Category: Blog

Web push notifications are easy to send, and are a great way to connect with your readers.

But, while push notifications are easy to send from a website, there are challenges and limitations for what you’re able to do.

For optimal results, you need to use web push notifications and mobile notifications.

In this guide, we’ll show you how. We’ll give you an overview of the different kinds of push notifications, recommend the best services for sending web push notifications, then explain how Vendrux can help you to send push notifications that drive better results.

By the end you’ll know exactly how to send push notifications from a website! Keep reading for more, or check out the key points in this video on our YouTube channel:

What Are Push Notifications? 

There are two types of push notifications we’re going to look at in this article:

• Web push notifications
• Mobile push notifications

Both are called “push” notifications because the messages are “pushed” from a server to the UI of the device, even if the app or website is not running. 

Both are a very handy way to re-engage past visitors and notify fans and subscribers of time-sensitive and useful information. 

Although they look similar from the user’s perspective, web push and mobile push work differently, and it’s important to understand the difference if you want to be able to send notifications from a website in the most effective way possible. 

Let’s take a look at each type now.

Web Push Notifications

Most of us are familiar with web push notifications at this point (if not, check out this article for a deeper dive).

Web push notifications, also known as browser notifications, are notifications that are sent to the user via a desktop or mobile web browser. 

They are delivered any time the user has the browser open, whether they are on that specific site or not. 

The key point to remember about web push notifications is that the browser sends them – irrespective of the particular device.

You can use web push notifications to notify readers of new content, offers or announcements, whether or not they’re on your website.

This way, they can be notified when you publish new content whether or not they’re on your website.

A little banner will pop up on their desktop (or at the top of their phone if they’re on mobile) to let them know about something of interest.

They may also include rich content, like images, and call to action buttons:

Web push notifications are supported by multiple browsers, including:

• Edge
• Safari
• Opera
• Firefox
• Chrome

For mobile, Android permits push notifications on:

iOS allows web push notifications, but crucially only on PWAs added to the home screen.

Now that we’ve looked at web push notifications let’s move on to mobile notifications. 

Mobile Push Notifications 

Mobile notifications are notifications sent from mobile apps.

Though web push notifications can be sent through mobile browsers too, when we talk about mobile push notifications we’re typically talking about mobile app push notifications.

With web push notifications the notifications are sent from the browser, whether that’s to a mobile or a desktop device.

‍With mobile notifications, the notifications come from the app.

‍From a users point of view they are very similar on mobile devices, though there are some important differences. 

Web Notifications vs Mobile Notifications 

The first difference is permission.

With web notifications, the user must explicitly give their permission to receive notifications. This makes sense, it would be a horrible user experience to be bombarded with notifications from every website you visit. 

Browsers are making it harder to get permission lately, in line with the “user first” thinking that is increasingly dominating UX design.

With mobile notifications it’s more flexible.

As you’ve already shown some significant interest in the brand by installing the app, the permissions are more lax.

On Android users are automatically opted in, and iOS are moving further towards this, although traditionally have required user approval.

The second major difference is that mobile push notifications can reach the user at any time.

As long as their device is on (and as long as they haven’t muted notifications), you can reach their home screen.

With web push notifications, the user will only see your push notification when they have the browser open.

This makes it a lot harder to cut through and capture your users’ attention with web push.

Both are very handy tools in the arsenal of a digital business, and using both is optimal.

Let’s have a look at some of the reasons why you’d want to send push notifications from a website. 

Why Send Push Notifications from a Website?

33% of people between 18-34 say they always allow push notifications on their phones, while 63% say they allow notifications “always” or “often”.

That’s a sizable portion of your existing and potential future users you can send direct messages to about your business. 

Push notifications have a significantly higher engagement rate compared with email, and don’t artificially limit your reach like social media platforms.

They are ideal for any business that wants a direct line of communication with users!

The main benefit of web push notifications is the huge reach of the web.

Potentially everyone who visits your website, mobile or desktop, can receive them, which gives you a chance to reach your whole audience.

• Direct access to your audience at all times
• Create a better user experience (if you use them right)
• Increase engagement through staying top-of-mind
• Generate more ad revenue through driving more traffic
• Boost sales and conversions for eCommerce 
• Get insights into your users through push analytics

There are many different ways that web and mobile push notifications can be used to boost engagement, traffic and conversions.

• News Publishers can use both web push notifications and mobile notifications from a mobile app to alert past visitors and app users to new content, breaking news, and special offers
• eCommerce Stores can promote special offers, new products, and offer special discounts to drive up conversions. With mobile notifications tied to an app user’s account it would also be possible to send personalized notifications notifying customers about their orders similarly to how Amazon does.
• E-learning platforms can share snippets of information on courses, promotions, and free content – and with mobile app notifications could give students individual updates about the courses they are enrolled in. 
• Communities can use notifications to promote hot threads or discussions, drive users back into the app/site, and with personalized mobile notifications could alert individual users when they receive messages or requests like the Facebook app does 

Any business that values engagement, traffic and conversion opportunities can find a good use for push notifications. 

