PushAI – Self-Hosted Web Push Notifications
PushAI – Self-Hosted Web Push Notifications

PushAI – Self-Hosted Web Push Notifications

5/5 (1 ratings) 40 active installs Updated Aug 4, 2026
Dashboard — subscriber counts, 7-day delivery & click stats, recent campaigns, and live Web Push service health at a glance.

Dashboard — subscriber counts, 7-day delivery & click stats, recent campaigns, and live Web Push service health at a glance.

🚀 Try the live demo — explore the PushAI admin panel without installing anything. | 💎 Upgrade to PushAI Pro — AI digests, WooCommerce automation, and more.

PushAI turns your WordPress site into a re-engagement channel. Visitors subscribe with one click, and you reach them directly in their browser — even when your site is closed — using the native Web Push standard. No third-party SDK, no per-subscriber pricing, no external delivery service: notifications go straight from your own server using your own VAPID credentials, generated automatically on activation.

Everything stays on your site. Subscribers live in your own database, delivery runs through a background queue so large sends never block your site, and every push link is tagged with UTM parameters automatically so traffic shows up correctly in Google Analytics and your other reporting tools. The free plugin covers the full lifecycle out of the box: subscribe button, a customizable opt-in popup, automatic notifications for posts and custom post types, a manual composer, per-user targeting, click tracking with 7-day dashboard stats, delivery history, and GDPR export/erasure. With the optional email fallback, registered users who haven’t subscribed to browser push still get the same notification as a clean HTML email — so no one is left out.

PushAI is device-aware: when a logged-in visitor subscribes, PushAI keeps one active subscription per device type — one mobile, one desktop — so the same person can opt in independently on each device and receive notifications on whichever ones they enabled. Stale and duplicate subscriptions are pruned automatically.

PushAI Pro adds the three things self-hosted push plugins almost never offer out of the box:

  • AI-summarized post digests, powered by OpenAI, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, DeepSeek, or any OpenRouter model — with a template fallback so digests always send, even without an API key.
  • Deep WooCommerce automation — order and stock alerts, order-status updates, abandoned-cart reminders, cross-sell follow-ups, and trending-product pushes.
  • A built-in Progressive Web App (PWA) — an installable manifest and service worker, so visitors can add your site to their home screen without a separate PWA plugin.

Actively developed. New automations, AI providers, and WooCommerce flows ship regularly, and every release is documented in the changelog below. Feature requests and feedback directly shape the roadmap.

Why choose PushAI?

  • You own your subscriber list. Subscriptions live in your WordPress database, never on a third-party platform.
  • Unlimited subscribers and notifications — on Free and Pro. No per-subscriber pricing, no monthly send caps.
  • No third-party SDK or delivery service. Native Web Push + your own VAPID keys, straight from your server.
  • Transparent, flat pricing. Free stays free forever; Pro is one flat price no matter how big your audience gets.
  • AI digests, built in (Pro). Summarize your latest posts and send them on a schedule, across multiple AI providers.
  • WooCommerce automation (Pro). Order, stock, status, abandoned-cart, cross-sell, and trending-product pushes.
  • Built-in PWA (Pro). Make your site installable — no separate PWA plugin required.

Free vs Pro

Both plans include unlimited subscribers, unlimited notifications, the self-hosted setup, and the developer API. Pro adds automation, AI digests, WooCommerce, the built-in PWA, and analytics on top — you only pay for the automation and AI layer, not for audience size.

Free — $0 forever

  • One-click subscribe button (shortcode)
  • Customizable opt-in popup (permission prompt)
  • Automatic new-post notifications
  • Custom post type automation
  • Click tracking & 7-day dashboard stats
  • Manual notification composer
  • Per-user / specific-subscriber targeting
  • Separate mobile & desktop subscriptions
  • Guest subscriptions
  • Email fallback for users without a push subscription
  • Automatic VAPID key generation
  • Background delivery queue with retries
  • Automatic UTM link tagging
  • Delivery history & status
  • Privacy / GDPR export & erasure
  • Developer API (functions + action hooks)

Pro — $21/year — everything in Free, plus:

  • Scheduled AI digests (OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, OpenRouter + template fallback)
  • WooCommerce order & stock alerts
  • WooCommerce order-status & customer notes
  • Abandoned-cart reminders
  • Cross-sell follow-ups
  • “Trending Today” (post & product daily-view alerts)
  • Built-in PWA (installable manifest + service worker)
  • Statistics & analytics (7/30/90-day, CTR, most-clicked links, per-category performance, digest conversion)
  • Site-management admin alerts (pending comments, posts awaiting review, published posts, new subscribers)
  • Comment notifications (authors & replies)

Upgrade to PushAI Pro

PushAI is developed and maintained by PushAI.

