Do I have to rebuild my monitoring systems?

No. One HTTP call gets a different address and a different key. There is no SDK and no library that would have to be installed, and the field names stay the same.

Does PagerDeck ignore the priority my system sends?

No, it treats it as a suggestion. Without a matching rule a suggested urgency becomes the level set aside for it. The suggestion does not disappear, it just stops being the last word.

Can PagerDeck break through a Focus and the silent switch?

The high level breaks through a Focus. For the critical level, which also overrides the silent switch, Apple requires an entitlement granted per app and the user's consent on the device. As long as both are not in place, critical falls back to high, visible in the history and without an alert being lost.

Is there a PagerDeck for Android?

Not today. On Apple devices delivery runs through Apple's service, on the desktop through the Windows app, which holds its connection open itself. Android has neither; there the history in a browser remains. Whoever needs to wake an Android is right with Pushover, and that stands here because it is true and because finding it out after signing up would be the expensive way to learn it.

Can I run both at the same time?

Yes, and for the first few days that is the calmest way to do it. Most monitoring systems allow several recipients, so the same event travels both ways until you trust the rules.

Does the all-clear cost an alert as well?

No. Closing an incident is not an alert: it creates no notification, reaches no phone and counts against no quota. Anyone who used to send a second message saying “back up again” paid for it and set off a second sound anyway. Here the monitoring system calls the same dedup key once more, the incident is closed, and nobody is woken doing it. That holds even when the quota is exhausted: otherwise precisely the incidents there were too many of would stay open.

PagerDeck or Pushover

Both put a push notification on your phone. The difference is who decides how loud it is.

Pushover is a good tool and was the obvious one for a long time. It made a clear decision: the sender sets the priority, per message, and the service carries it out. This page describes why PagerDeck made that decision differently and which of the two fits you.

The one difference

Who decides whether an alert wakes you at four in the morning?

Pushover

With Pushover, the system sending the alert. It puts the priority into the request and the receiver gets whatever it says. Whoever runs ten connected systems has ten places where that is configured, and it is often configured by somebody who is not the one whose phone rings.

PagerDeck

With PagerDeck, you. The sender suggests an urgency, nothing more. A rule chain in your account turns it into the alert level, by source, tags, text pattern, time of day and weekday. One place, and it belongs to whoever gets woken up.

Side by side

The Pushover column describes its design, not its quality. Prices are on the pricing page.

Point	Pushover	PagerDeck
Who sets the level	The sender, per message	The receiver, by rule chain
Where the decision happens	At the sender, before the request goes out	Server-side on arrival and again on the device
Rules by source, tags and text pattern	Not part of the design; quiet hours apply per device	Rule chain per account, order matters
Time of day and weekday as a condition	Quiet hours, for everything at once	Time windows per rule
Escalation and repeat until acknowledged	Available, but requested by the sender	Available, decided by the receiver
Collapsing open incidents	Not part of the design	Deduplication key per incident
The all-clear, once the trouble is over	Another message, and it counts against the quota	One call closes the incident, and it counts against no quota
Intake by mail	One address per account, on the dashboard	Its own address per source, revocable one by one, from Business
Connecting existing systems	HTTP call with an application key	The same call, a different address, the same field names
Platforms	iOS, Android and desktop	iPhone, iPad, Mac and Windows, plus the web dashboard in a browser
Billing	One-off payment per platform	Ongoing subscription, two plans by allowance

What a switch costs

Little work, and that is not a sales point but a property of the interface. Whatever talks to Pushover today changes its address: the route /1/messages.json takes the same field names and the same encoding. The real work then appears somewhere else, namely in writing the rules down, and that is precisely the work nobody could do before.

When Pushover is the better choice

This page would be worthless without an answer to that. There are three cases, and in all three Pushover is the more honest tool:

You need Android. There is an app for iPhone and iPad, and one for Windows on the desktop; on Android only the history in a browser remains today.
A single system sends you alerts and you own it yourself. Then the priority belongs with the sender exactly where it is, and a rule chain would be a layer with no job.
You want to pay once and never hear about it again. That is a legitimate expectation and PagerDeck does not meet it: what runs here is a delivery service, and it is paid for continuously.

Frequently asked about the comparison

Do I have to rebuild my monitoring systems?: No. One HTTP call gets a different address and a different key. There is no SDK and no library that would have to be installed, and the field names stay the same.
Does PagerDeck ignore the priority my system sends?: No, it treats it as a suggestion. Without a matching rule a suggested urgency becomes the level set aside for it. The suggestion does not disappear, it just stops being the last word.
Can PagerDeck break through a Focus and the silent switch?: The high level breaks through a Focus. For the critical level, which also overrides the silent switch, Apple requires an entitlement granted per app and the user's consent on the device. As long as both are not in place, critical falls back to high, visible in the history and without an alert being lost.
Is there a PagerDeck for Android?: Not today. On Apple devices delivery runs through Apple's service, on the desktop through the Windows app, which holds its connection open itself. Android has neither; there the history in a browser remains. Whoever needs to wake an Android is right with Pushover, and that stands here because it is true and because finding it out after signing up would be the expensive way to learn it.
Can I run both at the same time?: Yes, and for the first few days that is the calmest way to do it. Most monitoring systems allow several recipients, so the same event travels both ways until you trust the rules.
Does the all-clear cost an alert as well?: No. Closing an incident is not an alert: it creates no notification, reaches no phone and counts against no quota. Anyone who used to send a second message saying “back up again” paid for it and set off a second sound anyway. Here the monitoring system calls the same dedup key once more, the incident is closed, and nobody is woken doing it. That holds even when the quota is exhausted: otherwise precisely the incidents there were too many of would stay open.

Fourteen days, full feature set, no payment method

The most honest comparison is the one you run yourself. Create an account, connect one source, let the same alerts travel both ways.

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