Product notifications API: what it handles and how to build

A product notifications API centralizes the process of turning application events into user messages by determining recipients, channels, timing, templates, preferences, and delivery status across email, SMS, push, in-app inboxes, collaboration tools, and webhooks. The post argues that such systems address recurring challenges including unified user identities, cross-channel preference enforcement, quiet hours, throttling, batching, digests, durable delayed workflows, notification-center read states, tenant-specific settings, editable templates, and consolidated delivery logs. It contrasts this approach with using separate delivery and marketing platforms, whose preference data and message histories may remain disconnected, and advises that building internally is most suitable only for simple, single-channel cases because long-term maintenance includes provider changes, token management, workflow reliability, and data reconciliation. Courier is presented as an example platform that accepts events through an API or webhook, supports immediate sends and multi-step journeys, provides embeddable inbox and preference components, and offers tools for AI coding agents through skills, an MCP server, documentation, and a CLI; its stated pricing includes a free tier of 10,000 monthly sends and pay-as-you-go pricing thereafter.

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