Alerts for festivals
The common thread is not size. It is that the message matters more than the medium, and that the people who need it already know who you are.
Four subscribers or four million, same message
Sending does not fan out into per-recipient work: an alert is written once and each phone asks for what it has not seen. That is why the cost and the speed do not change with the size of the audience, why there is no queue to drain and no per-message price to negotiate. It is also the reason the honest-numbers section reads the way it does — the same design that makes it cheap is what makes a delivery receipt impossible.
Three rungs, and each one costs something
Normal is a notification in the shade and needs no permission at all. Important is a heads-up banner with a sound, if the subscriber allowed this channel that. Urgent may take over the screen, override Do Not Disturb and be read aloud — each granted separately, each refusable. The rung is a ceiling rather than an outcome, and it is also a budget: a channel that spends Urgent on a car-park closure loses the permission the same afternoon, from the only people who could have granted it.
A picture, a sound or a document, when words are not enough
A diverted bus route is a map. A boil-water notice is a paragraph of instructions people will re-read. An alert can carry an image, a sound file or a document alongside the text. Documents are stored exactly as written and re-rendered from a sanitised copy rather than being run as markup, so an attachment cannot turn into a script on somebody’s lock screen. The bytes are uploaded once and attached by reference, which keeps a send cheap however large the audience.
Questions, answered plainly
Does it get slower or more expensive as we grow?
No. An alert is written once and each device asks for what it has not seen, so four million subscribers cost the same to send to as four. Your plan caps how many subscribers a channel may have, but the send itself does not change shape.
When should I use urgent priority?
When somebody needs to act in the next few minutes: an evacuation, a lockdown, a genuine safety instruction. Not for a schedule change, and not for anything that would still be fine to read an hour later. Urgent is granted by subscribers one at a time and withdrawn just as easily, so it behaves like a budget rather than a setting.
Can I attach a map or a PDF?
You can attach an image, a sound file or a document. A document is stored exactly as submitted and rendered from a sanitised copy, so it can never execute anything on a subscriber’s phone.
Do subscribers need an account?
No. They install the app, subscribe to a handle, and that is the whole of it. Only the person running the channel signs up for anything.
Say it once. Every subscribed phone gets it.
Free up to 100 subscribers, no card to start, and the handle is yours permanently.
Start a channel