June 2025 Summaries

Twilio Notify, a multi-channel messaging API for delivering notifications through a single interface, will be officially deprecated by the end of 2025, prompting a need for users to migrate their notification infrastructure. Knock is presented as a viable alternative, offering more comprehensive features such as transactional and promotional messaging, native in-product messaging, and audience-based notifications. Unlike Twilio Notify, Knock supports a wide range of communication channels, including SMS, email, push, in-app, and chat platforms like Slack and MS Teams, with additional functionalities like workflow builders, user preference management, and visual template editors. The transition involves mapping Twilio concepts such as identities and bindings to Knock's user IDs and channel properties, with the added advantage of Knock's SDKs and components for easier token management. Knock's structured system allows for better targeting logic and enhanced notification orchestration, providing an opportunity to upgrade the notification stack with improved flexibility and control.

In-app messaging is an often-overlooked but increasingly popular method for engaging users of modern apps and SaaS products, offering benefits such as increased product engagement and reduced churn without the drawbacks of email or push notifications. However, building an effective in-app messaging system requires considerable engineering resources, as teams need to manage real-time delivery, message persistence, and complex UI components while ensuring scalability and integration with internal teams like marketing and product management. This guide evaluates the top in-app messaging tools that enable faster implementation without sacrificing flexibility or performance. It highlights the shortcomings of no-code platforms like Pendo, Braze, Userpilot, and Chameleon, which often lack customization options, real-time capabilities, multi-channel support, and developer control, making them less ideal for engineering teams aiming to build robust notification systems. Among the evaluated tools, Knock stands out for its developer-friendly infrastructure, offering comprehensive APIs, SDKs, and customizable components that allow for seamless integration and multi-channel orchestration, making it suitable for teams looking to build versatile and scalable in-app messaging solutions.

Google announced a significant update to Chrome on Android, incorporating on-device machine learning to identify and categorize potential spam in web push notifications, which may lead to users opting out more frequently. This change has sparked debate among developers, with some seeing it as a positive move to reduce unwanted notifications and others concerned about its impact on communication channels that require user permission. Despite web push notifications being an open channel, they are increasingly deprioritized, similar to past challenges faced with other platforms like Safari. Developers are advised to maintain good domain hygiene and carefully audit notification content to avoid spam flags. The update is currently limited to Chrome on Android, but it could expand, prompting developers to explore solutions like Knock, a platform that enhances notification quality to mitigate spam detection risks.