Parse vs. StackMob vs. other for push notifications service (Appcelerator application)

Question

We have a very basic application (iOS/Android) done in Appcelerator that will receive a single update every week. This update will be sent to all the users subscribed to the push notifications service.

By this moment, we have around 35k installs but 7,000 active users on this application on last month. We've been evaluating two services for all the push notifications:

• StackMob
• Parse

Appcelerator Cloud services is fine, but we're not willing to pay that much. Parse and StackMob prices are lower than Appcelerator Cloud services and by our analysis, we could even use the free service on both services (StackMob = 60k push notifications + 60k api calls, and Parse 1M api calls + 1M pushes).

If we're going to use Parse, we'll need to buy the Android and iOS module from the Marketplace ($30/year each). Which is fine. On the counterpart, I think we could use the REST API on StackMob for subscribing to the push service.

Questions:

• What are your thoughts on both services? Which one do you prefer and why?
• Have you used StackMob REST API for subscribing to push notifications?
• How do you retrieve Android's token?
• Is there any (cost effective) alternative to these services? I also reviewed PubNub, which seems to be great but costs are higher than StackMob and Parse.

Thanks in advance.

Update

I asked the same question on Appcelerator forums. After a while, users came back with several answers and users using Parse.com for this.

I ended implementing Parse.com, which was really simple by using the Android and iOS plugins that are on the Appcelerator Market.

Answer 1

I wanted to chime in and point you to some StackMob references around Appcelerator.

Aaron Saunders has several projects on github showing how to use StackMob with Appcelerator. https://github.com/aaronksaunders

He also wrote a series of blog posts about it. http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2011/11/titanium-appcelerator-quickie-stackmob-api-module-part-one.html

Our REST API reference is available at https://developer.stackmob.com/tutorials/dashboard/REST-API-Reference

One of the big differentiators between StackMob and others is our custom code option. You can write your own logic in Java, Scala or Clojure and host it on StackMob. The custom code can interact with your user data and other 3rd party APIs.

https://developer.stackmob.com/tutorials/custom%20code

Answer 2

I haven't used those services myself, so I cant comment. However, Another alternative we use (and have been pretty happy with) is Urban Airship. It's relatively cost effective, supports Android, iOS and BB and it has server side libraries for a bunch different languages. There is also a neat blog post outlining how to easily do device registration (at least for iOS) via simple web requests in Appcelerator.

The blog post on its Appcelerator integration is here.