Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Dokku VS NotificationAPI

Compare Dokku VS NotificationAPI and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Dokku logo Dokku

Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash

NotificationAPI logo NotificationAPI

A managed and scalable solution for easily creating and managing user notifications.
  • Dokku Homepage
    Homepage //
    2024-08-26
  • Dokku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • NotificationAPI Website
    Website //
    2025-02-04

Design your notifications in our dashboard, then integrate them into your software with a few lines of code. No other third-parties, no email HTML, no A2P registrations, no websocket management.

NotificationAPI comes with:

Dokku

Website
dokku.com
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

NotificationAPI

$ Details
freemium
Platforms
Node JS Python Java JavaScript .Net TypeScript PHP Go Ruby ReactJS React Native Angular Vue Android iOS
Release Date
2020 May
Startup details
Country
Canada

Dokku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Dokku provides simple commands and clear documentation, making it straightforward to deploy, manage, and scale applications using a process similar to Heroku.
  • Heroku Compatibility
    Dokku uses a Heroku-like buildpack system, which allows users to deploy applications with ease if they are already familiar with Heroku.
  • Cost-Effective
    Being an open-source project, Dokku itself is free to use, which can significantly reduce the cost of deploying applications compared to using premium services.
  • Customizability
    As an open-source tool, Dokku allows for extensive customization according to user needs, offering flexibility in deployment settings and configurations.
  • Plugin System
    Dokku supports a wide range of plugins, enabling users to extend its functionality easily, such as adding database support, monitoring capabilities, and more.

Possible disadvantages of Dokku

  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Setting up Dokku for the first time might be challenging, especially for users with limited experience in server management and Linux administration.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Compared to fully-managed PaaS solutions, Dokku has fewer built-in features, potentially requiring more effort to implement certain functionalities such as load balancing and extensive monitoring.
  • Scalability Challenges
    While Dokku supports basic scaling, it might not handle extensive scaling needs as efficiently as more robust enterprise-level solutions.
  • Resource Management
    Dokku's resource management capabilities are limited compared to dedicated orchestration tools like Kubernetes, making it less suitable for complex and large-scale application deployments.
  • Community Support
    Even though Dokku has a growing community, it is not as large or as active as some of the more popular platforms, which can limit the availability of community-driven support and resources.

NotificationAPI features and specs

  • Email
    Built-in email delivery, comprehensive email editor, dedicated IP
  • SMS / Voice
    Built-in SMS delivery, automatic A2P 10DLC registration
  • Realtime In-App
    Low code in-app notifications widget in your front-end
  • Push (iOS, Android, RN, Browser)
    Built-in management of push tokens
  • Less Code
    Notification batching, digest, scheduling
  • Less Bugs
    Notification throttling and deduplication
  • Compliance
    Built-in compliance with Google bulk sender policy, managed A2P 10DLC registration and requirements for other regions
  • Back-End SDKs
    Node, PHP, .NET, Python, Go
  • Front-End Support
    JavaScript, React, Next, Angular, React Native, Vue, Astro

Analysis of Dokku

Overall verdict

  • Dokku is a solid option for teams or developers looking for a cost-effective way to deploy and manage applications with the flexibility of a self-hosted solution. While it might not be as polished or feature-rich as commercial PaaS providers like Heroku or AWS Elastic Beanstalk, its open-source nature and community support make it a reliable choice for those who are comfortable with a bit more hands-on management.

Why this product is good

  • Dokku is often hailed as a self-hosted Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, which is based on Docker. It simplifies the deployment process by allowing developers to manage applications similar to how they would on Heroku, but with more control and flexibility. Dokku is lightweight, can be scaled easily, and integrates well with various databases and programming languages. It is also open-source and can be installed on any server that supports Docker, making it a cost-effective solution for many projects.

Recommended for

  • Small to medium-sized projects
  • Developers who prefer open-source solutions
  • Teams looking for a Heroku-like experience on their own infrastructure
  • Cost-conscious developers or startups
  • Technical users who are comfortable managing their server environment

Dokku videos

00028 Creating Your Own PaaS with Dokku

More videos:

  • Review - Dokku - An open source PAAS alternative to Heroku. You could save $$$ money!
  • Review - Rise Up and Deploy Your Own Heroku-like Service with Dokku in Minutes! #webdevelopment #tutorial

NotificationAPI videos

No NotificationAPI videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Dokku and NotificationAPI)
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Push Notifications
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Dokku and NotificationAPI.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

NotificationAPI's answer:

Our happy users (developers) are those who don't want to spend weeks or a fortune to get their notification project done.

