OneSignal
Push-first lifecycle messaging with a free tier that never expires
OneSignal is a customer engagement platform built outward from mobile and web push notifications, adding email, SMS and RCS, in-app messages, and iOS Live Activities under one Journeys automation builder; it is metered per channel (monthly active users for mobile push, subscribers for web push, sends for email) rather than by contact database size, and it is one of the very few platforms in this category with a permanently free plan that includes unlimited mobile push.
Overview
OneSignal is the odd one out in lifecycle messaging because it grew from the wrong end. Most platforms in this category started as email tools and bolted push on later, which is why their push support is usually a thin wrapper around Firebase. OneSignal started as push infrastructure, spread through mobile developer communities on the strength of free unlimited notifications and genuinely good SDKs, and only later added email, SMS, in-app messaging, and a Journeys builder on top. The result is a platform where the push channel is the deepest part of the product rather than the afterthought.
That history shows in the shape of the customer base. OneSignal reports powering roughly 12 billion messages a day across more than 200,000 apps, and the typical account is a consumer mobile app, a media property, a marketplace, or a web publisher rather than a B2B SaaS company. Those buyers care about delivery volume and per-platform behavior (notification channels on Android, provisional authorization on iOS, Live Activities for real-time updates) far more than they care about a CRM sync, and OneSignal is built for exactly that priority order.
Commercially it is the most approachable platform in this category. The free plan is not a trial: unlimited mobile push sends, up to 10,000 web push subscribers per send, 10,000 email sends a month, and one active in-app message, indefinitely. Growth starts at $19 a month plus usage, priced at $0.012 per mobile monthly active user, $0.004 per web push subscriber, and $1.50 per thousand emails after the first 20,000. SMS and RCS are gated behind the annual Professional plan, which is quoted rather than published, and that is the one real self-serve ceiling in the product.
The company raised a $50M Series C in September 2022 led by BAM Elevate, taking total funding past $80M, and employs roughly 175 people. It is a real, well-funded, independent business, not a side project, and the free tier is a customer acquisition strategy rather than a runway problem waiting to happen.
Best for
Consumer mobile apps, marketplaces, media sites, and web publishers whose primary channel is push notifications, especially teams that want serious push infrastructure and a workable email and in-app layer for free or for tens of dollars a month rather than hundreds.
Not the right fit for
- B2B SaaS teams whose lifecycle logic is account-shaped; OneSignal has no native concept of a company with many users, so anything Userlist does natively you would be faking with tags.
- Email-led businesses; email here is a competent secondary channel with a sends meter, not a deliverability practice, and a newsletter or ecommerce brand will find the template and list tooling thin next to Drip or Klaviyo-class tools.
- Teams that need SMS on a self-serve plan; SMS and RCS require the annual Professional contract, which means a sales conversation and an annual commitment for a channel that costs $19 a month elsewhere.
- Anyone who wants deep behavioral segmentation over a product event stream; tags and sessions cover a lot, but this is not an event-driven engine in the Customer.io or Vero sense and complex sequence logic gets awkward fast.
- Buyers who need published enterprise pricing; everything above Growth is annual and quoted, so the cost curve past a few hundred thousand active users is opaque until you talk to someone.
How it works
- 1
You install a OneSignal SDK in your app or a script tag on your site. SDKs cover Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, Expo, and Unity, plus web push, and the setup path is deliberately short because push permission prompts and certificate handling are the parts developers most often get wrong. Once installed, every device that grants permission becomes a subscription record attached to an external user ID you supply.
- 2
You send data in alongside those subscriptions: tags (key-value attributes on a user), events, and, through the data connectors, records from Segment, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Snowflake, BigQuery, or HubSpot. Tags are the lightweight path and are the reason a small team can get useful segmentation working in an afternoon without building an event pipeline first.
- 3
Segments are built from tags, subscription state, session behavior, device attributes, and location. Because segmentation runs off device and tag state rather than a full behavioral event store, it is faster to set up than a Customer.io style implementation and correspondingly shallower when your targeting logic depends on sequences of product events.
- 4
Journeys is the automation layer: an entry trigger, then message steps across push, email, SMS, in-app, and Live Activities with waits, branches, and exit conditions. Messages are composed in per-channel editors, delivery timing can be optimized per user, and OneSignal AI layers on drafting, testing, and reporting assistance. The 2026 positioning pushes an autonomous mode where you set brand guardrails and let the system draft, send, test, and optimize the lifecycle campaigns itself.