Want to send mobile push notifications to engage your users? The best option is to convert your site to mobile apps. It’s easier than you think – book a free consultation with a Vendrux product manager now to learn how.

How to Send Web Push Notifications from Your Website

Can you send push notifications from a website? Yes! 

Traditionally you needed to do a bit of code tinkering or use the skills of a developer to set them up, but today, there are more than enough software tools that do all the heavy lifting for you.

For most businesses that want to send push notifications from a website fast, it’s best to use a push notification service. 

The push platform will give you all you need to get set up and send push notifications from your website.

It’s then up to you to try to get approval from visitors that land on your site through desktop or Android devices!

The Best Push Notification Providers

Like email marketing tools, push notification providers make it super easy to set up and send push notifications, and create powerful automations with push.

There are many providers out there, and honestly you can’t go wrong with many of them.

We broke down a few of our favorites. These make sending push notifications from a website as easy as 1-2-3.

1. OneSignal

OneSignal is the #1 choice for sending push notifications from a website without having to do any coding yourself.

The platform has an extensive online presence, with notable users including USA Today Sports and EatStreet. It has an impressive list of integrations and supports leading browsers.

If you haven’t used push notifications before, then OneSignal is the best choice, with an intuitive design that enables you to install and set up fast.

Once push notifications are set up, you can configure and schedule notifications across multiple platforms with ease.

OneSignal’s web notifications can be used to alert users to new content, notify eCommerce customers of abandoned carts, or to tell community members about a new social integration. 

The platform has a limited free version that supports 10,000 web and unlimited mobile subscribers, and affordable plans should you need more powerful features.

2. PushEngage

PushEngage, which is now owned by WPBeginner, is used by numerous major businesses, including Dominos and TUI.

Like OneSignal, it features a broad selection of integrations and support for leading browsers and device operating systems. 

Importantly, PushOffer features segmentation functionality, with criteria including location, device, and activity.

What’s more, PushEngage automates segmentation and offers triggered campaigns. Its A/B testing and analytical features are extensive, and allow you to optimize your push notifications based on the data it collects.

If you’re unsure about committing to PushEngage, you can try it out for free. That comes with a limit of 2500 subscribers and 120 notifications per month though – significantly lower than OneSignal’s free model.

Their “Business” plan typically starts at $25/month, which supports up to 100,000 subscribers, customized branding, and unlimited notifications. 

3. VWO Engage

You may know VWO Engage under its former name of Push Crew.

As with the other options, VWO Engage boasts a range of integrations and is compatible with leading browsers and device operating systems. VWO Engage counts CreditLoan and Ubisoft among its users.

VWO Engage offers a user-friendly design that lets users quickly implement push notifications without a steep learning curve.

Its triggered campaigns can be automatically activated and ended by certain activities, such as clicking a link or filling out a form.

Segmentation and A/B functionality are offered, but you may find VWO Engage’s features and analytical tools are not as comprehensive as competitors.

Unfortunately, VWO Engage only offers a 30-day free trial period.

Its entry-level “Growth” plan supports 10,000 subscribers and unlimited notifications. More premium options support additional subscribers, but these plans are pricier.

Learn more: Best practices, tips & tricks, and real examples of how eCommerce brands use push notifications to drive sales.

The Optimal Push Notification Strategy (Website and App)

So, we’ve explained the two main kinds of push notifications.

We’ve seen how web push notifications are great, and how they can boost results for your company. We’ve also recommended three great push notification providers that can get you up and running. 

But what about mobile push notifications?

As we mentioned, web push notifications are great but have their limits. Browsers are increasingly cracking down on them to protect users, they need the browser to be open to reach your users, and it’s more difficult to send them on iOS.

We’re not saying you should ditch web push notifications, but rather pair them with push notifications from an app.

Utilizing both web and mobile push notifications gives you far greater reach, and allows you to unlock the full potential of push as an engagement channel.

“But I don’t have an app!”

If you have a website, creating an app is easy. Read on and we’ll show you how.

Send Mobile Push Notifications with Vendrux

Forget about building apps from scratch, which will cost you six figures and at least six months of stressful work.

You can get just as good a result in just weeks for a fraction of the cost by turning your website into apps with Vendrux. 

We’ve built over 2,000, enjoyed by millions of users. Just check out some examples here.

With Vendrux you can build mobile apps for iOS and Android from any website, and get all the features you’d expect from a top mobile app, including unlimited push notifications.

You don’t need to touch a single line of code to build apps with Vendrux, and our team handles all the tricky parts from submission to the App Store and Google Play, to ongoing updates and maintenance (which saves you thousands of dollars per year in development costs).

Your Vendrux apps will sync 100% with your existing site, updating automatically with any changes you make or any new content that you publish.