How would you describe your primary audience?

NotificationAPI's answer:

Technical managers and developers who care about their team's velocity and shipping their roadmap asap.

What makes your product unique?

NotificationAPI's answer:

NotificationAPI is the fastest way to implement user notifications in your product. Some B2B SaaS products roll out all their notification requirements in a couple of days using NotificationAPI.

What's the story behind your product?

NotificationAPI's answer:

In 2015, I (Sahand) was the CTO of this successful VC-backed B2B SaaS company in Canada, where the notification system was both critical and problematic. Between complex infra and logic, messaging policies and regulations, and many notification items on the roadmap, nobody was happy with notifications. Not users, developers, or the non-technical team.

"There must be a 3rd-party for this," I thought, so I googled "Notification API" and found nothing. Am I missing something here? Isn't this a big enough problem? I queried Jira and found that notifications comprised 5% of our Done tasks. We had spent 5% of our WHOLE productivity on something that was already broken.

Over the next few years, as we solved each of these challenges, we learned about all sorts of bottlenecks and pain points, realizing the need for a developer tool to solve user notifications for developers.

After successfully exiting that company, we officially started NotificationAPI as an independent company in 2020.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

NotificationAPI's answer:

  • Hydac
  • Spellbook
  • Bluedrop

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Dokku and NotificationAPI

Dokku Reviews

35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
Dokku is a great alternative if you’re working with a stringent budget. It’s a miniaturized self-hosted platform as a service. You can deploy applications to it using Git. Because it’s a Heroku derivative, it’s compatible with Heroku apps.
Heroku vs self-hosted PaaS
CapRover is in many ways similar to Dokku. It uses Docker for deployment just like Dokku but CapRover does not support buildpack deployments as it uses Dockerfiles only. This is not necessarily a bad thing since Dockerfile deployments are great in Dokku as well. You don’t have to write your own dockerfiles however for simple deployments as there are multiple defaults for...
Source: www.mskog.com

NotificationAPI Reviews

We have no reviews of NotificationAPI yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Dokku seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Dokku mentions (21)

  • Show HN: Wiederhol – GitHub for Checklists
    Android users can install https://wiederhol.com/ as a PWA (Progressive Web Application). Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, React, PostgreSQL, https://dokku.com/ for hosting on Hetzner, https://pwabuilder.com for the iOS app. PS: Wiederhol means 'repeat' (imperative verb form) in German. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Self-Hosting like it's 2025
    I am going to continue to stan for dokku for hosting web apps, docker images included https://dokku.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Deploy a NestJS Application with Dokku
    In this article, we will deploy a NestJS application using Dokku (https://dokku.com). - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Hosting your own PaaS: Open-Source Tools to Help You Exit the Cloud!
    # download the installation script Wget -NP . https://dokku.com/bootstrap.sh # run the installer Sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.35.10 bash bootstrap.sh # configure your server domain Dokku domains:set-global your-domain.com # add your ssh key to the dokku user PUBLIC_KEY="your-public-key-contents-here" Echo "$PUBLIC_KEY" | dokku ssh-keys:add admin # create your first app Dokku apps:create test-app. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Stop Paying Vercel: Self-Host Unlimited NextJS Apps for $19/month
    Use GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Dokku or any CI/CD tool you prefer. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

NotificationAPI mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of NotificationAPI yet. Tracking of NotificationAPI recommendations started around Mar 2024.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Dokku and NotificationAPI, you can also consider the following products

Google App Engine - A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

Knock App - Power your product notifications with Segment and Hightouch.

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

Novu - The ultimate library for managing multi-channel transactional notifications with a single API.

Google Cloud Functions - A serverless platform for building event-based microservices.

SuprSend - Single Notification API for Every Channel (SMS, Slack, Whatsapp, Email, SMS, Push, App Inbox)