Yesterday, Pusher announced that they are discontinuing Chatkit. And we are saddened to hear that. We believe Chatkit had all the potential to be a great product and it's unfortunate that Pusher has to narrow their focus to their more successful product- Channels. We've always been a big fan of Pusher and wish them the best moving forward.

If you are one of Chatkit's customers affected by this, firstly we want to say, we're sorry. It's a tough situation. You invested the time and money to integrate their service and, due to the current climate, they had to discontinue their product.

We understand that your trust in external services has taken a hit by this experience. That's why we'd like to take a moment to tell you about the ways in which CometChat differs from Chatkit in a business sense. In a few words- our core and only focus is chat.

This could also be an opportunity for your business to update and improve on your existing chat implementation. We've been doing a lot of exciting work and you could take this chance to start using some awesome features like HD voice and video calling.

How CometChat can speed up integration?

Our recently launched UI Kits allow you to go from 0 to 100 in a matter of minutes. Integration is as easy as-

1. Signup for a free CometChat Pro account
2. Follow the quick start guide for your platform:
   a. Android
   b. iOS
   c. Javascript
   d. React Native
   e. Cordova/Ionic

How CometChat can enhance your existing in-app solution?

We have a number of features which are unique to our offering. If we were to highlight just a few, they would be Voice & Video Calling and our Extensions Marketplace. You can quickly features like email notifications, sentiment analysis, profanity filtering and more.

How CometChat can help you migrate?

Three key ways that make it easier for you to migrate-

Price Match
In the current climate, we understand that it may be hard for you to get approvals for a different pricing structure. So we are offering a 1-year price match for all Pusher Chatkit customers.

Historical Migration
We are offering free data migration services to migrate all your existing Chatkit data to CometChat.

Live Migration
A common problem you may face is how quickly your customers can upgrade their mobile apps to a newer version (with CometChat). Our Live Migration technology allows users who are still using an older version of your app (with Chatkit) to be able to message users who are using your latest version (with CometChat) and vice versa. So there is minimal impact for your users.

Ready to begin?

Our team is happy to assist you with steps forward. Simply get in touch.

There's a hacker attack every 39 seconds.

Hackers are continuously finding new ways to steal data. Most companies protect and encrypt their email channels. Many don't think of protecting areas like chat rooms or video calling.

IP addresses, file attachments, and images can spread fast through private chats. They can also spread through group chats and other collaboration channels. As a result, data gets stolen, companies lose money, and HIPAA laws get broken.

The only way to combat the issue is to use a HIPAA compliant chat API.

Do you want to learn more about HIPAA laws and how to ensure you're using a HIPAA compliant chat? This guide will break it down for you.

What Is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Enacted in 1996, HIPAA is a United States federal law that ensures your private health information stays secure.

HIPAA includes regulations for how healthcare providers and businesses should and can handle data and health information. Those regulations and standards are required to ensure PHI data is stored, managed, and accessed correctly at any time of the day.

HIPAA laws include specified penalties and fines for those organizations or individuals that opt not to comply with HIPAA standards.

What Is PHI?

PHI, or protected health information, includes information such as:

• Medical records, including everything from an MRI scan to blood test results
• Billing records and payment methods at any medical office
• Conversations between any parties, including you and your doctor, your doctor and their staff, your insurance company and your health provider, etc.
• Any emails, notes, texts, video chats, and other correspondence

How Are HIPAA Laws Followed?

HIPAA laws are clear and easy to follow. For a business associate or covered entity to be compliant with HIPAA law, they must do these 4 things:

• Have safeguards in place so that PHI data is protected always
• Restrict access to PHI data to only those employees or people needed to accomplish the purpose at hand
• Have BAAs (Business Associate Agreements) with service providers in place to ensure PHI data stays secure
• Have policies and procedures to limit access to PHI data, and to have the training to teach users and employees about privacy and data security

What Technical Safeguards Do SaaS Companies Use to Ensure HIPAA Compliancy?

There are 4 HIPAA rules - security, privacy, enforcement, and breach notification. Developers and service providers must pay extra attention to the security rules as they set the tone for how PHI data must be handled and managed.

The security rule uses 4 Technical Safeguards to make sure data is safe, access is controlled, and that only properly authenticated users are authorized.

Access Control dictates that there must be procedures and policies in place to ensure that only authorized users are granted access to PHI data. These policies might include emergency access procedures, encryption procedures, and unique identifiers from user to user.

Audit Controls mandate that certain mechanisms should be in effect to examine access by individuals and activity in the system.

Integrity Controls say that PHI data must never be improperly destroyed or altered. In turn, there must be procedures in place so that if a breach does occur, auditors can figure out how and why it happened.

Transmission Security dictates that security measures should be in place to ensure no unauthorized access to PHI data happens when it's transferred over a network.

Who Must Comply With HIPAA?

When HIPAA was first enacted, the purpose was to provide a safe way for people to transfer employment and doctors using their same health insurance policies and information. Initially, it was only hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies that had to comply with HIPAA specifications.

