is your one-stop notification system that's complete with all the tools you need to enhance your customer experience, including a notification inbox. It has a centralized dashboard that allows you to manage your email, plus in-app and push notifications at a glance. It also makes your life less stressful thanks to its easy setup and beautifully crafted messages.

Why is MagicBell the Best Notification Service Provider?

Since push notifications can have a significant impact on user engagement and retention, having relevant and timely messages sent to your customers is critical. But as the business landscape rapidly changes, it's easy to lose sight of where you are and where you need to be. MagicBell monitors the latest trends, allowing your company to always remain up-to-date and relevant.

Compared to OneSignal and other notification services, MagicBell has a list of extensive features that allow us to fulfill our promises to subscribers. These key components let you create, send, and manage notification messages with ease.

Let’s review some of the features that make MagicBell the best notification service provider today.

Seamless Setup

With OneSignal, you'll need technical knowledge to set up your mobile and web notification system, but that’s not a requirement with MagicBell. With a setup process designed to make life simpler for you, you can easily add a notification inbox to your app in just minutes.

Easily Customizable Notifications

Creating attractive and eye-catching notification messages enhances customer satisfaction and retention for your company. However, it's challenging to customize your notifications with most notification services like OneSignal. Fortunately, MagicBell allows easy customization using our robust tools.

Now, you can create impressive notifications. By utilizing HTML and CSS, you can craft unique and personalized messages to let your customers know they’re valued and appreciated. You can also format text and place images on email content.

Centralized Inbox

It's easy to get disoriented when you check multiple inboxes at once. Messy and unorganized messages can also lead to frustrations, and unfortunately, many notification services, including OneSignal, won’t provide you with a centralized dashboard.

With MagicBell, you can manage all your notifications in a unified inbox. You can view and send emails, push notifications, and in-app messaging through a user-friendly, fully customizable UI, so you’ll never lose track of important messages again.

Diverse Platform Use

There are a number of things worth considering when managing your operations. For instance, you'll want to maximize your customer reach and engagement. That's why sending messages via different platforms like emails, push notifications, and in-app messaging is critical.

MagicBell makes it easy to manage a multi-channel notification strategy. You can utilize its push notifications and in-app messaging on both the web and mobile, allowing your customers to stay informed with your latest promotions and updates whenever and wherever.

Effortless and Quick Notification Sending

Apart from managing all your notifications in a centralized inbox, you can also send your messages through every channel simultaneously or separately.

MagicBell also offers a Rest API for greater flexibility. With this feature, you can send notifications to your customers through their email address or ID. You'll also appreciate the diverse integration options you can use with MagicBell, including Mailgun, Postmark, and SendGrid.

Extensive Management Options

Compared to OneSignal, MagicBell gives you full access and control over your notification system. You can assign different categories to your messages for easier management, and customize the delivery channel and schedule for a specific notification.

For instance, you can utilize the notification API to send notifications for both web and mobile, while syncing your notifications across devices to ensure that your users don’t receive the same notification twice. You can even segment a unique message for Android users and have another personalized message for iOS users. On top of that, you can choose from a broad range of templates to make your life easier.

Transparent and Affordable Pricing

Finally, MagicBell offers transparent and affordable pricing for any business type, with highly flexible plans depending on your budget and needs. For instance, small companies and individuals can subscribe to their free package to get the necessary notification management tools they need to grow.

Growing businesses can also opt for the Startup or Pro plans for more features and functions, while larger companies can enjoy more benefits with the Business and Enterprise plans.

Final Thoughts

One of the most powerful marketing strategies is having a robust notification system that can fully operate on different platforms and that provides you with greater growth opportunities for your business. But when in-app messaging, emails, and push notifications are done poorly, it can take a toll on your company's image and your retention rate.

With MagicBell, you can maximize your engagement and reach your users on both mobile and the web. You can send and view notifications across different platforms and devices. The in-app inbox application also offers many customizable features compared to other leading notification system services.

If you're interested to learn more about what we can do for you, be sure to schedule a demo with us today!