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App Center Push vs Notification Hub


So it seems that in the spirit of having documentation all over the place, docs.microsoft has once again taken the cake.

Looking into sending push notifications, I came across these two pages:

  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/appcenter/sdk/push/uwp

  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-windows-store-dotnet-get-started-push

Notice how there's no reference from either page to the other.

So I tried searching Google, doing similar searches to the title of this question, only to find little more than the above two pages.

Which brings me here, with the following question: What is the relationship (and/or difference) between App Center Push and Azure Notification Hub?


Solution

  • They don't have a reference from either to the other because they are two completely unrelated solutions (except for the fact they solve the same problem).

    Both allow you to setup a cross-platform push notification infrastructure for your mobile app, but App Center is free, specifically built for iOS, Android and Windows notifications and requires less setup, but gives you a bit less control over how the notifications look. However it makes it easier to segment notifications based on analytics data. Notifications Hub is a Azure service, so you need a Azure subscription and you need to build a backend to make it work. It takes a more work but you have more complete control over the notifications.

    The awesome James Montemagno made a nice summary article comparing the two options.