The reason for this is because at first, these were the only people and places with access to PHI data. Under HIPAA law, these "covered entities" include any organization that provides treatment, payment, and health care operations, such as:

• Hospitals
• Doctors and medical offices
• Pharmacies
• Insurance Companies
• HMOs

In 2013, HIPAA decided to take into account the fact that health care across the country was outsourcing and using cloud providers. Now, these services must all stay HIPAA compliant too. They're called "business associates," and they include any service that transmits, stores, or receives PHI data.

These business associates include:

• SaaS companies that provide cloud-based and electronic health information and records for medical professionals
• Medical transcription services that provide services to doctors and other health professionals
• Analytics companies that process medical data

What Are the Benefits of Staying HIPAA Compliant?

Aside from following the law, there are many other benefits of staying HIPAA compliant and only investing in services that are as well. Here are some of those benefits:

• You'll open your organization up to new customers
• You'll save money by limiting your vulnerability to a breach
• You'll gain trust from other businesses who can rest assured knowing your data is protected
• Your employees will understand practices necessary to keep data safe, ensuring your "human firewall" is strong
• It reduces your organizational and individual liability
• You'll avoid additional and expensive add-on security
• I'll reduce medical errors
• You'll improve the quality of care and increase patient satisfaction

How Can HIPAA Compliant Chat API Help?

Think about cloud-based services for a moment. HIPAA laws changed only 7 years ago to account for this new means for communication and data storage. HIPAA laws continue to change as the need for advanced security and protection changes too.

Hackers are continuously finding new ways to breach data. Plus, many breaches occur simply because of inadequate employee training. It can be something as simple as an opened hyperlink in a group chat that provides an entryway for an attack on PHI data.

Medical chat rooms, healthcare messaging apps, and video conferencing provide new ways for hackers and individuals to breach sensitive information. Any chat app used in the medical community should be HIPAA compliant as HIPAA chat API connects patients and providers, avoiding any compliance issues.

Why CometChat?

CometChat is a cloud-hosted chat platform. CometChat's products are made specifically to help any company, individual, or organization build chat features into their business.

Do your teachers need a way to securely connect with their students? Does your delivery app need a way to ensure communication between drivers and customers is secure? Do you need to build trust between your buyers and sellers?

Whether it's a group chat, live chat, private chat you need, and whether it's text, voice, or video, CometChat can help build customized HIPAA compliant chat solutions for your needs.

What Are the Benefits of Using HIPAA Compliant Chat API?

When you use HIPAA compliant instant messaging, your employees can communicate in a more efficient, streamlined manner, without having to worry about a breach in security. A truly HIPAA compliant service should enable users to send patient charts, prescribed medications, X-rays, and other sensitive information by simply attaching it to a message.

With HIPAA chat API services, you'll never have to worry about compliance risks. Healthcare organizations and hospitals that don't follow HIPAA's regulations can find themselves owing $50,000 for just a single infraction and up to $1.5 million for repeated ones. Following government sanctions by investing in HIPAA compliant chat services will save you from potential penalties and fines in the future.

Loudspeakers and pagers are a thing of the past. Plus, they take too long.

Everyone has a mobile phone with them, though, almost wherever they go. Sending a mobile message to a medical professional on the device they carry around at all times is much more efficient than waiting for a page to get returned. Plus, going mobile inevitably improves the quality of patient care.

With HIPAA compliant instant messaging, you can smash the language barrier, too, with real-time message translation.

HIPAA Chat API Is a Small Price to Pay

CometChat exists to keep private information safe. Built into the cloud, CometChat services are always available, and there's always someone to help at any time of night or day.

Don't wait to protect your employees, your patients or customers, and yourself. With HIPAA compliant chat API, the hard part is done for you. You don't have to worry about HIPAA laws or the possibility of losing customer data and trust.

All you have to do is to educate your staff and ensure they have the proper tools and information to communicate efficiently and safely.

Do you have questions about how it works? Contact us at any time! Ready to get started? You can get started here for free!

As the Coronavirus pandemic puts countries on lockdown, we would like to share the measures we are taking for the safety of our team members and our customers.

We would like to reassure our customers that our services will not be disrupted during this period.

We are taking measures to ensure the well being of our employees. As of Monday, all our 50+ team members spread across two continents are working from home until the risk has been reduced.

While our physical offices are closed, our products & support/success teams are fully operational. We have intentionally delayed new feature rollouts during this period. But our support & customer success teams continue to operate with the same efficiency and responsiveness that you've come to expect.

We are constantly monitoring this situation and we will update this blog post as this situation evolves.

Finally, we would like to extend our support for anyone affected directly or indirectly by COVID-19. Stay safe.

Building rich messaging for your app might seem simple at first, but things can quickly escalate when you start to think about advanced features, edge-cases, and how to manage your chat infrastructure at scale. To overcome these challenges, you have several solutions available, but how do they compare?

In this article, I will compare Firebase, a general-purpose app development platform, to CometChat Pro, which is built specifically to help you build chat.