Shortcode

Place a subscribe button anywhere with:

[pushai_button]

Optional attributes:

  • label — default button text.
  • on — text shown after notifications are enabled.
  • blocked — text shown when the visitor has blocked notifications.
  • alignleft, center, or right.
  • class — extra CSS classes.

Example:

[pushai_button label="Enable browser notifications" align="center"]

In PHP templates:

<?php echo do_shortcode( '[pushai_button]' ); ?>

The shortcode is also shown on the PushAI Settings screen with a copy button.

Developer API

Queue a notification from a theme or plugin:

pushai_trigger_notification( array(
    'title' => 'Title',
    'body'  => 'Message',
    'url'   => home_url( '/' ),
    'image' => '',
) );

The same notification can be triggered with a WordPress action:

do_action( 'pushai_send_notification', array(
    'title' => 'Title',
    'body'  => 'Message',
    'url'   => home_url( '/' ),
) );

Targeting specific users

By default a notification is delivered to every active subscription. To send it to specific WordPress users instead, pass target_user_id (a single user) or target_user_ids (an array of users). Only subscriptions tied to those user accounts receive the message.

Send to one user:

pushai_trigger_notification( array(
    'title'          => 'Your order shipped',
    'body'           => 'Track it from your account.',
    'url'            => home_url( '/my-account/' ),
    'target_user_id' => 123,
) );

Send to several users:

pushai_trigger_notification( array(
    'title'           => 'Members-only update',
    'body'            => 'A new perk is available.',
    'target_user_ids' => array( 12, 45, 78 ),
) );

Notes on targeting:

  • Only users who subscribed while logged in can be targeted; guest subscriptions have no user account and are never matched.
  • A user with several browsers or devices receives the notification on each active subscription (mobile and desktop are tracked separately).
  • If targeting arguments are supplied but none resolve to a valid user, the notification is rejected with a WP_Error instead of being broadcast to everyone.

Supported arguments

  • title (required) — notification heading.
  • body (required) — notification message.
  • url — link opened when the notification is clicked. Defaults to the site home URL. UTM parameters are appended automatically.
  • image — image URL shown in the notification.
  • target_user_id — a single WordPress user ID to deliver to.
  • target_user_ids — an array of WordPress user IDs to deliver to.
  • source_type — a short label describing what triggered the notification (e.g. post, manual, developer). Metadata only — shown in admin history and used to build the utm_campaign value; it does not affect who receives the message. Defaults to developer.
  • source_id — the ID of the object that triggered the notification, paired with source_type (e.g. the post ID for a post source). Metadata only, not a recipient — use target_user_id/target_user_ids to choose recipients. Defaults to 0.

Available hooks:

  • pushai_should_create_post_notification — filter whether a published post creates a notification.
  • pushai_should_send_to_subscription — filter, per subscription, whether it should receive a given notification.
  • pushai_notification_payload — filter the payload sent to the browser.
  • pushai_utm_parameters — filter (or disable) the UTM parameters appended to push links.
  • pushai_notification_queued — fires after a notification is queued.
  • pushai_notification_failed — fires when a notification fails to send.
  • pushai_notification_delivery_completed — fires after a delivery batch finishes, with success/failed/expired counts.
  • pushai_loaded — fires once PushAI has initialized its services.

Bundled Libraries

PushAI bundles the following open-source libraries in its vendor/ directory. All are MIT-licensed and GPL-compatible.

Third-Party Services

PushAI communicates with two categories of external services. No personal data is sent without user action.

Browser push services

When a visitor subscribes and a notification is delivered, the encrypted push payload is sent directly from your server to the browser’s native push service:

  • Google Chrome / Edge — Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM): Privacy Policy
  • Mozilla Firefox — Mozilla’s Autopush service: Privacy Policy
  • Apple Safari — Apple Push Notification service (APNs): Privacy Policy

This follows the Web Push standard (RFC 8030). Only the encrypted notification payload (title, body, URL, optional image) is transmitted; the subscriber’s email address or identity is never sent. You control the VAPID keys used to sign each push.

PushAI license API (Pro only)

Sites with a PushAI Pro license send license key verification requests to the PushAI license server at wpushai.com. This happens:

  • When the license is first activated.
  • On a periodic background check (at most once per day) to confirm the license remains valid.
  • When the admin manually refreshes the license status.
  • When WordPress checks for Pro plugin updates.

The request includes your site URL (so the license can be validated against the registered domain) and the license key. No personal data beyond these two values is transmitted. PushAI Privacy Policy