Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering a new service that aims to make it easier for developers to send push notifications to Android and iOS applications.
Amazon pitches Simple Notification Service with Mobile Push as an easier way for developers to add notifications than previously has been possible. Using one API, developers can send notifications to iOS and Android-based devices, including Amazon's own Kindle Fire tablets.
Previously adding push notifications at a large scale on multiple platforms has been complicated for developers, according to Amazon. That's because each smartphone OS has a different service that delivers notifications. So to support multiple mobile platforms, developers must integrate with each platform, which introduces operational complexity and cost, Amazon said.
Mobile Push is compatible with Amazon's own Device Messaging platform as well as Apple's Push Notification Service and Cloud Messaging from Google. Notification messages sent to a mobile endpoint can appear as message alerts, badge updates, or even sound alerts.
The service can send messages to individual users on specific devices or broadcast identical messages to many subscribers at once. For developers who find themselves with a hit app on their hands, it can scale from a few notifications a day to hundreds of millions, according to Amazon.
Developers can send up to one million notifications each month for free. After that, customers pay US$0.50 for every million messages published, and $0.50 for every million messages delivered.
To help them get started, Amazon has published more information about the service on its documentation website.
Mobile Push is built into the existing Simple Notification Service, which is still labelled as a beta and already lets developers send notifications to their users via SMS text message and email.
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