Your deploy finishes at 2am. You want to know. Pushbullet used to handle that. Then in 2023 they slashed the free tier to 100 notifications per month and the reliability complaints started piling up on Reddit. If you’re here, you’ve probably already hit the wall.

A quick caveat before the list: Pushbullet did two distinct things — server-to-phone notifications, and phone-to-phone stuff like SMS mirroring and file sharing between devices. Most alternatives only replace one of those. Know which one you actually miss.

#The alternatives, honestly

#Pushover

The closest apples-to-apples swap if you want managed, reliable push to iOS and Android with minimal setup. One-time $5 per platform, no subscription. You get an API key, you POST to their endpoint, notifications arrive.

curl -s \
  --form-string "token=your_app_token" \
  --form-string "user=your_user_key" \
  --form-string "message=Deploy finished" \
  https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json

Pushover has been running since 2012 without drama. The free trial is capped at 10,000 messages, then you pay the one-time fee. It’s the right answer for personal projects where you want someone else to operate the infrastructure.

Limitation: no free tier after trial, and the API has its own conventions (form-encoded POST, separate app and user tokens) that add setup friction compared to a simple curl.

#ntfy

Open source, self-hostable, and free at ntfy.sh if you don’t want to run your own server. You publish to a topic URL; anyone subscribed to that topic gets the notification. Dead simple.

curl -d "Deploy finished" ntfy.sh/your-topic-name

The catch is the topic model — topics are public by default on the hosted version unless you configure access control. Self-hosting solves that but adds infrastructure to manage. If you’re already running a VPS and want full control, ntfy is hard to beat. The Android app is excellent; iOS support is solid now too.

#Gotify

Self-hosted only — there’s no managed cloud option. You run a Go server, create an application, get a token, and push messages. Clean REST API, real-time WebSocket for the client app.

If you want total privacy and you’re comfortable running a container, Gotify works well. If you’re not already maintaining a server, the operational overhead probably isn’t worth it for personal alerting.

#Bark

iOS only. An app you install on your iPhone that gives you a personal endpoint. Push to it, notification arrives. Beautifully simple.

curl https://api.day.app/your-bark-key/Deploy%20finished

If you’re on iOS and just want the simplest possible path, Bark is worth a look. Android users are out entirely.

#trigger.fyi

Built specifically for the server-to-phone use case. The entire API surface is a POST with a text body:

curl -X POST -d "Deploy finished" https://trigger.fyi/fyi_your_key

Or from Node:

import fyi from "trigger.fyi";
 
fyi("Deploy finished");
fyi.critical("Payment processor down");
fyi.log("Health check passed"); // feed only, no push

Three notification levels: normal push, critical (high urgency, degrades gracefully on iOS where web push can’t break silent mode — the docs are upfront about this), and log-level events that write to the feed without buzzing your phone.

Zero config to start. npx trigger.fyi mints a key and opens a live TUI watching your event feed. The CLI watches; curl sends — that distinction is intentional.

One honest limitation: trigger.fyi doesn’t replace the file-sharing or SMS-mirroring side of Pushbullet. It’s entirely focused on code-triggered notifications — server events, background jobs, deploys, signups. If you want to push files between your laptop and phone, look elsewhere.

#Which one

If you want managed infrastructure and simple pricing: Pushover.

If you want free and open source with a cloud option: ntfy.sh.

If you want full self-hosted control: Gotify.

If you’re on iOS and want zero friction: Bark.

If your use case is code-triggered notifications from servers, CI, or background jobs: trigger.fyi.

The real successor to Pushbullet’s phone-sync features doesn’t really exist as a single product in 2026. But most developers using Pushbullet were using it for one thing — getting server output onto a phone screen. That part has several good solutions.