There’s nothing new to learn, and nothing to add to your workflow. 

Crucially, Vendrux allows you to send mobile push notifications from your website.

We integrate with OneSignal, and offer unlimited notifications on all plans.

If you’re on WordPress, you’ll be able to send push notifications from a plugin that sits in your admin panel. On Shopify, you can integrate push notifications with your website using our native Shopify app.

If you’re on any other kind of site, you’ll be able to send notifications from our simple interface.

Vendrux apps are also optimized for push notifications.

Your users will have a push preferences section where they can choose the kinds of notifications that they want to receive, and an in-app message center where notifications can be saved for later. Both of these ensure maximum impact for your push notifications. 

We also have abandoned cart notifications built in to the apps, which have helped some users recover as much as $200,000 in revenue in just one month!

With web notifications set up covering desktop mobile web visitors, and Vendrux app push notifications to send to all your biggest fans who download the apps, you’ll really have covered push notifications as a channel.

Start Driving Revenue With Push Notifications Now

Converting your site into an app with Vendrux is really the best way to experience all the benefits of push notifications.

It takes minimal investment, and zero friction to launch your app, with our team of experts handling all the difficult parts of app development for you.

There’s no overhead, a low ongoing cost, and significant upside available once you can send native app push notifications.

Getting started is as simple as booking a demo call with one of our app experts.

There are no long-term contracts, and you can get a full refund within 60-days for any reason so there’s no risk. 

Ready to send push notifications from your website? If so, book a free consultation today!

Mobile is taking over. Nearly 60% of global internet traffic comes on mobile devices, and mobile commerce sales account for more than $2 trillion yearly, 57% of all eCommerce sales around the world.

These trends show that today’s brands need to invest in mobile-first communication channels, such as push notifications and SMS.

But between push and SMS, which is better? Which is most efficient, which is most effective, and are there different situations where you should use one or the other?

We’ll answer all of these questions below.

Read on to learn all you need to know about the best way to get in front of mobile-first customers in 2026.

What Are Push Notifications?

Push notifications are short messages sent from a mobile app directly to a user’s device. They appear on the lock screen, in the notification center, and as banners, even when the app isn’t open.

On iOS, they’re delivered through Apple Push Notification Service (APNs). On Android, through Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). Both systems require the user to have the app installed and to grant notification permission through the operating system’s built-in prompt.

One important feature from a business standpoint: push notifications cost nothing to send. 

There’s no per-message fee, no carrier involvement, no third-party billing. Once you have an app with push capability, you can send 1,000 or 1,000,000 notifications at the same marginal cost: zero.

What Is SMS Marketing?

SMS (Short Message Service) messages are text messages sent to a phone number through the cellular network. 

They don’t require an internet connection, a smartphone, or an app. If someone has a phone number, you can text them. It’s just in the last 10-15 years that SMS has moved from a primarily person to person channel, to a legit B2C (business to consumer) one.

SMS carries a per-message cost, typically $0.01 to $0.05 per send, plus carrier surcharges that have been steadily increasing.

Push Notifications vs SMS: How Do They Compare?

Here’s how the two channels stack up across the dimensions that matter most.

The table gives you the snapshot. Here’s the context behind each dimension.

Cost

Push notifications cost nothing per message. SMS costs $0.01 to $0.05 per send, depending on your platform and message type, plus carrier surcharges that add $0.003 to $0.01 per message on top of that.

At scale, the gap is significant. A brand sending 100,000 messages a month pays $0 for push and $1,000 to $5,000+ for SMS, before platform subscription fees. 

That’s not including the compliance infrastructure SMS requires: consent management systems, opt-out processing, legal review, and 10DLC registration.

And the revenue side is just as lopsided. According to Omnisend’s 2025 ecommerce report, push notifications generate 15% of attributed ecommerce revenue from just 3% of total message volume. 

On a per-message basis, push is the most cost-efficient direct messaging channel available.

Reach and Audience

SMS reaches anyone with a phone number, which is practically everyone. (if someone you know doesn’t have a phone, ask them to email me, send a letter, send a smoke signal. I want to know how they do it). 

You don’t need them to download anything or enable anything beyond receiving texts. For broad-reach campaigns and transactional messages, that universality is hard to match.

That universal reach is SMS’s biggest advantage. It’s also what makes it heavily regulated. 

In the US, SMS marketing falls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which requires prior express written consent before sending marketing texts. Each unsolicited message can trigger $500 to $1,500 in statutory damages. 

Brands also need to register through 10DLC (10-digit long code) systems, comply with carrier filtering rules, and manage opt-out processing within 10 business days under the FCC’s 2025 revocation rules.

Push notifications only reach people who have your app installed and have opted in. That’s a smaller audience by definition. But it’s also a more valuable one. App users are self-selected: they’ve already bought from you, trust your brand, and tend to have higher average order values and repeat purchase rates than your general customer base.

