Pusher

Pusher is a technology company that provides hosted APIs and developer tools designed to simplify the integration of real-time features into web and mobile applications. Founded in London in 2010 by Max Williams and Damien Tanner, the company set out to provide the infrastructure for features like in-app notifications, chat, real-time dashboards, and live location tracking. Williams, who served as CEO, was passionate about using technology and APIs to improve user experiences.

The company's core products are Channels and Beams. Channels is a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging API that enables developers to build interactive and collaborative features. Beams is an API focused on delivering push notifications to iOS, Android, and web browsers. Pusher's business model is subscription-based, offering tiered plans that scale based on the number of messages and concurrent connections. It serves a global client base of developers and enterprises, including notable names like GitHub, MailChimp, and The Financial Times.

In December 2020, Pusher was acquired by the Dutch omnichannel cloud communications platform, MessageBird, for approximately $35 million. The acquisition was a strategic move by MessageBird to integrate Pusher's real-time notification and in-app messaging capabilities into its broader communications suite ahead of a planned IPO. Following the acquisition, Pusher continues to operate as a standalone product while also being integrated into the MessageBird platform, and its team joined the MessageBird family. Co-founder Max Williams transitioned to a role leading Developer Experience at MessageBird.

Keywords: hosted APIs, real-time messaging, push notifications, developer tools, pub/sub API, WebSocket, in-app chat, live dashboards, location tracking, bi-directional functionality, developer platform, collaboration features, SDKs, MessageBird