ntfy

Founders note: The first time I started playing with this, I actually took too long to get it done because I assumed more complexity than was needed.

Assumed complexity

The first time I started playing with this, I actually took too long to get it done because I assumed more complexity than was needed. It is literally the simplest solution possible and it’s 100% vibe code ready. But what I noticed is that within seconds I could create an account and set up notifications so that I could get operational messages off of my newsletter, off of my client applications, things that in the past would have taken an API key, I could do in seconds.

What developers assume

Most people, most developers I know, think in terms of secure messaging, of API keys, of full integrations, of service layers, of just moving a lot of features back and forth. But I was completely sure that this was going to take longer than it should be. But there’s no even API key needed.

And also the assumption that push notifications are something that are worth putting energy in, you don’t get that. So we end up signing up with services like SaaS, like Better Stack, Sentry to monitor our stack. And then notifications can often, if we’re past anything in Slack, can often come with a package upgrade. But if you build it on your own, you have to wrangle with Google’s or Apple’s push notification structure and you just end up doing a lot of engineering that isn’t needed.

Less is more — when not to over-secure

The decision that I would recommend people think about is sometimes less is more, less is simple. And sometimes we apply security standards in places that’s not needed. If we’re not pushing any PII or PHI over a push notification, we don’t really need to worry about whether someone’s going to see it. So if a new feature branch builds and it gets deployed, do you really need to protect that? If you don’t, then simple is fast and fast is clean. And clean is super easy to support. Also, they give you 2500 messages a day. So most startups or applications can get really nice analytics that come in for free.

Channel string + mobile app + light signals

So one of the ways to think about this is they can be used both in the front end since you just need to have a channel string. So you can set whatever channel string you want and then you can use that channel sync. You can install a mobile app so that you can access those channel strings. There is no security control over who can or can’t get in, although the advanced features might give you some of that. But I use it now because I just want light signals off of my stack to know when things are happening. So when a sale comes through, when someone upgrades, when someone gives me data, etc.

Why it’s Surge-simple

I would score this a five and five on everything. There’s really no vendor lock-in issue at all. It’s 100% vibe codable since your MCP or your AI could just look at the docs and drop it in. You really only need to set up whatever the subscription channel name you want is, store it somewhere, and then you got to spend some time to download the mobile app. So it is like literally right down the middle. It’s a super simple way. I’ve shown it to four other tech stack teams and they almost immediately switched over to use it.

I’d actually call this as simple and as valuable as Surge, which is just super simple for browser design, for hosting something fast.

The decade of push regret

My only regret is that I’ve spent so much time over the last ten years fighting browser and push notification configurations. Apple has literally made me lose months of my life trying to make sure I could get things wired up properly so that push notifications to a mobile device or through Firebase would work properly. This just takes all the pain out of it. I regret I didn’t find this like five years ago. It’s one of these micro solutions that’s so simple that it actually takes a genius to invent something that requires so little configuration.

Co-founder pitch

If I was telling a non-technical co-founder about this, I would be like, that feature you want, that feature that’s going to let you know how many sales came in this week or who did X or Y, that normally gets ignored on our roadmap because we have way bigger fish to fry, it’s done. You want to change it? It’s done. It takes two seconds. Hell, I could tell the CTO or the CEO or anybody else, go in and do it yourself. It’s literally a no-brainer. It’s a no-security issue.

Investors wouldn’t care. Investors would not care at all. Not even worth bringing up.

Next step

Setup an account, install the mobile app and connect the dots. Or simply tell your AI coder to setup an alert. I use it for build messages on GitHub, new subscribers, upgrades. Basically anything I would like top line attention to.

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See it in the stack: Fractional.tools and the tech stack map — light ops signals next to the rest of the go-to stack (runner-up energy, same lane as Surge).

Related playbook entries

• Surge — same micro-solution energy: brutal simplicity, almost no config.
• Better Stack — when you actually need the observability package, not a light signal.
• Sentry — error monitoring depth when stack traces are the product, not a top-line ping.