Think of it this way: SMS casts a wider net. Push reaches the people already in your boat.

Open Rates and Engagement

SMS has a widely cited open rate of around 98%, with click-through rates in the 21-35% range. 

Push notification engagement metrics look lower on the surface. Airship’s analysis of 50 billion notifications found reaction rates of about 10.7% on Android and 4.9% on iOS across all industries. Ecommerce-specific CTR runs around 3-4% (Pushwoosh 2025 benchmarks).

These numbers can be misleading, though. Opens and clicks are not as black and white as with a channel like email. Push notifications, for example, are essentially “open” already when they land on the lock screen. 

The content in short SMS messages may also be visible from the preview that shows up on the user’s device when it’s first delivered.

Regardless of how this is measured, the engagement rates of both channels are strong – particularly automated, behavior-triggered notifications (abandoned cart, browse abandonment, price drops), which convert at 22.9% according to Omnisend’s 2025 data.

Rich Media and Interactivity

Push notifications support images, action buttons, deep links into specific app screens, custom sounds, and (on iOS 16+) interactive carousels. 

You can send a notification that takes a customer directly to the product they left in their cart, one tap from checkout.

SMS is limited to 160 characters of plain text. MMS (multimedia messaging) supports images but costs more per message and doesn’t render consistently across all devices and carriers.

SMS does support two-way communication, so customers can reply directly. Push is one-directional, though action buttons can simulate choice-based interaction.

Regulatory Compliance

This is one of the biggest practical differences between the two channels, and one that most comparison articles gloss over.

SMS marketing in the US is governed by the TCPA, with statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 per unsolicited message and no cap on total penalties. TCPA class action filings increased 112% between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025, with over 2,128 lawsuits filed through September 2025. Recent settlements include DSW at $4.43 million and Zales at $7.5 million.

Beyond TCPA, SMS requires 10DLC registration, carrier approval for commercial messaging, compliance staff or legal review, and opt-out processing within 10 business days under the FCC’s April 2025 rules.

Push notifications have none of this. Users opt in through Apple’s or Google’s native permission prompt and opt out by toggling a switch in their phone’s settings. No federal regulation, carrier involvement, or class action exposure.

Delivery and Reliability

SMS works without an internet connection. As long as there’s cellular signal, the message gets through. For true emergency communications and transactional alerts, that carrier-level reliability is genuinely superior.

Push notifications require an internet connection (WiFi or cellular data). If the user’s phone does not have an internet connection, the notification will most likely arrive when they connect again.

FCM (Android) can queue up to 100 notifications when a device is offline; APNs (iOS) stores only the most recent notification per app.

One additional thing to note, though: due to SMS relying on a cell carrier for delivery, there’s a third party that can affect your reach. On top of that, SMS messages from unknown senders have started to be filtered to secondary inboxes (like email).

Push notifications are more direct, and (as almost everyone has an internet connection today everywhere they go), generally more reliable at landing right in front of your customer.

When Should You Use SMS?

SMS stands out for specific scenarios:

• Transactional messages. Order confirmations, shipping updates, delivery notifications. These are expected, high-utility messages that customers want via text.
• Reaching non-app users. For customers who haven’t installed your app, SMS is your only direct-to-device option. If you need to reach your full audience, SMS has the coverage.
• Urgent, time-sensitive alerts. Flash sales with a hard deadline, low-stock warnings, security codes. SMS’s near-guaranteed visibility makes it the right call when timing is everything.
• Two-way conversations. Customer service interactions, conversational commerce, and quick feedback requests work naturally over text.

Platforms like Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive, and Omnisend have made SMS marketing accessible for ecommerce brands, with built-in TCPA compliance tools and deep Shopify integrations.

When Should You Use Push Notifications?

Push notifications are strongest where cost efficiency and audience quality matter most:

• Abandoned cart recovery. Push notifications can recover up to 20% of abandoned carts, and they cost nothing to send. For a flow that triggers thousands of times per month, the savings over SMS add up fast.
• Flash sales and promotions. Rich media support means you can send a product image with a deep link straight to the product page inside your app. One tap from notification to checkout.
• Re-engagement. A well-timed push notification drives lapsed users back into a full native shopping experience, not a mobile browser. Brands using segmented push see up to 3x higher retention compared to those that don’t send notifications at all (Airship).
• Loyalty and rewards. Points updates, tier milestones, exclusive offers. These are high-frequency messages that would be expensive via SMS and are a natural fit for push.
• Back-in-stock and price drop alerts. Behavior-triggered notifications that hit when intent is highest. These rank among the highest-converting ecommerce message types, with CTR as high as 8-10% (Pushwoosh/PushPushGo).

The revenue numbers reinforce this. Push notifications account for 15% of attributed ecommerce revenue from just 3% of total message sends (Omnisend 2025). That’s the highest revenue-to-volume ratio of any direct messaging channel.

