After three years of using OneSignal across multiple high-traffic websites, I made the difficult decision to migrate our entire push notification infrastructure to LaraPush. This wasn't just some casual switch - it meant moving over 2 million subscribers and completely reimagining how we deliver notifications. Here's what happened, why I made this change, the challenges I ran into, and what I learned along the way.
The Promise and Reality of OneSignal
When I first started using OneSignal back in 2019, it felt like we'd hit the jackpot. The free plan was pretty generous, the docs were solid, and honestly, their JavaScript SDK made everything way easier than I expected. We got push notifications up and running on our WordPress sites and custom apps in just a few days.
However, as our subscriber base grew beyond 500,000 users, cracks began to appear. The first major issue was delivery reliability. We noticed that time-sensitive notifications were experiencing delays of up to 30 minutes during peak hours. For a news website where immediacy is crucial, this was unacceptable. Our tracking showed that only 78% of notifications were being delivered within the first five minutes - far below the 95% delivery rate promised in OneSignal's documentation.
Security Concerns That Couldn't Be Ignored
The turning point came when we discovered that OneSignal's default configuration was storing our notification data in ways we hadn't anticipated. Every push notification, including those containing sensitive URLs and user segmentation data, was being cached on OneSignal's servers indefinitely. While this isn't necessarily a security breach, it raised red flags for our privacy-conscious organization.
To make things even worse, the GDPR compliance features we actually needed were stuck behind their Enterprise tier, which would've bumped our costs up by over 400%. We needed geographical segmentation and data retention controls, but honestly, the pricing made these features way too expensive for a medium-sized operation like ours.
The Real Cost of "Free" Services
OneSignal's pricing becomes a real headache when you start to grow. Sure, the free tier looks pretty generous at first, but once you hit those thresholds, costs shoot up fast. We had between 800,000 and 1.2 million monthly active users, which put us in this weird spot - too big for free but nowhere near ready to pay enterprise prices.
The hidden costs weren't just about money. Every time we needed to add a custom segmentation feature or tweak the notification template, we'd end up writing these crazy complex workarounds. What started as a simple integration had turned into this maintenance nightmare that kept eating up our developer time.
Enter LaraPush: A Different Approach
LaraPush caught my attention because of its straightforward pricing and the fact that you can self-host it. OneSignal only works in the cloud, but LaraPush actually lets you keep control of your own notification setup. That was really appealing to us since we're getting more concerned about privacy these days.
Getting started was definitely more work than OneSignal - we had to set up our own servers and handle SSL certificates ourselves. But honestly, that extra effort was worth it for what we got back in control and flexibility. Now we can: - Keep complete control over our notification data - Set up custom delivery rules without running into API limits - Scale things up or down based on what we actually need - Keep all our sensitive user data locked down in our own secure setup
The Migration Process: Challenges and Solutions
Moving millions of subscribers between push notification services? Yeah, that's not something you want to mess up. We knew this migration would need serious planning and flawless execution. So we came up with a phased approach. First step was testing everything on our smallest site with about 50,000 subscribers. Better to work out any kinks there than risk breaking something for millions of users, right?
The biggest headache we faced was keeping everyone's subscriptions intact during the switch. We built custom middleware that let us send notifications through both systems at the same time - basically doubling up to make sure nothing got dropped. This dual setup ran for two weeks, which gave us enough time to confirm LaraPush was actually working the way we hoped it would.
Performance Improvements and Cost Savings
Once we finished the migration, we could see the improvements right away. Notification delivery times dropped to just 2.3 seconds on average, which was a huge improvement from OneSignal's 15-second average. Our delivery success rate jumped to 96.8%, and we can now handle those regional traffic spikes without any drop in service quality.
The cost savings were huge. Even though we had to set up extra server infrastructure for LaraPush - we're running three dedicated servers for redundancy - our monthly costs still dropped by 62% compared to what we would've paid for OneSignal's Enterprise tier.
Security and Privacy Enhancements
Since we're hosting LaraPush ourselves, we can actually add security features that just weren't possible with OneSignal. We've started using NordVPN's dedicated IP service to keep connections secure between our notification servers and CDNs. This extra protection has gotten more important lately - push notifications are becoming a bigger target for bad actors, and we needed that added security layer.
We're now in complete control of our data retention policies. We've set up automatic deletion of notification data that's older than 30 days, though some specific categories need to be kept longer. Your data is encrypted when it's stored using AES-256, and everything gets transmitted securely through our custom SSL certificates.
Final Thoughts: When to Make the Switch
While OneSignal's still a solid choice for smaller websites and anyone just getting started with push notifications, deciding whether to switch really depends on a few key things. You might want to consider making the change if you:
If your organization really cares about privacy and wants things set up exactly how you need them, having more control over your data makes the switch worth it. Sure, there's definitely more to learn upfront, but when you look at the long-term picture - better costs, performance, and security - it's actually a pretty compelling alternative to just relying on cloud solutions.
If you're thinking about making a similar move, start small and take your time planning it out. It's definitely not simple, but if you prepare well and test everything thoroughly, the transition can go pretty smoothly. The benefits are worth it too. For us, switching to LaraPush turned out to be one of the best infrastructure decisions we've ever made.