Why people look for Airship alternatives
Airship invented much of mobile engagement: it claims the first push notification service, the first in-app message and the first mobile wallet pass. Today it sells an enterprise experience platform to brands like Alaska Airlines, The Home Depot, McDonald's and PayPal, with the widest SDK coverage in the category (Apple platforms including tvOS and visionOS, Android TV and Fire OS, React Native, Flutter, Capacitor, Cordova, Unity and .NET MAUI). Teams look elsewhere mainly because of how it is sold and billed.
Pricing is a quote
Neither the Experience Platform nor the self-serve Essentials plan shows a price. Vendr reports a median contract around $37,800 a year, with apps under 1 million MAU typically in the tens of thousands and much larger apps in the hundreds of thousands. Small apps cannot budget without a sales call.
Many billing units
MAU covers the core, but email and SMS are packages, native app experiences are billed per impression, wallet passes per pass installed or updated, feature flags per active flag, and Performance Analytics on addressable users. Each one is reasonable on its own. Together they make the annual cost hard to predict.
More platform than many apps need
Reviewers describe a robust but complex dashboard and analytics that take effort to use. A subscription app that mostly sends trial reminders, billing notices and win-backs will use a small slice of Airship.
| Your situation | Keep Airship when... | Better alternative |
|---|---|---|
| TV, visionOS, Unity or wallet-heavy app | Platform coverage is a hard requirement | Stay with Airship |
| Subscription app on RevenueCat or Superwall | Push reliability is the main concern | Sequenzy |
| Push and in-app only, small team | You need enterprise support | OneSignal |
| Every channel in one enterprise contract | App experiences matter most | Braze |
| Wallet passes at published prices | You want Airship's scale and support | Pushwoosh |
The alternatives, honestly
Best Airship alternative for subscription apps: Sequenzy
Sequenzy connects natively to RevenueCat, Superwall and Adapty. Subscription webhooks become trial, purchase, billing-issue, cancellation and churn events, and a trial-ending event fires 3 days before each store trial converts. One sequence can send an email, a push and an in-app message and stop when the purchase arrives. iOS Live Activities can be started, updated and ended from your backend through the API, CLI or MCP server. Push and in-app are unlimited on every plan, and you pay per email (free up to 2,500 emails/mo, then $19/mo for 15k emails).
The gap is platform reach and app experiences. Sequenzy has SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter only, no wallet passes or App Clips, and no native screens or Message Center. Contacts also need an email address, so anonymous users only get push after they sign in. Our guide to email marketing for subscription apps covers the flows that matter most.
Best self-serve Airship alternative: OneSignal
OneSignal is free up to 1,000 MAU and $19 a month plus $0.012 per mobile MAU on Growth, with in-app messages and Live Activities included with push. It is the fastest way off a quote-based contract if push and in-app are most of what you use.
Best enterprise Airship alternative: Braze
Braze is the choice when email and SMS matter as much as push and you want one contract for all of them. Expect to pay more: Vendr's Braze median is about $88,500 a year.
Best Airship alternative with analytics: CleverTap
CleverTap adds funnels, cohorts and flows to push, in-app and App Inbox, publishes Core pricing from $85 a month for 5,000 MAU and offers a 30-day trial. Email and SMS are add-ons.
Best Airship alternative for wallet passes at published prices: Pushwoosh
Pushwoosh is the only alternative here with wallet passes, alongside Live Activities, Android Live Updates and a message inbox, for $13 per 1,000 MAU with email and messengers included.
Best European Airship alternative: Batch
Batch is an independent Paris-based mobile CRM with app push, in-app, email, SMS, WhatsApp and mobile landing pages, positioned as a sovereign European platform. Pricing is demo-only.
The pricing comparison
Prices as published in November 2026, or the vendor's sales model and Vendr's reported contract size where no price is published.
| Platform | Entry price | Billing unit | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airship | Quote, Vendr median ~$37.8k/yr | MAU plus package units | None published |
| Sequenzy | $19/mo for 15k emails | Emails sent | 2,500 emails, push unlimited |
| OneSignal | $19/mo plus usage | MAU and sends | Up to 1,000 mobile MAU |
| Braze | Vendr median ~$88.5k/yr | MAU, profiles, credits | None |
| CleverTap | $85/mo up to 5k MAU (Core) | MAU or data points | 30-day trial |
| MoEngage | Sales-led, 1-year minimum | Monthly tracked users | None |
| Customer.io | $100/mo for 5k profiles | Profiles | Trial, Startup Program |
| Pushwoosh | $13 per 1,000 MAU | MAU | Up to 1,000 MAU |
| Firebase FCM | Free | None | Free at any volume |
Airship's MAU counts unique users who opened your app in a calendar month, which is narrower than some competitors' definitions. When comparing quotes, line up the units and the add-ons, not just the headline. Our roundup of push notification services compares billing units across the category.
When Airship is still the right choice
| Stay with Airship when... | Switch when... |
|---|---|
| You ship on TV, visionOS, Fire OS or Unity | Your app is iOS and Android only |
| Wallet passes, App Clips and Scenes are core to the product | You mostly send push, email and in-app messages |
| You need push at very large scale with enterprise support | A small team wants self-serve tools and published prices |
| Your quote is competitive for your MAU | Package add-ons keep growing the renewal |
Airship remains the most complete app-first platform for large brands. If you use a fraction of it, or your lifecycle program is driven by subscription events and email, the alternatives above are cheaper and easier to run. For a broader view, see our list of customer engagement platforms.
