Top 6 OneSignal Alternatives in 2025

If you're seeking to establish personalized and timely communication with your users, leveraging the right customer engagement platform (CEP) is crucial. OneSignal, a prominent player in the martech industry, offers a comprehensive solution with a diverse set of capabilities to optimize the customer journey.

However, as the competition in this domain intensifies, several alternative choices to OneSignal have emerged, presenting businesses with an array of options to consider for their engagement needs.

Here's a short guide to help you decide between OneSignal alternatives right away:

• Choose Plotline if in-app engagement is crucial for you in addition to the regular push, email, and SMS capabilities. If you’re looking to deploy Stories, Videos, etc in your app without developer effort, Plotline is the best choice.
• Iterable is a recommended choice for mid-market or enterprise mobile-first companies.
• Choose Airship if you want both CEP and MAX features in a single platform.
• Klaviyo is suitable for e-commerce startups and SMBs.
• Braze is also a recommended choice for mid-market or enterprise mobile-first companies.
• Customer.io offers a self-serve approach that is ideal for SMBs and startups, making it easier to get started.

Introducing OneSignal: A brief overview

OneSignal is a comprehensive customer engagement platform that enables businesses to deliver personalized and timely communications to their users across various channels. Its key features include:

• Multi-Channel communication: OneSignal supports mobile push, web push, in-app messaging, email, and SMS, ensuring comprehensive reach across various platforms. But it predominantly focuses on push notifications.
• Robust analytics suite: Gain valuable insights into user behavior, campaign performance, and conversion metrics to measure success and refine engagement strategies.
• Conversion tracking: Track user actions and conversions, enabling businesses to understand user engagement and campaign effectiveness.
• Unlimited API access: OneSignal's API empowers users to send highly personalized messages at a large scale, facilitating impactful user engagement strategies.
• Accessible freemium model: The freemium model makes OneSignal highly accessible, providing businesses with an entry point to start engaging their users without cost barriers.
• In-app message builder: OneSignal offers an intuitive in-app message builder and limited pre-built templates (modals, in-app carousels, and in-app surveys) for engaging user interactions.

Reasons some companies are looking to make a switch

• Push notifications, emails, or SMS don’t improve in-app adoption, activation rates, etc
• Brands want more options to communicate with users inside the app
• Stitching in-app and outside-app comms proves to be very difficult
• Popups appear at the wrong time (delays of 5-10s after event-fire)
• In-app communication lacks context - not specific to any feature

Listed below are the top OneSignal alternatives.

Plotline

Choose if: You are a mobile-first consumer tech company. By far, Plotline provides the best omni-channel capabilities especially if in-app is a crucial focus for you.

1. Multi-channel messaging: Aids in omnichannel engagement (In-app, push, SMS, email, Whatsapp). Helps stitch outside and inside-app comms together for a unified customer journey.‍
2. Strength/uniqueness: Best in-app engagement modules - stories, scratch cards, quizzes, videos, spotlights, tooltips, etc to drive feature adoption, retention, and LTV for your app.‍
3. Main geography of operations: US, South East Asia, MENA‍
4. Pricing: The Starter plan starts at $499. You can book a call for a free trial.

Iterable

Choose if: You are a mobile-first mid-market or enterprise business looking for a comprehensive Customer Engagement Platform.

1. Multi-channel messaging: Iterable functions as a comprehensive cross-channel marketing platform that allows you to send personalized messages across push, emails, SMS, and in-app messages.
2. Strength/unique feature: A distinctive feature of Iterable is its recently introduced "embedded message" functionality, which seamlessly integrates native message placements that dynamically adjust based on individual user data, all without the need for coding.
3. Main geography of operations: Iterable has most of its customers in the US.
4. Pricing: Iterable doesn’t have a free plan unlike OneSignal which has for unlimited mobile subscribers and up to 10k web subscribers. In general, Iterable will be much more expensive than OneSignal.

Airship

Choose if: You want both CEP and MAX features in a single platform

1. Multi-channel messaging: It excels in personalized messaging, allowing users to create and deliver real-time, personalized messages through various digital channels like push, email, SMS, and in-app messages.
2. Strength/unique feature: Airship's AXP (App Experience Platform) offers comprehensive app experience solutions and analytics. Its Mobile Wallet feature allows the creation of passes for Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, providing added convenience and engagement for users
3. Main geography of operations: Airship has most of its customers from US, UK, and France.
4. Pricing: Airship provides a free trial. The cost starts at $25,000/year owing to both its CEP and MAX. In general, Airship will be much more expensive than OneSignal.

Klaviyo

Choose if: You are an e-commerce startup or SMB.

1. Multi-channel messaging: Klaviyo functions as comprehensive cross-channel marketing across push, emails, and SMS. Also provides seamless integration with Facebook and Instagram
2. Strength/unique feature: Klaviyo allows you to send any number of messages without any volume limitations. This means you have the freedom to send SMS campaigns of any size, whether it's a small targeted campaign or a large-scale promotional blast.
3. Main geography of operations: Klaviyo has a presence in most countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and more.
4. Pricing: Klaviyo’s prices get progressively larger as you add new profiles to your contact list. If you have less than 250 contacts, you can’t upgrade to non-free tiers. And if you have more than 250 contacts at once time, you’ll be forced to upgrade to a paid plan.

Braze

Choose if: You are a mobile-first mid-market or enterprise business looking for a comprehensive Customer Engagement Platform.

1. Multi-channel messaging: Allows for engagement across push, mobile, SMS, and in-app messages.
2. Strength/unique feature: Its shape-based filters (rectangle, pentagon, custom-shaped) for location-based targeting. It also provides a Canvas Flow feature for building multi-channel automated campaigns, albeit exclusive to annual plan users.
3. Main geography of operations: Braze has most of its customers in the US.
4. Pricing: Braze's pricing is tied to data consumption, which can be advantageous for businesses that have predictable data usage patterns. In general, Braze will be much more expensive than Customer.io owing to its enterprise capabilities.

Customer.io

Choose if: You are a tech-savvy marketer or a developer in startups and SMBs (more than 80% of its customer base).

1. Multi-channel messaging: You can seamlessly integrate email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, and webhooks within a single workflow.
2. Strength/unique feature: Customer.io offers a flexible data model that allows easy ingestion and updates of data without concerns about losing valuable information during integration. Its inclusive pricing model, which includes unlimited events and attribute data, SMS, and deliverability monitoring, sets it apart.
3. Main geography of operations: Most of its customers are from US and UK.
4. Pricing: Customer.io will typically be in the same range as OneSignal. The availability of a free trial and flexible subscription options, including monthly, annual, and multi-year plans, make it more accessible and transparent for users.

How to choose the right OneSignal alternative?

• Choose Plotline if in-app engagement is crucial for you in addition to the regular push, email, and SMS capabilities. If you’re looking to deploy Stories, Videos, etc in your app without developer effort, Plotline is the best choice.
• Iterable is a recommended choice for mid-market or enterprise mobile-first companies.
• Choose Airship if you want both CEP and MAX features in a single platform.
• Klaviyo is suitable for e-commerce startups and SMBs.
• Braze is also a recommended choice for mid-market or enterprise mobile-first companies.
• Customer.io offers a self-serve approach that is ideal for SMBs and startups, making it easier to get started.

Final thoughts

By thoroughly researching and comparing the above options, you can make a well-informed choice that aligns with your customer engagement strategy in 2025 and beyond.

If you're interested in learning more about how you can engage your users outside as well as inside your app to help you drive activation, retention, and monetization metrics, start your free trial with Plotline.