Feature breakdown
20 features in 4 modulesPush notifications
The original product and still the deepest part of the platform.- Unlimited mobile push on the free plan
- Mobile push sends are unmetered even at $0, which is why hundreds of thousands of apps run OneSignal without ever paying. Paid plans meter mobile push at $0.012 per monthly active user rather than per send.
- Web push across browsers
- Browser push for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari from a script tag, with the free plan capped at 10,000 subscribers per send and paid usage billed at $0.004 per web push subscriber.
- Native SDKs for six platforms
- Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, Expo, and Unity, all first-party. The SDKs handle permission prompting, token refresh, and certificate plumbing that teams routinely get wrong when integrating APNs and FCM directly.
- iOS Live Activities
- Support for the Dynamic Island and lock screen live updates used by delivery, sports, and transport apps, which very few platforms in this category offer at all.
- Rich media and action buttons
- Images, action buttons, and per-platform payload control so a notification can be acted on without opening the app.
- Delivery timing optimization
- Send at a per-user optimal time or in the recipient's local timezone rather than firing a whole segment at once.
Other channels
Email, in-app, and SMS added around the push core, with uneven depth.- Email with a sends meter
- 10,000 sends a month free, 20,000 included on Growth, then $1.50 per thousand. Sending is included rather than bring-your-own-ESP, and you can authenticate your own domain.
- In-app messaging
- Modals, banners, and full-screen messages triggered inside the app. The free plan allows one active message; mobile push customers on Growth get unlimited in-app messages included.
- SMS and RCS
- Available on the annual Professional plan only. RCS support is unusual for this category, but the gating means self-serve buyers cannot get SMS at all without upgrading to a quoted contract.
- One audience across channels
- A user's push subscriptions, email address, and phone number resolve to a single external user ID, so a Journey can fall back from push to email without you maintaining two audiences.
Journeys and targeting
The automation layer that turned a push API into a lifecycle platform.- Visual journey builder
- Entry triggers followed by message steps, waits, branches, and exit conditions across every channel, so onboarding, reactivation, and retention flows live in one canvas.
- Tag-based segmentation
- Key-value tags on each user combine with subscription state, session data, device attributes, and location to define segments. Cheap to implement and the fastest path to useful targeting for a small team.
- Event and API triggers
- Journeys can start from tracked events or direct API calls, so backend state changes can drive messaging without a marketer touching anything.
- A/B testing
- Split tests on message content and timing, with results feeding the AI optimization layer on paid plans.
- Frequency capping and quiet hours
- Guardrails that stop a push-heavy app from burning permission grants, which matters more here than in email-first tools because a revoked push permission is usually permanent.
Data and integrations
How customer data gets in and how results get out.- CDP and warehouse connectors
- Segment, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Snowflake, BigQuery, and HubSpot connect as data sources so audiences can be built from data that already exists rather than re-instrumented.
- REST API and server SDKs
- A documented REST API covers subscriptions, segments, and sends, which is how most engineering teams actually drive OneSignal.
- Webhooks and event streaming
- Delivery, open, and click events can be streamed out to your own systems for attribution and analytics.
- Confirmed delivery reporting
- Device-level confirmation of receipt rather than just accepted-by-the-provider, which is the metric that actually tells you whether a push landed.
- OneSignal AI
- Drafting, automated testing, and natural-language reporting over campaign data, plus a 2026 autonomous mode where the system runs lifecycle campaigns inside brand guardrails you define.
Use cases
4 documentedConsumer app with 40,000 monthly active users
The team needs onboarding nudges, re-engagement pushes, and an occasional email, and a $100 a month platform floor is not defensible on a pre-revenue app.
The free plan covers unlimited mobile push and 10,000 emails a month indefinitely, and moving to Growth for unlimited in-app messages costs $19 plus about $480 in MAU charges at $0.012 per active user.
News or media site running web push
Breaking news alerts need to reach hundreds of thousands of browser subscribers within a minute of publication.
Web push is metered per subscriber at $0.004, a script tag is the only integration, and confirmed delivery reporting shows what actually landed rather than what was accepted.
Delivery or live-events app
Users want a status that updates continuously on the lock screen, not a stream of separate notifications.
Live Activities support means order and match status updates in the Dynamic Island are handled by the same platform as the rest of lifecycle messaging, which almost no competitor offers.
Growth team consolidating three tools
Push is in Firebase, in-app messages are hand-rolled, and email is in a separate tool, so nobody can build a cross-channel onboarding flow.
Journeys puts push, in-app, and email steps on one canvas against a single user identity, and the data connectors pull audiences from the Segment or Amplitude instance the team already runs.