Firebase

Firebase evolved from a tool named "Envolve," which, interestingly enough, was built specifically to help developers code chat. Since then, Firebase has pivoted from a chat-specific tool to become a general-purpose development platform, comprised of numerous products, including a real-time database called Cloud FireStore. These generic Firebase products are "good at everything" but not great.

In short, to build chat with Firebase, you need to define a FireStore database structure. When someone sends a message, you then create a database record and, being a real-time database, FireStore broadcasts an event to all subscribers in real-time. Here is an example message structure:

An example of a subscriber would be your app, which can then render these new chat messages.

This works pretty well because, typically, you do actually want to keep a record of most messages for message history, search, etc. However, what about ephemeral events? For instance, if you wanted to show a typing indicator - that would involve creating an isTyping structure (or similar) in your database and cleaning it up periodically. Similarly, you'll need to think about how to handle delivered indicators, read indicators, online presence, media messages, and other such features yourself.

In our view, the greater the dependency you take on Firebase, the more the benefits compound. For example, you could use Firebase Authentication to authenticate and manage users, FireStore for your data (including chat data), and Firebase Cloud Messaging to send push notifications. Because it's all the same platform, Firebase makes it natural for these products to communicate together with reasonable (not unlimited) flexibility.

CometChat Pro

Whereas Firebase is good at everything, CometChat Pro is an excellent developer tool for enabling chat.

In contrast with Firebase, CometChat Pro offers a chat SDK featuring numerous chat-specific functions and events. For example, you would send a message with sendMessage and subscribe with onMessageReceived.

As another example, when a user starts to type, you would call startTyping and subscribe by creating a typingListener. You don’t necessarily need to convey that someone “stopped” typing because CometChat Pro can figure that out heuristically. You see, being focused on chat allows CometChat Pro to do one thing, and do it very well.

With Firebase, you need to do much work to build a basic chat, including managing the database structure, transactions, encryption, access rules, and more. With CometChat Pro, most of the work has been done for you.

Another benefit of CometChat Pro is extensions. To date, CometChat Pro has nine available extensions and more on the way:

• Push notification
• SMS notification
• Email notification
• Message translation
• Thumbnail generation
• Sentiment analysis
• Human moderation
• Profanity filter
• Smart replies
• Link preview
• Image moderation

With extensions, we have anticipated the most common and natural "next steps" for your chat app. You know you need the basics - like messaging and “who’s online” presence. Advanced features that would generally require a lot of time and energy can now be added in no time with simple "turnkey" extensions.

CometChat Pro has a concept of a "CometChat user," by which you can store frequently-needed data like the user's name, username, avatar URL, and so on. That being said, CometChat Pro does not concern itself with authentication - to authenticate users, you will need to perform that logic on your own server (or using a third-party tool like Auth0) and generate a token for CometChat Pro to use. We wrote a tutorial about how to build a chat authentication server that makes it easy.

On reliability and security

When you base your app on a platform, you expect it to be completely reliable, secure, and compliant.

Firebase has been around for almost a decade, and being a development platform, many serious applications like The New York Times and todoist are built on Firebase. That being said, many customers have experienced frustration and disappointment with Firebase due to sporadic outages and reported security vulnerabilities. These issues likely didn't affect all applications, but it would be reasonable to assume these issues are going to be most prevalent in any real-time system like a chat.

CometChat was founded a couple years earlier in 2009, and since then, we have powered billions of conversations. While no platform is immune to downtime, staying in one lane and focusing only on chat affords us a more predictable environment in which to plan our failovers should anything go awry. CometChat Pro is completely GDPR compliant and secure.

On price

Firebase offers three plans creatively named Spark, Flame, and Blaze:

Anticipating your monthly bill is tricky and may surprise you. That being said, you can reason that using the Flame plan, 100,000 daily document writes, and 10GB monthly bandwidth for $25 is reasonable. Of course, you will need to do much work yourself, which must be factored into your total cost.

CometChat Pro offers two plans named Metroid and Asteroid, plus you an also enroll on a custom plan:

Here is a quick link to the CometChat Pro pricing page so you can experiment with the slider.

Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur, growing start-up, or enterprise, CometChat Pro offers transparent pricing, so you'll always know what you'll pay.

Conclusion

I hope this comparison has helped highlight the key differences between CometChat Pro and Firebase. At the end of the day, there will be no better comparison than the one you and your team carry out independently. Of course, if you have questions or need help building your prototype/MVP with CometChat Pro, you can join our Slack group or get in touch - you may be surprised at how quick you receive response.

Today WordPress continues to be the most popular tool for building websites and perhaps the most simple and trusted content management system in the world. According to W3Techs Web Technology Surveys, at the moment 35% of sites on the internet use WordPress involving those that don’t use CMS at all and those that are powered by a custom-built CMS.

A variety of engaging themes, plugins, and elements make WordPress a great solution for website development. E-commerce stores, cross-sectional blogs, news portals, educational institutions, dating services, music platforms, online businesses, and celebrities choose this CMS for its intuitiveness and convenience.

