Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Pusher Beams VS Amazon SNS

Compare Pusher Beams VS Amazon SNS and see what are their differences

Pusher Beams logo Pusher Beams

Send push notifications programmatically at scale

Amazon SNS logo Amazon SNS

Fully managed pub/sub messaging for microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications
  • Pusher Beams Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • Amazon SNS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21

Pusher Beams features and specs

  • Ease of Integration
    Pusher Beams provides simple and well-documented APIs and SDKs for various platforms, making it easy for developers to integrate push notifications into their applications quickly.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Beams supports multiple platforms including iOS, Android, and web, allowing developers to manage push notifications for different environments through a single service.
  • Scalability
    Pusher Beams is built to handle large volumes of notifications efficiently, making it a suitable choice for applications with a growing or large user base.
  • Reliability
    The service uses robust infrastructure to ensure the delivery of notifications, even under heavy loads, which enhances the reliability of the communication.
  • Advanced Features
    Beams offers advanced features such as user segmentation and detailed analytics, aiding in the creation of targeted notification campaigns and performance tracking.

Possible disadvantages of Pusher Beams

  • Cost
    While Pusher Beams offers a free tier, the costs can increase significantly with scale, which may be a consideration for smaller projects or startups.
  • Dependency
    Using a third-party service like Pusher Beams means additional dependency on their infrastructure and uptime, which could be a risk if the service experiences downtime.
  • Limited Customization
    While the service offers many built-in features, there may be limitations when it comes to custom use cases or very specific requirements that fall outside the provided capabilities.
  • Data Privacy
    Using any external service to handle user data introduces potential privacy concerns, particularly if the application involves sensitive information that needs stringent privacy controls.
  • Notification Delivery Limits
    There can be limits on the number of push notifications that can be sent per month or per second, which might necessitate significant planning and optimization for high-traffic applications.

Amazon SNS features and specs

  • Scalable
    Amazon SNS can handle a high-throughput of messages, making it suitable for large-scale applications.
  • Flexible
    Supports multiple message delivery formats and protocols, including HTTP/S, SQS, Lambda, SMS, and email.
  • Easy Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with various AWS services such as EC2, S3, and Lambda, simplifying the overall architecture.
  • Real-time Notifications
    Provides near-instantaneous notifications, ideal for time-sensitive applications.
  • Reliability
    Offers high availability and durability, ensuring that messages are reliably delivered.
  • Cost-effective
    Pay-as-you-go pricing model can be cost-effective for various use cases.
  • Security Features
    Supports fine-grained access control and encryption to ensure secure message delivery.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon SNS

  • Complexity
    May require a learning curve to fully understand and configure, particularly for those not familiar with AWS services.
  • Potential Latency
    Message delivery can occasionally have latency issues, particularly over less reliable network connections.
  • Limited Message Size
    SNS has a limit of 256KB per message, which may be restrictive for certain use cases.
  • Cost Overhead
    While it can be cost-effective, costs can accumulate with high volume and usage, especially if you are not optimizing your resources.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Using SNS ties you to the AWS ecosystem, which might be a disadvantage if you are looking for a multi-cloud or cloud-agnostic solution.
  • Limited Protocols for Direct Communication
    Although several protocols are supported, certain specific or legacy protocols may not be directly compatible.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pusher Beams and Amazon SNS)
Mobile Push Messaging
76 76%
24% 24
Push Notifications
47 47%
53% 53
Web Push Notifications
69 69%
31% 31
Stream Processing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Pusher Beams and Amazon SNS

Pusher Beams Reviews

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Amazon SNS Reviews

6 Best Notification Infrastructure for Modern Applications
Lastly, let’s not forget Simple Notification Service by Amazon, a web service that supports application-to-application (A2A) and application-to-person (A2P) communication between distributed environments, microservices, and event-driven serverless applications.
Source: geekflare.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon SNS seems to be a lot more popular than Pusher Beams. While we know about 55 links to Amazon SNS, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Pusher Beams. 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.

Pusher Beams mentions (3)

  • How to enable HTTPS in Laravel Homestead
    I met this need because I am working on browser notifications for Inspector using Pusher/Beams. But Beams requires that the application be necessarily served over HTTPS. It is required also in the local development environment. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • Push notifications from web app
    Lots of options, but Laravel already integrates with Pusher for websockets; https://pusher.com/beams is their push notification system, and it's fairly easy to add to Laravel. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Pusher.com — Free, unlimited push notifications for 2000 monthly active users. A single API for iOS and Android devices. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago

Amazon SNS mentions (55)

  • Event-Driven Architecture on AWS
    Event Routers: Services like Amazon SQS (A managed message queuing), Amazon SNS (A pub/sub messaging), AWS Step Functions (An orchestrate serverless workflows) and Amazon EventBridge (A serverless event bus) act as event routers, establishing the paths and flow for messages within the architecture. They enable seamless handling and distribution of events, ensuring that each message reaches its intended destination... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Serverless Site Health Check Notification System
    This blog details how you can use some key serverless components from AWS like Amazon Eventbridge, AWS Lambda, and Simple Notification Service to setup a system that will monitor your site (which can be running anywhere) and send emails, text messages, slack messages, and more when the reachability status of your site changes. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, and SSE - Which Real-Time Notification Method Is For You?
    Compare this to a stateless communication mechanism like Amazon SNS or other Webhook implementation where the connection is not persistent and the communication is one-way. These are intended to be used as a response to an event and inform subscribers without maintaining a continuous connection or keeping memory of previous interactions. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Programmatically reacting to S3 bucket external access exposures
    Let's make it simple and add an SNS topic target to the rule. We can add multiple different subscribers to the topic. Any time when Access Analyzer creates a new finding, SNS can, for example, send an email or a customized Slack message. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Receiving Slack notifications when CloudTrail logging gets turned off
    Of course, Slack is not the only way to receive notifications. EventBridge integrates with many target services, both AWS and 3rd parties. For example, we can set up email or phone text message alerts in SNS, or add a different target if business needs require. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Pusher Beams and Amazon SNS, you can also consider the following products

OneSignal - Customer engagement platform used by over 1 million developers and marketers; the fastest and most reliable way to send mobile and web push notifications, in-app messages, emails, and SMS.

Amazon SQS - Amazon Simple Queue Service is a fully managed message queuing service.

Push Notification Preview - A simple tool for previewing push notification copy

PushOwl - Re-engage website visitors with push notifications

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Truepush - Unleash limitless possibilities with Truepush and save up to $600 monthly. Free up to 10K Subscribers on all features.