Pricing
from $0 (Free), then $19 per month plus usage (Growth)Per-channel usage metering rather than a single contact-count meter: mobile push billed per monthly active user, web push per subscriber, email per thousand sends, with a small platform fee on Growth and quoted annual contracts above it.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month |
A genuinely complete product for a small app, not a crippled trial. Most OneSignal accounts never leave it. |
| Growth | $19 per month plus usage |
The only self-serve paid tier. Model your MAU count carefully, because that is where the bill actually comes from. |
| Professional | Custom annual contract |
The gate that matters: SMS is unavailable at any self-serve price point. |
| Enterprise | Custom annual contract |
|
Add-ons
- Email sends beyond the included allowance ($1.50 per 1,000 sends): 20,000 included on Growth, 10,000 free per month on the free plan.
- SMS and RCS (Quoted): Professional plan and above only, on an annual contract.
Billing notes
- The meter is per channel, not per contact, which is the single most important structural difference from Customer.io, Ortto, or Drip. A large dormant database costs nothing here until you actually message it.
- Mobile push billing keys on monthly active users, so a seasonal app pays for the months people open it rather than for the size of its install base.
- At 5,000 mobile monthly active users, Growth is roughly $19 plus $60 in MAU charges, about $79 a month with email inside the included allowance.
- At 50,000 mobile monthly active users, the same plan is roughly $19 plus $600, about $619 a month before email overage, which lands close to Ortto's Starter band and well under Braze-class contracts.
- SMS and RCS require the annual Professional contract, so a team that needs SMS should budget for a sales-negotiated annual deal rather than a monthly card charge.
- Free plan limits are functional caps rather than time limits; there is no expiry and no forced upgrade, which is rare in this category.
Value assessment: Judged per dollar, OneSignal is the cheapest serious multi-channel platform a small company can buy, and by some distance. Unlimited mobile push at $0 is not a loss leader trick, it is the product, and Growth at $19 plus a per-MAU rate keeps a 5,000-user app under $100 a month with email, in-app, and Journeys included. What you are not buying is a data platform: segmentation is tag and session based rather than a real behavioral event store, there is no account model, and email is a channel rather than a deliverability practice. The value is exceptional if push is your primary channel and merely fine if it is your third.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- The best push implementation in this category by a wide margin, covering mobile, web, rich media, per-platform payload control, confirmed delivery reporting, and iOS Live Activities.
- A permanently free plan with unlimited mobile push, which removes the budget conversation entirely for early-stage consumer apps.
- Per-channel usage metering means a big dormant contact database costs nothing, the opposite of profile-based platforms where dead contacts are billable.
- First-party SDKs for Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, Expo, and Unity that handle the permission and certificate plumbing teams usually get wrong.
- Data connectors to Segment, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Snowflake, BigQuery, and HubSpot mean you can build audiences from data you already collect instead of re-instrumenting.
- Well funded and substantial: a $50M Series C in 2022, more than $80M raised in total, roughly 175 employees, and around 12 billion messages a day.
Limitations
- SMS and RCS are locked behind an annual quoted Professional contract, so the cheapest self-serve path to SMS is a different vendor entirely.
- Segmentation is tag, session, and device based rather than a full behavioral event store, so sequence-dependent targeting is harder here than in Customer.io or Vero.
- No native account or company object, which makes B2B SaaS lifecycle logic awkward and rules the platform out for anyone whose messaging is organization-shaped.
- Email is a competent secondary channel, not a strong one; template tooling and list management are thinner than in email-first products.
- Pricing above Growth is entirely quoted and annual, so the cost curve for a scaling app is opaque until you engage sales.
- MAU-based push billing punishes apps with high install counts and shallow engagement in a different way to contact-based billing, and it is worth modelling before assuming it is cheaper.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesOneSignal vs Knock
from $0 (Developer), then $250 per month (Starter)Both send notifications, but they answer to different buyers. Knock is notification infrastructure for a product engineering team, with workflows as code, bring-your-own providers, preference centers, and multi-tenancy, starting at $250 a month above a generous free tier. OneSignal is a marketing-operable engagement platform where push is the deepest channel and sending is included. Pick Knock when the notifications are part of your product; pick OneSignal when they are part of your growth loop.
Full OneSignal vs Knock comparisonOneSignal vs Courier
from $0 (Developer, 10,000 sends per month), then $0.005 per sendCourier routes notifications through providers you already pay for at $0.005 a send and is designed to be embedded in an application, with an inbox component, a preference center, and template design for developers. OneSignal owns the delivery infrastructure itself and gives away unlimited mobile push. Choose Courier if you want an orchestration layer over your existing SendGrid and Twilio accounts; choose OneSignal if you want push done properly without assembling a stack.