By the way, WP is used by a huge percentage of top-ranked sites. TechJury reports that as of 2019, 14.7% of the world’s leading 100 websites are made with WordPress. Well, this unveils myth that WP is may not be good enough for big brands.

Instead, numerous world-famous websites once chose WordPress as the core of their services and managed to design truly excellent products. And some of the names may even surprise you. For this article, we’ve created a list of famous websites using WordPress. See them below and draw inspiration!

30+ Popular websites using WordPress

1. TechCrunch

Founded in 2005, TechCrunch is the world-known US online publishing portal that covers tech topics like technology news, trends, startups, innovative products, funding, and others. The website also presents audio and video sections to engage the audience that prefers these types of content.

As you can see, the menu is pretty simple which scrolls as the user scrolls the page up or down to ensure a high level of convenience. All the elements are built around the content and nothing draws attention away from titles and images. Due to a timeline system, all of the posts are displayed according to their publish time while a grid-like format allows putting an accent to the new ones.

For today, TechCrunch has an Alexa rank of #1,649 which makes it one of the most popular WordPress websites on the internet.

2. The New Yorker

The New Yorker has been one of the most famous magazines in the world for decades. Well, nothing has changed over time. Providing in-depth quality content on a wide range of topics—culture, politics, arts, business, science, poetry, humour, etc.—The New Yorker website is also powered by WordPress.

It is safe to assume that while the New Yorker WordPress admin dashboard will look similar to yours or mine, a lot of changes have been made to the theme to security precautions—for example, you cannot simply sign in by going to the login page.

Also, this online service employs beautiful fonts for titles and quality images of different sizes to add creativity. High usability and user-friendly interface are those things that make this online magazine one of the top-ranked websites in the world. Currently, The New Yorker has an Alexa rank of #2,605.

3. BBC America

Having been founded in 1998, BBC America is a large US pay television network that operates as a commercial-supported channel. As of September 2018, the service was available to approximately 80.9 million television households in the United States.

Providing the best of entertainment, BBC America comprises TV shows of various genres like natural history, movies, awards, science, and drama.

Intuitive navigation, simple menu, plenty of quality images, well-designed structure, and in-depth theme are the key elements of this amazing platform. The portal is truly multifaceted and offers a wide range of content types so that everyone can choose what he or she likes while the schedule enables to easily find the desired information.

As of November 2019, BBC America is ranked #18,578 by Alexa which makes it one of the 20,000 most popular WordPress websites on the internet.

4. Rackspace

Established in 1998, Rackspace is the US managed cloud computing company that has offices in the UK, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. As of 2014, the organization’s revenue is $1.794 billion.

The company’s website was created using WordPress among other technologies. Having a great UI and UX design, it provides an intuitive user interface. With a simple structure and convenient navigation, the user can easily find the necessary information.

Being our customer and the user of CometChat, Rackspace has one of the most popular WordPress websites on the internet. Today, it has an Alexa rank of #2,384.

5. Variety ****

Variety is an American media company and perhaps one of the most trusted sources of entertainment business news. It was founded in 1908 as a weekly newspaper. On the official website, now Variety also provides text, audio, and video content on numerous topics (tech, film, music, lifestyle, etc.) on the internet.

With an Alexa rank #2,163, the organization has one of the most famous WordPress websites globally.

6. The Official Star Wars Blog

The official War Stars blog is an amazing website for movie fans. Having a branded theme and engaging design, it offers various content types such as news, series, films, information about apps and games, and more. This web portal has an Alexa rank of #19,225 which automatically includes it in the list of 20,000 leading sites worldwide.

7. Sony Music ****

Owned by Sony Corporation of America, Sony Music Entertainment (SME), or simply Sony Music, is a world-famous American music conglomerate. Built with WordPress, the company’s website is a news aggregator covering the music industry: singers, album releases, announcements, and a lot more. Each post is dated with the latest publications on top of the page. The portal also provides a page of featured artists with links back to their official sites.

As of November 2019, Sony Music website has an Alexa rank #148,037 which proves that it’s an engaging news service.

8. Microsoft News Center

Microsoft News (formerly known as MSN News and Bing News) is an online news portal featuring news articles about tech, money, politics, sports, entertainment, and many other topics. Providing search filters, notifications about news, and a wide range of topics, it enables users to instantly find the desired information.

A clear structure and convenient navigation help this great WordPress website to be ranked #31 by Alexa.

9. PlayStation.Blog ****

PlayStation Blog is an entertainment and media entertainment center that provides awesome user experience using text, image, and video content. Packed with a variety of videos and news articles, the portal is one of the most famous websites using WordPress. In global internet engagement, it ranks #575.

10. Wired

Being a monthly American magazine, Wired reports about emerging technologies and their impact on our world. It also covers topics such as culture, science, security, business, transportation, etc. The Wired.com site was created in 1994 and uses WP among other technologies.

For today, it has an Alexa rank of #1,548 which automatically includes it in the most popular websites that use WordPress.