Why the Best Brands Use Both

If you’ve read this far, there’s one clear takeaway we want you to have: push and SMS aren’t competing for the same job.

SMS reaches everyone. It’s your broad-reach channel for transactional messages, urgent alerts, and customers who don’t have your app. It works on any phone, doesn’t need an internet connection, and has near-universal visibility.

Push reaches your best customers. App users have higher average order values, higher repeat purchase rates, and higher lifetime value. Push notifications are a direct line to those customers, with no per-send cost, no regulatory risk, deep-linking directly to your mobile app.

“Push notifications give us a way to get in front of high-value customers within a walled environment… they’re in the app… we have their attention captured.”
— Damien Smith, Bottle Stop

Here’s a way to think about how you divide the work:

• Use SMS for broad reach. You’ll likely have more people on your SMS list than push subscribers. This list will also include people who haven’t bought from you before. You can use SMS to start building customer relationships at the early stages and turning interest into revenue.
• Use push for your app audience. Abandoned cart recovery, promotions, re-engagement, loyalty notifications… You’re reaching your highest-value segment at zero marginal cost with zero compliance overhead. Basically anything you send via SMS can reasonably be sent via push, with less risk and higher ROI.
• Shift high-frequency campaigns from SMS to push. Daily deals, flash sales, loyalty updates. These are the messages that rack up the biggest SMS bills and also happen to work great as push notifications. You should segment app users (who have push enabled) so that this is the primary channel you use to reach them.

Brands running both channels in an omnichannel strategy consistently outperform those relying on a single channel. One Omnisend case study showed a brand achieving 1:300 ROI using combined email, SMS, and push automations.

How to Add Push Notifications to Your Marketing Stack

Push notifications require a native mobile app. Web push exists, but opt-in rates are significantly lower, engagement is low, and there’s limited support for iOS users.

If you’re running an ecommerce store and want to add native push to your marketing channels, Vendrux makes it easy.

Vendrux builds native iOS and Android apps from your existing website. Your full storefront, checkout, and integrations, all delivered as a native app with push notification support built in. No rebuilding from scratch.

Here’s how it works (and how easy it is):

1. Book a strategy call. Share your website, talk through your goals, and find out if it’s a good fit. No commitment.
2. See your store as a native app. Our team builds a personalized preview so you can see exactly how it looks and performs before you decide.
3. Go live on the App Store and Google Play. We handle the build, testing, and submission. Most brands launch within a few weeks.

That’s it. Vendrux’s fully managed service means you can go live fast, with minimal effort, and essentially zero risk.

Curious whether push notifications make sense for your brand? Book a free strategy call to discuss it with our app team. We’ll walk you through the process and show you how to complete your marketing stack, by unlocking native push notifications.

You already send emails. Every ecommerce brand does. The question is whether push notifications add something email can’t, or whether they’re just a noisier version of the same thing.

Email and push serve fundamentally different purposes in how they reach your customers, what they can say, and when they’re most effective. Many brands send emails but not push notifications; and that means a gap in your marketing stack.

This article breaks down the real differences, backed by benchmarks, so you can figure out where each channel fits in your stack.

What Are Push Notifications?

Push notifications are short messages sent from a mobile app directly to a user’s device. They show up on the lock screen, in the notification center, and as banners, even when the app isn’t open.

They’re delivered through Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) on iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) on Android. Users opt in through a system-level permission prompt managed by Apple or Google, and they can turn notifications off at any time from their phone’s settings.

The key business distinction: push notifications cost nothing to send. No per-message fee, no platform-based pricing tiers for send volume, no carrier involvement. The marginal cost of your 100,000th push notification is the same as your first: zero.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email is the most established digital marketing channel. You collect an address, send messages to an inbox, and the recipient opens them when they choose to. It supports full HTML layouts, images, video embeds, long-form copy, and interactive elements.

The reach is effectively universal. Anyone with an email address is reachable, which means your potential audience is your entire customer and prospect list, not just app users. Platforms like Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Mailchimp have made email automation, segmentation, and personalization accessible to brands of any size.

Email also has the strongest ROI track record of any marketing channel. Industry benchmarks consistently put email ROI in the range of $36 to $44 returned for every $1 spent, which is why it remains the backbone of most ecommerce retention strategies.

Push Notifications vs Email: A Side-by-Side Comparison

Here’s how the two channels compare across the dimensions that matter most.

The table gives you the overview. Here’s the context behind each dimension.

Cost and ROI

Email marketing costs very little per message, typically fractions of a cent depending on your email service provider and list size. The ROI is well-documented: roughly $36-44 returned for every $1 spent, making email the single highest-ROI marketing channel for most ecommerce brands.

Push notifications cost nothing per message. Zero. No platform fees based on send volume, no per-notification billing. The investment is in building the app itself. After that, whether you send 1,000 or 100,000 notifications, the marginal cost doesn’t change.

