Show HN: We built a way for web apps to message users' phones without SMS
thenotifier.app
thenotifier.app
The messages are also limited to text and links, so no MMS.
Customers stopped trusting email because it became overloaded with spam. The incentive from loyalty programs (which is my primary use case) keeps trust high for SMS.
We built this to solve problems we've dealt with personally: - getting a ton of spam and scam text messages - text messages from coaches that got lost in a group chat - difficulty in unsubscribing from some community texts - etc
We got frustrated that anyone can send anything to us as long as they have our email or phone number and wanted a platform that made broadcasting a message more effective by letting users control who can reach them.
Who is your ideal customer? This seems worse for marketers because it's yet another channel to integrate, and the messaging cannot be personalized. The market moved toward personalized marketing years ago, so a channel that lacks personalization seems destined to underperform.
Asking my shoppers/users to download someone else's app seems like a non-starter.
This all seems great for end-users, but terrible for the marketers/organizations that would actually be paying you.
I can see this working for conferences, but most of those have their own apps.
Marketers already use different channels for different purposes - email, text, social - so we know introducing a new type of channel will definitely be a heavy lift.
However, we believe personalization at the expense of privacy has been out of hand and want to see control put back in the hands of users. My co-founder and I pioneered and have patents on tracking and personalization and feel we helped give birth to these problems. The Notifier is an idea we had to push the pendulum back towards user control. We'll give it a shot and see if the market feels the same way.
One could achieve the same with a Telegram bot, right? And unlike your app, which must be installed separately, there are already 1 billion users who already have the app installed.
For example, one of our use cases is youth sports where we've personally experienced problems with messages getting lost in group chats; parents not wanting their phone number/email or name on communication threads; coaches managing phone number lists for parents and athletes, etc. They view telegram and signal as something you use when you have something to hide - so they stick with options they don't like, text or whatsapp, because they don't have an alternative.
We built The Notifier as a better option.
Our developer API lets your web app broadcast important alerts to users through The Notifier app. Users join your alert group and your app broadcasts alerts that arrive as push notifications on their phones.
The API is available to all accounts, including our free Developer accounts. Give it a try and experience how The Notifier is more effective, while maintaining the privacy you expect for yourself.