11. Snoop Dogg

Websites that are centered around celebrities are often based on WordPress. The site dedicated to Snoop Dogg is not an exception. It showcases video and audio content, information about tours, announcements, and photos dedicated to this music star.

What’s more, a large photo of Snoop Dogg is placed on the landing page with multiple links on celebrity’s social media pages. The website is ranked #501,010 by Alexa.

12. Georgia State University

Georgia State is one of the largest and most prestigious universities in America. According to the WordPress showcase, gsu.edu is a single multi-site hosting over 150 sites. The website has a well-organized structure which allows its users to quickly and easily find the necessary information. Being one of the most popular WP websites, it ranks #5,725 in global internet engagement.

13. Quartz

Launched in 2012, Quartz is a business organization and online news portal that reports business news and covers every aspect of the new global economy. 60% of the site visitors access it via their smartphones and 45% of the users are outside the United States. As the site is fully adaptive, it naturally looks of different types of devices.

Focusing on digital storytelling, it makes engaging content which is complemented by beautiful custom images, high-resolution photos, readable fonts, nice typography, and clear structure. Thanks to this, the website meets the needs and preferences of the modern audience.

The Quartz.com WP-based website ranks #2,643 In global internet traffic and engagement and #978 in the USA.

14. TED Blog ****

Launched in 1984, TED Conferences LLC is an American media company that publishes talks on a variety of inspiring talks under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". Speakers share their experiences, thoughts, and ideas regarding culture, politics, tech, science, self-development, and other topics that are available online.

TED.com is another world-famous website that is based on WordPress CMS. Multiple filters, columns with the most popular and the most shared posts, extensive footer, a full-screen image on the top of the main page, archives, and other elements compose this service. What’s important, nothing draws attention from the content while modern design and high usability force users to stay on the website.

With an Alexa rank #999, TED.com is one of the most popular websites that use WordPress.

15. Sweden’s Official Website

Sweden.se is an official website dedicated to Sweden. Providing different a variety of facts about the country, it is created and managed by the Swedish Institute, the company that distributes information about Sweden and promotes its interests around the globe.

The site publishes articles about business, innovation, politics, culture, nature, famous people, lifestyle, work, migration, and more. With several bright colors associated with the country’s flag, the organization created a great branding theme.

Powered by WordPress, this website has an Alexa rank of #83,718.

16. Boingo

Boingo is an American provider of Wi-Fi services, Wi-Fi products, and high-speed internet. According to the company’s reports, Wi-Fi access enabled by is consumed by over 1 billion users annually.

Having received awards like “The Best Wi-Fi Service, “Best Wi-Fi Network Operator”, and “Most Innovative Wireless Service”, Boingo enables wireless connections in large venues that include airports, stadiums, buildings, educational institutions, and even military bases.

With an Alexa rank #86,285, boingo.com is among the 100,000 most popular WordPress websites.

17. Reuters Blogs ****

Reuters is the largest global provider of multimedia news that reaches over 1 billion users every day that is owned by Thomson Reuters. Founded in 1851, this service reports news on a wide range of life spheres and topics that involve tech, market, wealth, business, politics, sports, entertainment, innovations, etc.

Having 17 editions, the service provides a business design theme, convenient content structure, search, video and image content, and simple navigation. It also displays the time of each publication. According to Alexa, Reuters.com ranks #488 which makes it one of the most engaging and popular WordPress websites on the internet.

18. Fortune Magazine

Fortune an international media organization and a world-famous business magazine that was founded in 1929 by Henry Luce. This news portal constantly publishes ranked lists like “Businessperson of the Year”, “100 Best Companies to Work For”, “100 Fastest Growing Companies”, “Fortune 500”, “Fortune 1000”, and many others.

The platform is full of rich content—news, insights, ratings—covering tech, economics, politics, entertainment, future and past conferences, and so on. A high emphasis is made on large and quality images and user-friendly design.

Powered by WordPress, Fortune.com has an Alexa rank of #6,534.

19. The Next Web ****

The Next Web, or simply TNW, is a popular website and annual series of conferences powered by WordPress. TNW includes news and insights into the tech world, the impact of technologies on our lives, and tech predictions.

Being a user-friendly website with cool design, it fully meets the needs of the modern web. There are plenty of images of different sizes, posts displayed in a grid, bright colours, convenient menu, and other elements that ensure great user experience.

According to Alexa, this WP-based website ranks #5,761.

20. The Mozilla Blog

The Mozilla Blog is one of the most famous blogs on the internet. Dedicated to Mozilla, it includes news, press releases, articles about Firefox, general information, etc. The content is displayed with the help of the grid, images, publishing dates, and pagination. Besides text, content creators and publishers use GIFs, branded images, diagrams, videos, and more.

As of November 2019, the blog has an Alexa rank of #260.

21. Mara Group

Mara is a Pan-African company that operates in technology, financial services, real estate, and manufacturing industries. Founded in 1996, now it employs over 11,000 workers. The organization is active in 24 countries with 22 in Africa.