Full OneSignal vs Courier comparisonOneSignal vs Novu
from $0 (Free or self-hosted), then $30 per month (Pro)Novu is open source, metered by workflow runs from $30 a month, and can be self-hosted, which makes it the choice when data control or embedding into your own SaaS is the deciding factor. OneSignal is closed, hosted, and free for unlimited push. Novu wins for engineering teams who want to own the stack; OneSignal wins for growth teams who want the best push channel at the lowest price.
Full OneSignal vs Novu comparisonOneSignal vs Vero
from $54 per month, or $49 per month billed annuallyVero is an event-driven engagement platform for product teams, with warehouse and SQL-based audiences, priced at $54 a month for 5,000 profiles and metered by profiles plus messages. OneSignal is push-led, metered by monthly active users, and free to start. Vero suits SaaS teams whose targeting depends on product event history; OneSignal suits consumer apps whose targeting depends on device state and tags.
Full OneSignal vs Vero comparisonOneSignal vs Customer.io
from $100/mo (Essentials)Customer.io is the deeper data platform: real-time behavioral segments, a first-party CDP, objects, compliance certifications, and five native channels from a $100 monthly floor that bills on profile count. OneSignal is cheaper, weaker on data, and much stronger on push. A product-led SaaS company with real event data should pick Customer.io; a consumer app with a large install base and a modest budget should pick OneSignal and keep the difference.
Full OneSignal vs Customer.io comparisonOneSignal vs Bento
from $29/mo (up to 5,000 active users, unlimited marketing sends)Bento is a lifecycle tool for SaaS founders who want email, in-app, and automation with unusually hands-on support and a free tier for small lists. OneSignal is built for apps rather than SaaS websites, with push as the centre of gravity and no account model. If your product is a mobile app, OneSignal is not a close call; if it is a B2B web app, Bento fits the shape of the problem better.
Full OneSignal vs Bento comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under an hour for web push (a script tag) and a few hours for a mobile app, most of which is spent on APNs certificates and Firebase configuration rather than on OneSignal itself. Journeys can be running the same day.
- Learning curve
- Low for push and in-app, moderate for Journeys. The tag model is easy to grasp but easy to abuse, and teams who tag indiscriminately end up with segmentation logic nobody can audit six months later. Agree a tag naming convention before you start.
- Onboarding
- Entirely self-serve on Free and Growth. Professional and Enterprise add guided onboarding and, at Enterprise, a dedicated customer success manager. Documentation and SDK guides carry most of the load and are good.
- Migration notes
- Push subscriptions cannot be migrated from another vendor because the tokens are tied to the SDK integration; you replace the SDK and re-collect subscriptions as users open the app, which means a tail of weeks before your addressable audience is whole again. Email lists import normally. Plan the SDK swap for a release you were shipping anyway.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web appAndroid SDKiOS SDKFlutterReact NativeExpoUnityWeb push scriptREST API
- API
- Documented REST API covering subscriptions, segments, templates, and sends, plus server SDKs and outbound webhooks for delivery and engagement events.
- Compliance
- SOC 2GDPRCCPA
- Data residency
- US-hosted by default; regional arrangements are handled through enterprise contracts rather than published as a self-serve option.
- SSO
- Single sign-on is an enterprise-tier capability rather than a self-serve feature.
- Security notes
- Encryption in transit and at rest, per-app API keys with scoped permissions, and confirmed-delivery telemetry at the device level. Data retention windows lengthen with plan tier, reaching two years of reporting history on Enterprise.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app supportDedicated customer success manager on Enterprise
- Documentation
- Extensive documentation at documentation.onesignal.com covering every SDK, the REST API, Journeys, segmentation, and per-platform push behavior.
- Community
- Large developer community across GitHub issues on the open-source SDKs, Stack Overflow, and mobile developer forums.
Company
- Founded
- 2014
- Headquarters
- San Mateo, California, United States
- Ownership
- Venture-backed
- Founders
- George Deglin, Long Vo
- Employees
- ~175 (est. 2026)
- Funding
- More than $80M raised in total, including a $50M Series C in September 2022 led by BAM Elevate.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | Undisclosed | 2017 | Backed by SignalFire, an early and continuing investor. |
| Series B | Undisclosed | 2020 | Growth round supporting the expansion beyond push into email and in-app messaging. |
| Series C | $50M | 2022 | Led by BAM Elevate with Nimble Partners, SignalFire, and Zach Coelius participating, taking total funding past $80M. |
Timeline
- 2014Founded by George Deglin and Long Vo after building push infrastructure for their own games studio and finding nothing acceptable to buy.
- 2017Spreads rapidly through mobile developer communities on the strength of free unlimited push notifications and first-party SDKs.
