Architecting a Scalable Notification System (Push, Email, SMS, In-App)

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Meerako — Dallas, TX experts in building enterprise-grade, scalable cloud architectures.

Introduction

Notifications are the heartbeat of user engagement. A timely alert about a new message, an order shipment, or a critical system event keeps users informed and connected to your application.

But building a reliable and scalable notification system is surprisingly complex. You need to handle:

• Multiple Channels: Email, SMS, Mobile Push Notifications, In-App messages.
• User Preferences: Users must be able to choose which notifications they receive on which channel.
• High Volume: Sending thousands (or millions) of notifications without overwhelming your system or getting blocked by providers.
• Failures & Retries: What happens if an email bounces or an SMS fails?

At Meerako, we architect notification systems using a robust, decoupled pattern on AWS. This guide explains our approach.

What You'll Learn

• Why a simple email function call doesn't scale.
• A decoupled architecture using AWS SNS, SQS, and Lambda.
• Handling channel-specific logic (Email, SMS, Push).
• Storing user preferences and managing unsubscribes.

The Problem: The Tightly Coupled Approach

Imagine a user comments on a post. The code might look like this:

This is bad because:

1. It's Slow: The user has to wait for the email to send before their comment appears.
2. It's Brittle: If the emailService is down, the entire createComment operation might fail.
3. It Doesn't Scale: What if you need to add SMS or Push notifications? You have to modify the createComment function everywhere.

The Solution: A Decoupled, Event-Driven Architecture on AWS

We break the notification logic out of the core application flow using queues and topics.

The Architecture:

1. Trigger Event: Your core application (e.g., the createComment function) simply publishes an event like comment_created onto an AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service) Topic. This is instant and non-blocking.
2. Fan-Out: SNS acts as a pub/sub hub. We subscribe multiple AWS SQS (Simple Queue Service) Queues to this topic, one for each channel (e.g., email_queue, sms_queue, push_notification_queue). SNS automatically copies the comment_created event message to each relevant queue.

3. Channel-Specific Workers: We have separate, independent AWS Lambda functions subscribed to each SQS queue:

   • EmailWorkerLambda listens to email_queue. When it gets the comment_created event, it looks up the post author's email preference, formats the email, and calls an email provider API (like AWS SES or SendGrid).
   • SMSWorkerLambda listens to sms_queue. It looks up the user's phone number and SMS preference, formats the SMS, and calls an SMS provider API (like Twilio).
   • PushWorkerLambda listens to push_notification_queue. It looks up the user's device tokens and push preference, formats the push payload, and calls a push provider (like Firebase Cloud Messaging or APNS).

Key Benefits of This Architecture

1. Decoupled & Resilient: If the Email worker fails, it doesn't affect SMS or Push notifications, nor does it block the original createComment action. SQS automatically handles retries for failed Lambda invocations.
2. Scalable: Each component scales independently. Getting lots of emails? Lambda and SQS scale automatically. Need to add a new channel (like In-App)? Just add a new SQS queue and Lambda worker; the core app code doesn't change.
3. User Preferences: The worker Lambdas are responsible for checking user preferences (stored in your database) before sending. The core app doesn't need to know.
4. Observability: Each step can be monitored and logged independently, making it easier to track down failures (see our Observability guide).

Handling Preferences & Unsubscribes

• Your database needs tables to store:
  • User notification preferences (e.g., userId, notification_type, channel, is_enabled).
  • Device tokens for push notifications (e.g., userId, device_token, platform).
• Each worker Lambda must query these preferences before sending.
• Emails and SMS messages must include clear unsubscribe links that update these preferences.

Conclusion

Building a reliable, scalable notification system requires moving beyond simple function calls to an event-driven, decoupled architecture. By leveraging powerful, managed AWS services like SNS, SQS, and Lambda, Meerako architects robust systems that ensure your users receive the right message, on the right channel, at the right time.

Don't let your core application logic get bogged down by notification delivery. Decouple it for resilience and scale.

Need to build an enterprise-grade notification system for your application?

🧠 Meerako — Your Trusted Dallas Technology Partner.

From concept to scale, we deliver world-class SaaS, web, and AI solutions.

📞 Call us at +1 469-336-9968 or 💌 email [email protected] for a free consultation.