Custom vs. off-the-shelf React web notification systems: Which is better?

When building a React web application, one feature you might consider is a notification system. Notifications enhance user experience by providing real-time updates, alerts, or calls to action. The choice between building a custom notification system from scratch or going for an off-the-shelf solution can influence your project's overall cost, resource allocation, and success. Building a custom React notification system involves several factors such as the notifications source (local or push), methods of pushing notifications from server to clients (Push API, SSE, WebSockets), displaying notifications to end users (Notifications API for browser notifications, In-app Toast notifications for React), and expanding user notifications to additional channels. However, building a custom notification system can incur hidden costs such as upfront development costs, maintenance and scaling costs, missed opportunity costs, and costs of inadequate functionality. Off-the-shelf notification solutions like Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), OneSignal, Pusher, Twilio, Sendbird, and Ably can be a great alternative to building a custom solution. These services come pre-built with features such as push notifications, in-app messaging, user segmentation, and analytics. When choosing between off-the-shelf solutions and custom notification systems, consider factors like reliability, scalability, feature set, ease of use, performance, and data handling control. Ably is a great option for adding notifications in React apps due to its feature-rich experience, reliability, scalability, and ease of integration.