Being one of our most famous clients, Mara Group is an e-commerce website. A great modern website with multiple interactive elements and large high-resolution images help ensure seamless user experience. Product gallery, comparison tables, live chat, cart—everything customers need to search, choose, and buy.

Having an Alexa rank of #273,163, maraphones.com is one of the most popular websites using WordPress.

22. Startup Weekend ****

Established in 2006, Startup Weekend is a part of the Techstars Community Programs. Helping entrepreneurs and aspiring businessmen find startup ideas and start a company, the service provides educational and networking opportunities. By now, it has already held over 5,000 events in more than 1,475 cities.

The website has a user-friendly sophisticated design and includes a lot of information about events. With a search field and filters by location, map, and edition/theme, it allows users to instantly find all the events in the required city/country including all the necessary details.

Being ranked #246,930 by Alexa in global internet engagement, Startupweekend.org is one of the 250,000 most popular WordPress websites.

23. The Walt Disney Company ****

The Walt Disney Company is an American mass media and entertainment conglomerate that was founded in 1923. Being a global leader in the industry, the organization has revenue of about $70 billion.

Like many other popular sites, the Disney’s is also powered by WP. Providing simple navigation, beautiful user interface, and numerous great photos and images with many of them taken from cartoons and movies, it offers an amazing user experience.

With a global Alexa rank of #45,964, it is one of the most famous WordPress websites.

24. The Rolling Stones

The website is fully dedicated to The Rolling Stones, a cult English rock band. With colorful flashy design and glaring images, it provides users with video, audio, and text content. Furthermore, due to the online store, fans can buy a wide range of products associated with The Rolling Stones: music (CD, vinyl, digital, etc.), clothes, accessories, books, and other things.

At the moment, the website has an Alexa rank #245,227 in global internet engagement.

25. ProBlogger

The ProBlogger.net blog was created by Darren Rowse, a popular blogger, speaker, consultant, and owner of several blogs and blog networks. Founded in 2004, the website offers thousands of articles and other educational content such as tips, tutorials, podcasts, eBooks, and case studies.

Being centered around content and providing an intuitive interface, it enables users to subscribe, comment, and even find the work through the platform.

ProBlogger.net is ranked #23,336 by Alexa which proves that the website is very popular on the internet.

26. Harvard Gazette Online

The Harvard Gazette is the official news portal of Harvard University that covers university policies, important announcements, national and world affairs, science and technology innovations, educational issues, and national concerns as well.

With a branded design theme, simple menu and navigation, quality images, and fonts, the website provides a high level of convenience and readability. The Harvard Gazette has an Alexa rank of #783 in global Internet engagement and of#304 in the USA.

27. The Official James Bond 007 Website

The Official James Bond 007 Website is fully dedicated to the famous character. It has a stylish sophisticated design with a lot of white space, images, and elegant theme. Like many brands and celebrities, the website provides an online store with numerous products that can be purchased. All the stories are displayed using a grid with the indication of the publishing date.

Being one of the most famous websites that use WordPress, it has an Alexa rank of #300,250.

28. Vogue India ****

Vogue India is the Indian edition of Vogue, a world-famous fashion and lifestyle magazine that was created in 1892. Launched in 2007, Vogue India is perhaps the most trusted fashion source in the country covering news on fashion, beauty, trends, Bollywood, wellness, culture, etc.

A lot of white space, numerous beautiful photos and images of different sizes, white background, simple navigation, and other elements make up the website design. Nice fonts and well-structured content increase its readability.

For today, this WordPress website has a global Alexa rank of #29,411.

29. Pulse by Target ****

Pulse by Target is one of the most popular companies and one of the leading retailers in the USA. The Pulse Blog was established to allow the company’s candidates to find out more information about working at Target.

The website includes content about culture, human resources, stores, technology, events, and much more. The blog has a sophisticated design and includes features like commenting mode, social media sharing, search by keywords and categories, etc.

With an Alexa rank of #361 in global internet engagement and #84 in the USA, Pulse by Target has one of the most famous WordPress websites worldwide.

30. SAP News Center ****

SAP is a German multinational corporation that specializes in developing and integrating software for business process automation and customer relations’ improvements. The company’s blog, called SAP News Center, publishes press releases, videos, information about events, articles about technologies and innovations, and other content.

According to Alexa, the website ranks #1,292 in global internet engagement.

31. cPanel Blog ****

Established in 1997, cPanel is a privately owned company building cPanel & WHM. Being based on WordPress, the cPanel Blog contains information about employees, events, tips, and products. With an intuitive user interface and high usability, the website provides the ability to easily find the desired content and enjoy reading.

As of November 2019, the website has a global Alexa rank of #52,268.

32. The Walking Dead – AMC

The Walking Dead – AMC is a website mainly dedicated to the world-famous TV series. This WordPress-based website offers a lot of entertaining content, from news to episodes that users can watch.