Email wins on proven ROI because the channel is mature, attribution is well-established, and the volume is massive. Push wins on per-message efficiency. 

According to Omnisend’s 2025 ecommerce report, push generates 15% of attributed ecommerce revenue from just 3% of total message volume, while email generates 67% from 88% of sends. 

Email drives more total dollars. Push drives more dollars per message.

Reach and Audience

Email reaches anyone with an email address. That’s your full customer list, prospects who signed up for updates, leads from ads, and anyone who’s ever bought from you. 

No app needed, no device requirements.

Push notifications only reach people with your app installed who’ve opted in to notifications. 

That’s a smaller audience. But it’s a concentrated one: app users tend to have higher average order values, higher repeat purchase rates, and higher lifetime value than your general customer base.

This isn’t a flaw in push; it’s a feature. Email is your broad-reach channel. Push is your channel for the customers who matter most.

Open Rates and Engagement

Email open rates for ecommerce average around 30-40% depending on the source, though these numbers have been less reliable since Apple Mail Privacy Protection started auto-loading tracking pixels in 2021. Click-through rates run around 2-3%.

Push notification “open rates” are reported differently across sources. Airship’s analysis of 50 billion notifications found reaction rates of 10.7% on Android and 4.9% on iOS across all industries. 

But this understates the visibility: every push notification appears on the user’s lock screen. Whether they tap it is a separate question from whether they see it. There’s no spam folder, no promotions tab, no algorithmic sorting.

Where push really outperforms email is in automated, behavior-triggered messages. Abandoned cart push notifications, browse abandonment alerts, and back-in-stock triggers convert at 22.9% according to Omnisend’s 2025 data. That’s roughly 3-4x the conversion rate of automated email flows.

Content Format

This is where email has an unmatched advantage. Email supports full HTML layouts, product grids, embedded videos, long-form storytelling, interactive elements, and branded design. 

If you need to explain something in detail, showcase a collection, or tell a story, email is the format.

Push notifications are short by nature: typically 40-120 characters of text, sometimes with an image and 1-2 action buttons. 

They can include deep links that open specific screens inside your app (a product page, a cart, an account screen), but the notification itself is a prompt, not a destination.

Think of it this way: email is the brochure. Push is the tap on the shoulder.

Deliverability

Push notifications bypass spam filters entirely. They’re delivered directly to the device through Apple’s and Google’s native infrastructure, with delivery rates above 95% on native apps. 

If a user has opted in and their device is connected to the internet, the notification arrives.

Email has a deliverability problem. Industry estimates put inbox placement rates at roughly 80%, meaning about 1 in 5 emails never reaches the primary inbox. 

Between spam filters, promotions tabs, and aggressive filtering by providers like Gmail and Outlook, a significant chunk of your emails are competing just to be seen.

This isn’t a reason to abandon email. It’s a reason to understand that the “30% open rate” already accounts for messages that made it through. 

Push’s 95%+ delivery rate means your message gets in front of the user more reliably, even if fewer users interact with it.

Frequency and Timing

Email is more forgiving on frequency. Daily emails are standard practice for many ecommerce brands, and weekly newsletters are the norm. 

Users are accustomed to commercial email and tend to tolerate higher volume, especially when content is relevant.

Push notifications need more restraint. 64% of users may stop using an app that sends more than 5 per week. Our research finds that most brands send between 2-5 push notifications per week; though there’s a wide range in best practices, depending on the brand and the vertical. 

When Should You Use Email?

Email is the best channel for scenarios that need reach, depth, or permanence:

• Newsletters and content marketing. Product stories, brand updates, educational content. Email is the format for anything that benefits from design and detail.
• Welcome and onboarding sequences. Introducing new customers to your brand, setting expectations, building a relationship over multiple touchpoints.
• Product launches and collections. Showcasing new arrivals with product photography, descriptions, and multiple CTAs.
• Transactional messages. Order confirmations, shipping updates, receipts. These are expected via email and serve as permanent records.
• Win-back campaigns. Re-engaging lapsed customers with longer-form messaging that can explain what’s new and why they should come back.
• Broad-reach promotions. When you need to reach your full list, including customers who don’t have your app.

When Should You Use Push Notifications?

Push notifications are best when immediacy, precision, and cost matter:

• Abandoned cart recovery. A push notification lands on the lock screen minutes after a customer leaves their cart. It costs nothing to send and can recover up to 20% of abandoned carts. At scale, this single use case can justify the cost of an app.
• Flash sales and time-sensitive offers. Push is instant. When you have a 24-hour sale or limited inventory, push gets the message in front of your best customers within seconds, with a deep link directly to the product.
• Re-engagement. Users who have your app but haven’t opened it recently. A well-timed, personalized push can bring them back into a native shopping experience where conversion rates are higher than mobile web.
• Back-in-stock and price drop alerts. These behavior-triggered notifications reach customers at peak intent. They’re among the highest-converting ecommerce message types, with CTR as high as 8-10%.
• Loyalty and rewards. Points updates, tier milestones, exclusive app-only offers. High-frequency, high-relevance messages that would be expensive via SMS and risk getting buried in email.

