Overview
This article outlines the key differences between MoEngage's two persistent message delivery solutions, designed to help marketers deliver timely, relevant messages to users:
- Cards
- Push Notification Center
While both ensure important messages remain accessible, they serve different purposes and offer different levels of customization.
Cards | Push Notification Center |
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Provides a persistent, rich media inbox within your app, ideal for delivering engaging content feeds, carousels, or widgets. It ensures important information remains accessible even after initial engagement. | Offers a history of push notifications, making important notifications visible even after they've been dismissed from the device's notification drawer. This acts as a central repository for user-specific alerts. |
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You can use cards for:
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You can use push notification center for:
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Capabilities
The following table compares the capabilities of the cards and the push notification center.
Cards | Push Notification Center | |
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Content Type | Rich media cards that support text, images, icons, GIFs, and interactive Call-to-Actions (CTAs). This allows for highly visual and engaging content experiences. |
Primarily text-based push notifications. Media content (images, GIFs) is supported only when using the Self-Handled Push Notification Center by parsing the payload. |
Delivery Mechanism |
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Reachability | Accessible to any user with a device where your app is installed and the MoEngage SDK with Cards module is integrated. Content is displayed to all app users. | Accessible to any user with a device who is eligible and has opted in to receive push notifications from your app and has the MoEngage SDK with the Notification Center module integrated. Users must grant notification permissions. |
Available Trigger Options |
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Content Retention |
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UI customization |
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Media Support | All rich media types, including images, icons, GIFs, and videos supported. |
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Interaction Tracking |
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Placement |
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Integration Effort |
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Ideal for | Teams looking to engage users with rich, persistent in-app content (feeds, carousels, widgets). | Teams requiring a notification history inbox inside the app. |
Supported Campaign Features |
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Supported platforms |
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MoEngage empowers you to deliver timely, relevant, and persistent messages that enhance your app’s customer experience. You can:
- Choose Cards to engage users with rich, interactive content delivered within your app.
- Opt for Push Notification Center to keep important alerts accessible after dismissal.
Select the solution that best supports your messaging strategy and user engagement goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because web browsers don't support a Notification Center, MoEngage recommends using Cards for your web message inboxes. Cards are essential for inbox features in web apps.
You can use Cards to reach all app users, including those who have opted out or do not have a push token. Cards can reach users eligible for and opted into push notifications.
Yes, the MoEngage Cards inbox allows customization of images and background colors for notifications. Furthermore, you can also customize the title, message, and default action.
Yes, Cards retain messages across multiple devices, uninstalls, and logouts. However, if you use the Notification Center, messages are not retained across devices, uninstalls, or logouts.
You can use either Cards or the Notification Center, depending on your requirements.
- Cards support attribute-based and event-based personalization.
- Notification Center supports attribute-based, event-based, Recommendations, and Content API personalization.
Push Notification Center is currently supported on Android and iOS native, React Native, and Flutter platforms. It is not available for web apps. Use Cards for persistent message inboxes in web applications.