What’s more, it contains a TV schedule, a number of movies, and an online shop. Large-screen images, black-color background, white-color fonts, simple menu, and great user interface make up this beautiful design. Being one of the most popular websites using WordPress, it ranks #18,501 by Alexa.

Closing thoughts

There are plenty of advantages of using WordPress for website development. Providing a wide selection of themes, elements, and plugins, it allows businesses to create beautiful responsive designs that ensure seamless user experience and look great on all devices.

No wonder, that WordPress powers 35% of sites on the internet. Today many brands, celebrities, online stores, blogs, popular news portals, fashion and lifestyle magazines, educational institutions, and large-scale companies choose it.

In the early two-thousands when 3G was on the rise and mobile devices like the Motorola A830 and the Nokia 3310 reigned supreme, a lesser-known Canadian parent company called Research in Motion was working on a communication interface for their famous phone line - the BlackBerry. It was there that engineers developed Blackberry Push Email, which in effect, was the first-ever push notifications system.

Fast forward to 2020, and push notifications are everywhere! Since their conception in 2003, they’ve gone through several phases of evolution in terms of content format, trigger points, and scale. No matter their format though, they’re a necessity for your chat application, but as straight-forward as that may seem, many variables can influence their successful delivery.

In a recent 2019 report by MoEngage it was revealed that overall the delivery rate for push notifications was in the range of 14 to 48%.

Chat notifications will often struggle with competition for inbox space and their delivery rates probably fall somewhere in the middle. We've written this short piece to tell you all about the way push notifications work behind the scenes and the elements that influence their delivery. Of course, we've got some great tips to help you increase your success with push notifications for your chat app, as well.

What exactly are chat push notifications?

Push notifications are the short pop-up messages that notify you of things in a web browser or an app. Companies mainly use them in campaigns to get the attention back to their product.

But not all push notifications you send simply reach their destination. In analysing overall delivery rates, MoEngage reported delivery rates between 14% and 48% depending on segmentation like industry and user activity.

For  companies with engaged users who run  modern devices the delivery rate will likely be higher but MoEngage note that even in good circumstance, sending notifications to active users running iOS 10 or later, the average delivery rate was observed to be only 85% meaning that if you successfully send notifications to 100 users, only around 85 users end up receiving the notification. This number is may even be a little skewed as it would include the millions of WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger notifications that are delivered successfully. We have seen results for corporate push notification delivery to be substantially lower.

How do push notifications differ on Android and iOS?

Android and iOS, together good for 97% of the mobile market, differ substantially on how they allow push notifications. Most importantly, iOS uses an opt-in system while Android uses opt-out.

The opt-in model which iOS employs doesn't allow brands and apps to send notifications until express permission has given by users to receive them. Android does it the other way around. Their users automatically receive notifications from brands and apps they install, but they can choose to opt-out at any time. An option to opt-out is given as early as on installation though.

These different approaches give Android apps an advantage in the size of the push-enabled audience they can reach. But it also comes with a risk. Sending too many push notifications, or notifications that are irrelevant or unnecessary will get users to seek out the uninstall button as easily as they'll look for the opt-out option.

Why push notifications are sometimes not delivered

MoEngage analyzed the most important reasons for push notifications not being delivered. For instance, even after your cloud messaging platform (like Google's FCM) has accepted the notification, it will fail to send it to devices that are turned off or not connected to the internet. And there's a couple more surprising factors that influence deliverability.

What is the difference between GCM and FCM?
You might be wondering about the difference between GCM and FCM as these acronyms often surface together. In short, Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) was a mobile notification service developed by Google that enables third-party application developers to send notification data or information from developer-run servers to applications. It has since been deprecated in favour of Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM),  which is is the new version of GCM under the Firebase brand. It inherits FCM’s core infrastructure to deliver messages reliably on Android, iOS, and Chrome. The more you know!

The user isn’t opted-in

According to Clevertap, the most important reason notifications can't be delivered is users opting out of receiving them on an OS level. Apps and brands on iOS can't send push notifications to users without getting express permission and resulting opt-out rates are very high at 55%.But even on Android, more and more control is given to the user and opt-out rates are around 40%. And these numbers are averages across different kinds of apps and industries. Messaging apps and on-demand apps, for instance, see a higher opt-in rate than average. One of the challenges you'll face is to find a way to get your users to opt-in and then stay opted in.

Manufacturer-related reasons

Clevertap also notes that the phone's manufacturer makes a difference in deliverability. Manufacturers like Oppo and Vivo build their own custom OS on top of Android. These flavours of Android often restrict an app's background network access as part of aggressive battery saving software. Apps that aren't able to connect to the internet are very difficult to deliver notifications to. Other devices like Samsung, Xiaomi, and Motorola have better delivery rates from 51% to 55%. The same issues arise with third-party battery saving apps which also force stop apps to increase battery life. This poses serious challenges to the delivery of notifications for most apps, especially the ones not frequently used. This is part of the reason why apps that are used more often have higher delivery rates.