Why the Best Brands Use Both

Email and push aren’t interchangeable. They differ in format, audience, timing, and what they’re good at. That’s exactly what makes them complementary.

Email gives you reach and depth. You can talk to your entire list, tell detailed stories, and send frequently without wearing out your welcome. 

It’s your foundational channel, and its proven ROI means you should never stop investing in it.

Push gives you precision and immediacy. You’re talking to a smaller group (app users), but it’s your highest-value segment. Every message is free, every message is seen, and behavior-triggered push notifications convert at roughly 3-4x the rate of equivalent email automations.

Here’s what that should look like in your marketing stack:

• Email for nurture, push for conversion. Build the relationship through email content. When a high-value customer abandons their cart or a wishlist item drops in price, push is the nudge that closes the sale.
• Email for broad campaigns, push for your VIPs. A new collection launch goes to your full email list. The flash sale or early-access notification goes to your app users via push.
• Email for the long game, push for the moment. A weekly newsletter keeps your brand in mind. A push notification timed to a customer’s browsing behavior catches them when intent is highest.

Brands running both channels in an omnichannel setup consistently outperform those relying on email alone. Omnisend’s 2025 data shows push notification volume grew 55% year-over-year, the fastest of any direct messaging channel, as more brands recognize what it adds to the mix.

How to Add Push Notifications to Your Marketing Stack

Native push notifications require a mobile app. Web push exists, but opt-in rates are much lower and iOS support is still limited. 

If you want push as a real channel, not a workaround, you need a native app on the App Store and Google Play.

That doesn’t mean rebuilding your ecommerce site from scratch. 

Vendrux turns your existing website into a native iOS and Android app, complete with push notification support. Everything your customers already use (your storefront, checkout, loyalty program, integrations) carries over to your app. No separate codebase, no duplicate content management.

If you want to see what that looks like for your store, book a free strategy call and we’ll go over everything. We’ve built over 2,000 apps over the last 10+ years, so we’re uniquely positioned to show you what you can gain by launching an app.

As many of our customers attest to: push notifications are the reason to launch an app.

If you want to explore this for your brand, get in touch and we’ll explain how to make it happen.

Imagine skyrocketing your PrestaShop store’s engagement rates overnight. 

You know the struggle of keeping customers hooked, but with the right tools, it’s possible. 

Push notifications, both through native apps and web browsers, are one of the best ways to boost customer engagement and sales.

In this article we’ll explain why. We’ll look at how push notifications work, how to get them set up for PrestaShop, and how to work them into your overall strategy. 

For a deeper dive into push notifications for eCommerce, check out this guide, which includes best practices and real examples of push notifications from successful eCommerce brands.

Benefits of Push Notifications for PrestaShop Stores

Push notifications are the secret weapon for your eCommerce brand. 

They’re an amazing tool for driving traffic and sales, building deeper relationships with customers, recovering abandoned carts, and much more.

The best thing about push is their immediacy.

‍Push notifications show up right on the lock screen, that people look at over 140 times every day.

Compared to email, PPC, even SMS, push notifications are difficult to ignore. 

Here are more reasons that push notifications are so powerful:

• You can deliver messages in real-time, keeping your customers informed about the latest deals and product launches.
• Unlike emails that can get buried in an inbox, push notifications take center stage with extremely high open rates.
• Push notifications are great for nudging customers to complete purchases and recover abandoned carts.
• Compared to other marketing tools, push is cheaper and easier to set up.

Simply put, push notifications are a gamechanger. 

Once you’re set up you can send as many notifications as you like, and see the immediate boost to your core metrics. 

Here are a few ideas for the kind of notifications you can send:

• Abandoned Cart Reminders: abandoned carts are a huge loss. With push notifications personalized with the customer’s name and abandoned items, sent within an hour of cart abandonment, you can potentially recover more than 20% of your otherwise lost sales.
• Exclusive Discounts and Promotions: push is the perfect channel to drive traffic to your special offers and promote exclusive offers to loyal customers.
• Product Launches and Updates: push works great for keeping your brand top-of-mind and informing customers of important updates.

Push is the perfect channel to connect, engage, and sell.

‍

Native App vs Web Push Notifications for PrestaShop

There are two kinds of push notifications you need to be aware of.

• Native app push notifications (sent from iOS or Android apps installed on the user’s device).
• Web push notifications (sent through the web browser).

Web and native app (aka mobile) push notifications are similar, but have some key differences.

Ultimately, while web push notifications can be a solid way to drive traffic to your website, they pale in comparison to native mobile push notifications.

Mobile push notifications have a much better opt-in rate, and much wider visibility, as they allow you to reach customers directly on their mobile’s lock screen.

