Cocoaheads Ireland and Northern Ireland

Question about push notifications and bandwidth/cost....

I've been wondering, is bandwidth/cost going to be an issue with push notifications?

My understanding is that the "push" is handled on Apple's servers: the developer's server sends each new message to Apple's server, which then relays it to each device.....

Am I right?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Vinny Coyne on August 4, 2009 at 2:47pm

Hi John,

That is correct. You need to write up a web service which connects to Apple's Push server and transmit the notification payload for each device you're notifying.

The max size of a single payload is 256 bytes, which is pretty low. But, if you're pushing to lots of devices (or pushing multiple notifications per minute), then that adds up.

I think for most applications, bandwidth really isn't an issue as the service has been designed to scale. It all depends on your userbase.

Vinny.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Callaghan on August 4, 2009 at 2:57pm

I thought that the developer's server sends the transmission once, then Apple sends it multiple times to each device, is that right?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Vinny Coyne on August 4, 2009 at 5:03pm

John Callaghan said:

I thought that the developer's server sends the transmission once, then Apple sends it multiple times to each device, is that right?

No, you have to specify the device token in each payload, so there's a payload for each device.

You only need to connect once, send all the payloads, then disconnect. That's where the single connection happens.

Vinny.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mike Butler on August 5, 2009 at 9:37am

Hi John,

I've been wondering about this myself. So I took a look at what some of the services are charging to get some sort of idea.

http://urbanairship.com/

Urban airship were interviewed on the Mobile Orchard podcast a few weeks ago, so take a look in the podcasting section of iTunes to have a listen to them and find out what they offer.

They charge $29/month for 50,000 pushes. Above 50K they charge 0.1 of a cent per message. They do have an unlimited push plan for the big pushers out there. These guys are ones that Tapulous turned to when they decided to add push.

iLime http://www.ilime.com are a bit cheaper

They give 25,000 free messages/month ( mpm ) and then charge .05 of a cent per message ( half the price of urban airship. )

When you see those numbers it looks pretty cheap. 25k pushes for free etc. But at .1 of cent if you charge, say, 99 cent for a pushes add-on you could only send ~700 pushes before you start to loose money with one of these services.

Mike.