Connectivity Issues with FCM

Android uses Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to deliver push notifications. To realize this, FCM maintains an idle socket connection from the Android device to Google servers. It is this connection that allows push notifications to be shown on the device. But this socket link can get interrupted. FCM can be unable to deliver a push notification when a user is not connected to the internet. Push notifications come with an expiration date though, known as the Time to Live (TTL). If the device doesn't connect back to internet in time, the notification will expire and remain undelivered. Another known issue happens when an app is uninstalled. Because it takes some time for the registration token to be removed completely from FCM, a notification sent while the removal is being processed can be flagged as valid even though it will not get delivered to the app anymore.

The user’s last activity

A user's last activity severely impacts delivery rates. This probably relates to background access being restricted for apps that have not been used recently. MoEngage recorded the highest delivery rates for users who were active in the last 24 hours. More than 80% of notifications were successfully delivered to these users. They also analyzed the user's app behavior prior to successful delivery and found that of the people who received notifications, 73% were active in the past 2 weeks.

Older Android OS versions

The different Android versions have also been seen to impact delivery rates, with the older versions like Lollipop, KitKat, and Jellybean showing lower delivery rates than new versions like Android Nougat and Oreo. Nougat has the highest delivery rate. These differences in delivery rates are the result of battery optimization and a change in the way Android shows notifications after they introduced notification channels.

What you can do to improve your delivery rate

Now the most important part: what can you do to improve your delivery rate? There are some issues you won't be able to influence, or you'll only be able to nudge your user in the right direction. If they're using a phone with very aggressive battery saving software, you won't be able to get them to buy a new phone that easily. Still, workarounds are available. If your app is used more often, the rate of delivery success of a notification improves noticeably.

Make sure your users opt-in

The impact of this one should be pretty clear. If users don't opt-in or eventually opt-out you won't be able to send them any push notifications. It is a good idea to use your design during the app set up to guide your users to opt-in. You'll also want to clearly state why it's advantageous for your user to receive notifications. Marketplaces will want to explain that missing a notification might mean missing a sale. Medical business will want to point out the urgency of the notifications they send. In any case, your users should feel that the notifications they are opting-in for are in their best interest. Check out how Slack and Monzo tells their users about what to expect from their notifications.

Slack even make it a little less natural to opt-out by putting the exit button in the top-left. Sneaky.

It is even possible to detect when a user hasn't opted-in initially. Facebook Messenger detects when notifications are disabled and shows a little banner at the top. Snapchat does something similar by showing a notification badge next to your Bitmoji:

Another page you can borrow from Messenger is only asking for permission after the user has created an account or logged in. It makes sense that more people will opt in after taking a positive action in your app rather than if you surprise them with notification requests the moment they open your app.

Allow users to configure which notifications they receive

Push notifications can be incredibly useful, but sending the wrong notifications, or annoying users by sending too many of them will result in users opting-out of receiving them entirely. A solution to this is to give your users more control over which notifications they receive, which can help you send only relevant notifications. Doing this will allow them to choose to only receive a certain specific type of alert, rather than opt-out entirely. Dating apps nowadays often give a lot of options concerning push notifications. They let their users choose whether they want to be notified of profile visits, of matches, of received messages, and in addition to those, also allow them to decide whether they want to receive offers for paid plans. We show you how to give your users control over their notifications when coding an Android chat app in this tutorial.

Send email notifications

For some businesses, engagement is just an important metric, but for others it's a critical part of their product. Think of marketplaces like Airbnb for example. If one of their hosts misses a message, it directly results in a lost business opportunity. But there is increasing competition for home screen space and many users just outright opt-out of receiving notifications in an attempt to reduce noise. That’s where email chat notifications can help. Sending an email notification about recent chat activity can be incredibly powerful in increasing retention and making sure your users never miss their most important messages.

We recently partnered with SendGrid to make it easier and more reliable for you to upgrade your product with email notifications. You can learn more about our email notification extension here.

Send SMS notifications

Just like email notifications, SMS notifications are another way to notify your user of missed activity. When building a chat application with CometChat, SMS notifications can be enabled through the SMS notification extension.

Use an app inbox as a fallback channel

There are even ways to reach the users who have not yet opted in or who have opted out. To reach these users you should use fallback channels like a dedicated app inbox which ensure a 100% delivery rate of push notifications inside of your app. An app inbox is also a great tool for brands when they send messages that need to stay with their users for a longer period of time. They are best suited for cases where you want to encourage users to do something. Think of giving out a discount code that doesn't expire for a gym membership, or information about personalizing screens without too much manual coding, compared to native.

Conclusion

Nowadays, you won't find a chat application without push notifications, but only using push notifications doesn't guarantee 100% delivery rates. If you are serious about using notifications to increase retention and engagement, which we highly advise you are, you should also be looking at fallback delivery options like an app inbox, email notifications, or SMS notifications. Spending some time on designing a compelling user experience can educate and guide your users about push notifications and will increase opt-in rates. Once you've got your deliverability sorted, you can expand the process by considering how many people interact and engage with your push notifications. For more insights on that, follow us on Twitter @CometChat.