Azure Notification Hubs on Microsoft Azure
Azure Notification Hubs is a fully managed push notification engine that enables sending notifications to millions of devices across different platforms. The service abstracts the complexity of various Platform Notification Services (Apple APNs, Google FCM, Windows WNS) and provides a unified API.
The service is designed for high scalability and can send millions of push notifications within seconds. Through features like tag-based routing, templates, and segmentation, targeted notifications can be sent to specific user groups.
For companies with GDPR requirements, Notification Hubs is available in European Azure regions and meets all relevant compliance standards.
Typical Use Cases
Mobile app notifications: Sending news, updates, and alerts to iOS and Android app users without operating your own push infrastructure.
Personalized marketing campaigns: Segmented push messages based on user behavior, location, or interests for higher engagement rates.
Breaking news and live events: Real-time notifications for time-critical information like sports scores, stock updates, or emergency alerts.
Multi-platform enterprise apps: Centralized notification management for enterprise apps running on different platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions about Azure Notification Hubs
What differentiates Notification Hubs from direct APNs/FCM integration?
Notification Hubs abstracts the various Platform Notification Services, provides automatic retry on failures, telemetry, tag-based routing, and templates for multi-language messages. Additionally, management of device tokens and platform-specific certificates is eliminated.
How does tag-based routing work?
Devices can be tagged during registration (e.g., “sport”, “location:munich”, “premium-user”). When sending messages, these tags can be used as filters to reach only relevant devices. Complex tag expressions are supported.
Can I perform A/B testing with Notification Hubs?
Notification Hubs doesn’t offer native A/B testing. However, through tag-based routing, different user groups can be defined and different message variants can be sent. Success analysis must be done through custom analytics.
How is Notification Hubs billed?
Costs are based on number of pushes and chosen tier: Free (up to 500 devices, 1M pushes/month free), Basic (from €0.01 per 1,000 pushes), Standard (€0.25 per 1M pushes plus advanced features like Scheduled Pushes and Telemetry).
Are messages stored when devices are offline?
This depends on the Platform Notification Service: APNs stores only the last message, FCM stores up to 100 messages for up to 4 weeks. Notification Hubs itself doesn’t store messages.
Can I send rich notifications with images?
Yes, through platform-specific templates, rich notifications with images, videos, and action buttons can be sent. Implementation varies by platform (iOS Rich Notifications, Android Expanded Notifications).
How secure is the transmitted data?
All connections to Notification Hubs run over HTTPS/TLS. Device tokens are stored encrypted. The actual notification content is transmitted through the respective Platform Notification Services (APNs, FCM), which also use encrypted connections.
Alternatives
alternatives:
- provider: “aws” product: “sns”
- provider: “gcp” product: “firebase-cloud-messaging”
Integration with innFactory
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, innFactory supports you in integrating Azure Notification Hubs into mobile apps and backend systems. We help with architecture design, implementation, and optimization of notification strategies.
Contact us for a non-binding consultation on Azure Notification Hubs.