- 2020Adds email and in-app messaging, beginning the shift from push infrastructure to a multi-channel engagement platform.
- 2022Raises a $50M Series C led by BAM Elevate, taking total funding past $80M, and launches the Journeys automation builder.
- 2024Adds SMS and RCS on annual plans and ships support for iOS Live Activities, an area almost no competitor covers.
- 2026Repositions around autonomous lifecycle marketing, where OneSignal AI drafts, sends, tests, and optimizes campaigns inside brand guardrails set by the team.
Integrations
- Segment
- Mixpanel
- Amplitude
- Snowflake
- Google BigQuery
- HubSpot
- Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service
- Shopify
- WordPress
- Zapier
- REST API and outbound webhooks
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is OneSignal?
OneSignal is a customer engagement platform built around push notifications. It covers mobile and web push, email, SMS and RCS, in-app messaging, and iOS Live Activities under a single Journeys automation builder, and it is metered per channel rather than by the size of your contact database. It is used by more than 200,000 apps and sends roughly 12 billion messages a day.
Is the OneSignal free plan really free forever?
Yes. The free plan includes unlimited mobile push sends, web push up to 10,000 subscribers per send, 10,000 email sends a month, and one active in-app message, with no expiry date and no card required. It is a functional product rather than a trial, and a large share of OneSignal accounts never upgrade.
How does OneSignal pricing work at scale?
Growth costs $19 a month plus usage: $0.012 per mobile monthly active user, $0.004 per web push subscriber, and $1.50 per thousand emails after the 20,000 included. At 5,000 mobile monthly active users that is roughly $79 a month; at 50,000 it is roughly $619. Professional and Enterprise are annual contracts with quoted, volume-discounted rates.
Can I send SMS with OneSignal on a self-serve plan?
No. SMS and RCS require the Professional plan or above, which is an annual contract quoted by sales. This is the clearest ceiling in the self-serve product, and a small team that needs SMS from day one will find it cheaper elsewhere.
Is OneSignal event-driven or list-driven?
It sits in between. Audiences are built from tags (key-value attributes you set on a user), subscription state, session behavior, device attributes, and location, and Journeys can be triggered by tracked events or API calls. That is more dynamic than a list tool but shallower than a true behavioral event store like Customer.io or Vero, and complex sequence-based targeting gets awkward.
Do I bring my own sending domain and ESP?
Sending is included rather than bring-your-own. You authenticate your own domain for email so messages come from you, but the delivery infrastructure is OneSignal's, and email deliverability responsibility is shared: they run the infrastructure, you own list hygiene and content. For push there is no third-party ESP question at all, since OneSignal talks to APNs and FCM directly.
Does OneSignal work for B2B SaaS?
Poorly, relative to alternatives. There is no native account or company object, so any lifecycle logic that depends on organization membership has to be simulated with tags. B2B SaaS teams should look at Userlist, Customer.io, or Vero instead, and treat OneSignal as a push add-on if they need one at all.
How hard is it to migrate to OneSignal from another push provider?
Push subscriptions cannot be transferred, because device tokens are bound to the SDK integration. You replace the SDK, ship the release, and re-collect subscriptions as users open the app, which means several weeks before your addressable audience is back to full size. Email lists import normally. Time the SDK swap with a release you were already shipping.
Can a marketer operate OneSignal without engineering help?
After the SDK is installed and the tags are being set, yes. Building segments, composing messages, and running Journeys are all no-code. But the tag and event data a marketer targets on has to be sent by engineers first, so the quality of the marketing work is capped by what the developers instrumented.
Who owns OneSignal and is it financially stable?
OneSignal is an independent venture-backed company founded in 2014 by George Deglin and Long Vo, headquartered in San Mateo, California, with roughly 175 employees. It has raised more than $80M, including a $50M Series C in September 2022 led by BAM Elevate. The free tier is a deliberate acquisition strategy backed by real revenue, not a sign of fragility.
Editorial verdict
OneSignal is the correct first choice for any small company whose primary channel is push. Nothing else in this category gives away unlimited mobile push, and nothing else handles APNs, FCM, web push, and Live Activities with this much per-platform care. Growth at $19 plus $0.012 per monthly active user keeps a real consumer app under $100 a month with Journeys, in-app messaging, and email included, and the per-channel meter means a large dormant install base costs you nothing. The limits are equally clear: segmentation is tags and sessions rather than a behavioral event store, there is no account model for B2B, email is adequate rather than good, and SMS demands an annual quoted contract. Buy it for push, keep it for in-app and email, and pair it with something else if your lifecycle logic is really about product events or company records.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.