Amazon is continuing its push to attract mobile app developers to its Amazon Web Services cloud platform with a one-stop solution for mobile push notifications.
The company announced today that it will begin offering AWS users the opportunity to send push notifications to iOS, Android and Kindle devices all through one cross-platform API. Of course, if you’re looking to send push notifications for Windows Phone, you’re out of luck with Amazon, at least for the moment.
The notifications are sent through Amazon’s Simple Notification Service, which can also handle SMS and email notifications.
All AWS users will be able to send up to a million push notifications a month for free, with every million push notifications after that costing $1.
“Many customers tell us they build and maintain their own mobile push services, even though they find this approach expensive, complex and error-prone,” said Raju Gulabani, Amazon’s Vice President of Database Services for AWS said in a press release. “Amazon SNS with Mobile Push takes these concerns off the table with one simple cross-platform API, a flat low price and a free tier that means many customers won’t pay anything until their applications achieve scale.”
Scott Kveton, the CEO of Portland startup Urban Airship, welcomed Amazon into the market, saying in a blog post that he saw Amazon’s move as a sign that the market had “matured.” Kveton went on to say that he saw Urban Airship’s focus in the market shifting as a result of Amazon’s move.
“We’ve always known that push notifications at the transport layer will become commoditized, which explains all of our efforts over the last two years to add advanced features and shift our focus from a developer resource to a platform for Mobile Relationship Management,” he said.
This new system puts Amazon a step ahead of its competition in Microsoft and Google. Windows Azure, Microsoft’s competing cloud service system, can be used to send push notifications, but has to be configured differently for each platform a developer supports. Google offers a service it calls Cloud Messaging for Android push notifications, but doesn’t have a pre-built solution for iOS apps.
Previously on GeekWire: Amazon Web Services adds SDK support for Windows Phone, Windows Store apps
