https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems
https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems
Last synced: about 1 month ago
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- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems
- Owner: trycourier
- Created: 2021-07-14T22:19:06.000Z (about 5 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2021-07-20T19:28:16.000Z (about 5 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-10-21T22:32:51.991Z (9 months ago)
- Size: 6.1 MB
- Stars: 4
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 1
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# The Startup Guide To Notification Systems
**This guide is designed to be a comunity resource to assist startup engineers in building out their notification system.**
## Table Of Contents
### [Introduction](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems#introduction)
- [What Makes A Great Notification System?](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems#what-makes-a-great-notification-system)
- [Notification Systems Are *Really* Hard](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems#notification-systems-are-really-hard)
### [End User Experience Requirements](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md)
- [Right User](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md#right-user)
- [Right Message](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md)
- [Right Frequency](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md#right-frequency)
- [Right Channel](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md#right-channel)
- [Right Time](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/end-user-experience.md#right-time)
### [Internal User Experience Requirements](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md)
- [API First](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#api-first)
- [Great Documentation](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#great-documentation)
- [Data/Analytics](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#great-documentation)
- [Robust Logs](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#robust-logs)
- [Editing & Designing Notifications](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#editing--designing-notifications)
- [Provider Abstraction](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#provider-abstraction)
- [Centralization](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#centralization)
### [Technical Requirements](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/technical-requirements.md)
- [Reliability](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md#centralization)
- [Deliverability](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/technical-requirements.md#deliverability)
- [Scalability](https://github.com/trycourier/startup-guide-to-notification-systems/blob/main/internal-user-experience.md)
## Introduction
Startup engineering is all about weighing the return on investment that various efforts will yield in order to decide where to spend your precious development time. Depending on the maturity of your startup, and complexity of your notification use cases, some parts of this guide may be more useful to you than others. This guide aims to give you the information you need to make the best actitectural choices based on your particular maturity and requirements.
### What Makes A Great Notification System?
There are three core components to a great notification system. The first is that it provides a fantastic user experience to the end user. This essentially boils down to delivering the right message, to the right user, with the right frequency, via the right channel, at the right time. A notification system that accomplishes this will delight your users and make your product more successful.
The second part to a great notification system is that it is easy to use and empowering to your internal team. For technical users that means having great developer tooling and documentation. For non-technical users that means having an intuitive design and editing interface and good visibility as well as useful data and analytics.
The third part to a great notification system is ensuring that it is well crafted from a technical perspective. That means building a system that is both reliable, scaleable, and is built with deliverability top of mind
### Notification Systems Are Really Hard
The explosion in communication APIs has made the engineering work required to send a single notification fairly trivial. Need to send an email? Make a call to Mailgun. Need to send an SMS? Make a call to Twilio. Need to send a push notification? Make a call to OneSignal. This explosion in communication APIs also means that users are more inundated with notifications than ever, and that your notification user experience can be a real differentiator or detractor for your product.
So what does a great notification system look like? Luckily many startups that were founded in the cloud era, but are now large public companies with plenty of resources to perfect their notifications have shared their system architecture publicly. LinkedIn, AirBnB, Slack, and others have shared their approach to building out their product notifications, and they all come down to the same common goal: deliver the right message, through the right channel, to the right users, at the right time. Building a system that accomplishes this goal requires careful consideration around your end user experience requirements, internal user experience requirements, and your technical requirements.