There’s no substitute for this kind of direct access to your customers.

So, if you really want to get all that push notifications have to offer, you need to send push notifications from an app.

How to Set Up Push Notifications for Your PrestaShop Store

At the risk of stating the obvious, to send native app notifications you need a native app. 

Now of course PrestaShop is not for building native apps, it is a CMS designed for the web. 

But there’s a way to launch a native app while continuing to manage your store via PrestaShop – Vendrux.

Vendrux is a platform for converting eCommerce web stores into high-end eCommerce apps for iOS and Android. 

We build the apps for you to your specification, and you can reuse all the features and functionality from your existing site. Everything PrestaShop gives you for the web, you can translate that into an app with Vendrux. 

We’ve built thousands of apps that have sent millions of push notifications, so we know the power of native push first hand. 

PrestaShop Push Notifications with Vendrux

All our apps are integrated with OneSignal, the best push notification platform on the market. 

As soon as customers download your apps from the App Store and Google Play, you can ask them for notification permission and start sending unlimited messages to them straight away. 

We also built a special feature for abandoned cart notifications. The apps detect when a customer has closed the app with items in their cart and trigger a notification sequence designed to nudge them to complete their purchase. It works really well!

Vendrux is all you need to convert a PrestaShop store into native eCommerce apps and send unlimited push notifications to customers. 

It’s the best way since all others either cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (native development) or result in low-quality, cookie-cutter apps that won’t do your brand justice (automated app builders).

Questions? Talk to one of our app experts and get all your questions answered. With Vendrux you get everything you need to send native app push notifications. Your apps are your web store, wrapped in the optimal native UX, it is sending native app notifications from PrestaShop – one of the few ways to do so.

Push Notification Best Practices for PrestaShop Stores

Compelling notifications are based on great copy, and contextually relevant messages that provide value to the recipient in some form. 

Never spam, never send notifications just because it “seems like a good idea”. There should always be:

1. A strategic business reason 
2. Value for the customer 

For. Every. Single. Notification. 

Copywriting

A well-crafted notification can be the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity, so copywriting best practices should be followed. 

Remember that they’re not just alerts – they’re calls to action. 

Each message should be punchy, focused and concise (they’ll have to be with the character limit).

When writing notifications:

• Keep it brief. Limit your message to 10 words or fewer whenever possible
• Use power words and compelling verbs to spur action
• Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers

A/B testing different message styles and content can pinpoint what works best for your audience.

Rich Media 

Another great thing about push is the ability to use rich media in your notifications. 

This works particularly well for eCommerce, and particularly well for native app push notifications which can sync more closely with the functionality of the OS. 

If there’s the potential for a visual element, like when announcing a new product or offer, include a nice image and watch your conversion rates increase. 

Personalization 

You should also personalize notifications when you can. Native app notifications are, again, better for this because you can use all of the data from the app to personalize the message. With web notifications, you might not even know a single thing about them. 

A few basic personalization tactics to test out:

• Use the recipient’s name to grab attention
• Recommend products similar to previous interests
• Send exclusive offers based on previous interests

Test this out and you’ll see higher engagement rates as your messages resonate with individual customers.

Timing and frequency

The timing and frequency of your notifications is really key.

One of the most common beginner errors is bombarding users with too many notifications. This will lead to opt-outs and annoyed users who think less of your brand. 

On the other hand, if you’re too sparing and sporadic this could mean missed opportunities. 

Like many things it’s about striking the right balance by:

• Schedule push notifications based on customer time zones for maximum impact
• Avoid odd hours which may annoy your subscribers
• Establish a balanced frequency that keeps users informed but not overwhelmed

Some studies argue that the best time to send notifications is between 11am and 1pm, when customers are most likely to be relaxing with lunch, others found that more than two notifications daily lead to higher opt-out rates. 

Ultimately you need to monitor the performance of your campaigns and find what works best for you. 

But always remember that the goal is to add value, not clutter, to your customers’ lives.

Start Sending Push Notifications From Your PrestaShop Store Today

You now know all you need to know to send push notifications from PrestaShop, and have success with today’s most effective communication channel for online brands.

The path to unlocking the benefits of push notifications is extremely straightforward.

1. Book a free consultation with our team to discuss converting your PrestaShop store into a mobile app.
2. When your app is live, turn on abandoned cart notifications, and set up some other simple, automated notifications, such as a welcome message or order updates.
3. Experiment, tweak and optimize further with promotional messages, loyalty updates and more, to understand the ideal push playbook for your brand.

It’s tough to go wrong, and Vendrux makes it easy enough to launch an app that access to push notifications alone is reason enough to do it.

You could play around with web push notifications at the same time, using a push notification service like OneSignal, but your first priority should be to get mobile push notifications off the ground.

Get a free consultation now to learn more, and get the ball rolling on your native PrestaShop app.