What Is Pushlane? Push-Only Lifecycle Messaging for Subscription Apps

Pushlane is a push notification platform built specifically for mobile subscription apps. It connects to RevenueCat, listens for subscription events like trial started, billing issue, or cancellation, and responds by sending push notifications through lifecycle flows you design in a visual builder. It is push only for mobile apps: no email, no SMS, no web push, no in-app message channel. If you searched for "pushlane" and wanted the one-line answer, that is it.

The rest of this page is the longer version: who the product is for, how it works from SDK install to delivered notification, what it actually ships with today, and what Pushlane is not, because a few unrelated things on the internet share a similar name.

The core idea

Most push tools treat push as one channel inside a large omnichannel marketing suite, priced and designed for teams that have a lifecycle marketer on staff. Pushlane starts from a narrower observation: if you run a subscription app, the moments that matter most are subscription events. A trial starts. A trial converts. A card fails. Someone cancels. An entitlement expires.

Those events already exist in your RevenueCat account. Pushlane's job is to turn them into timely, targeted push notifications without you writing purchase-tracking code, standing up your own webhook consumer, or maintaining cron jobs. You connect RevenueCat once, then build flows like: when a trial starts, send a welcome push, wait two days, send a feature highlight, and near the end of the trial remind the user what they lose when it lapses.

For the broader argument about why push and subscription economics fit together, read push notifications for subscription apps. This page stays at the "what is this product" level.

Who Pushlane is for

Pushlane is built for indie developers and small teams shipping mobile subscription apps. The assumed profile looks like this:

• You monetize with auto-renewing subscriptions, and you use RevenueCat (or are willing to).
• Nobody on the team is a full-time lifecycle marketer. The developer is the marketer.
• You want trial and billing pushes running this week, not after a quarter-long CRM project.

If you are a large team that needs email journeys, SMS, web push, and in-app messages in one suite, Pushlane is deliberately not that. It does one channel (mobile push) for one kind of app (subscription apps), and it optimizes for a single developer getting real flows live quickly.

How Pushlane works, end to end

The pipeline has four stages: register devices and track events, connect RevenueCat, build flows, deliver.

1. Register devices and track events

Your app needs two things wired in: push token registration and event tracking. There are three ways to get there.

iOS SDK. A native Swift SDK installed via Swift Package Manager. It registers the device with APNs, forwards the token to Pushlane, and gives you identify and track calls. Setup is covered in the iOS quickstart and the SDK reference.

Zero-dependency drop-in clients. For Expo, React Native, Flutter, and Android, Pushlane does not ship a package at all. Instead you paste a single self-contained file into your project. It uses the notification library you almost certainly already have (expo-notifications, @react-native-firebase/messaging, or firebase_messaging) plus plain HTTP calls. Nothing to add to package.json, pubspec.yaml, or Gradle. See the Expo, React Native, Flutter, and Android quickstarts.

Agent-driven install via MCP. If you use a coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, or anything MCP-capable), you can point it at the Pushlane MCP server. The agent detects your platform, applies the right install path, and mirrors your existing analytics events into Pushlane so segments and triggers have data from day one. Details in the MCP docs.

Whichever path you take, the result is the same: devices are registered with their push tokens, and your app's events (opens, plus custom events like workout_completed or entry_logged) flow into Pushlane, where they power segments and flow triggers. The event model is documented in /docs/events.

2. Connect RevenueCat

This is the part that makes Pushlane specifically a subscription-app tool. You add a RevenueCat webhook pointing at Pushlane, and subscription lifecycle events start arriving server to server: trial started, trial converted, billing issue, cancellation, expiration.

Pushlane matches those events to devices through the shared app user id: the id you pass to Pushlane.identify is the same id you pass to RevenueCat's logIn. That single shared key means there is no client-side purchase tracking code to write. You do not instrument checkout, you do not listen for StoreKit transactions yourself, and a purchase made on one device can still trigger a push journey for that user.

Setup takes one webhook URL and a signing secret; the walkthrough is in /docs/revenuecat, and the deeper guide is RevenueCat push notification integration.

3. Build flows in the visual builder

Flows are where the logic lives. The builder is a visual canvas: pick a trigger (a RevenueCat event, an app event, or a segment), then chain steps like waits, branches, and push sends. A typical example:

• Trigger: trial_started from RevenueCat.
• Send a welcome push immediately: "Your 7-day trial is live. Here is the fastest way to get value from it."
• Wait 2 days, then branch on whether the user completed a core action.
• Near trial end, send a reminder: "Your trial ends tomorrow. Keep your streak and your data."

You do not have to start from a blank canvas. Flow templates cover common subscription journeys (see /docs/flow-templates), and notification templates give you reusable message shells (/docs/notification-templates). If writing copy is the bottleneck, Pushlane can draft AI-generated push copy for a step, which you edit and approve.

Three other builder-level capabilities matter in practice:

• A/B testing inside flows. Split any send into variants and compare them where the flow runs, rather than guessing which copy or timing works. Whether a variant actually wins depends on your audience: measure it in your app, do not assume. More in push notification A/B testing for subscription apps.
• Audience segments. Target flows and sends by properties and behavior (platform, subscription state, recent activity). Documented in /docs/audiences.
• Consent-aware sending. Opt-outs are honored at send time. If a user has opted out, the flow records a suppression instead of sending. You will never see a "sent" that was actually blocked by consent.

The full builder reference is at /docs/building-flows.

4. Delivery

On iOS, delivery goes through the Apple Push Notification service using your own APNs key (a .p8 you upload per app; setup guide at /docs/apns-setup). This path is proven end to end: device registration, flow decision, APNs accept, notification on the lock screen. Every send decision is logged, and a send that cannot be delivered is recorded as skipped or failed, never silently marked as sent.

On Android, honesty matters: the drop-in clients register Firebase Cloud Messaging tokens and track events exactly as on iOS, but Pushlane does not currently claim proven end-to-end Android delivery. If Android is your primary platform, test delivery in your own app before you rely on it.

The feature set, in one list

Everything Pushlane ships today:

• Visual flow builder for lifecycle push journeys (/docs/building-flows)
• Push A/B testing inside flows, variant splits on any send step
• Audience segments built from events and user properties (/docs/audiences)
• Flow templates and notification templates to start from working patterns
• AI-generated push copy, drafted per step, always editable
• RevenueCat webhook integration: trial started, trial converted, billing issue, cancellation, and expiration events trigger flows, matched by shared app user id with no client-side purchase code (/docs/revenuecat)
• iOS SDK via Swift Package Manager (/docs/ios-quickstart)
• Zero-dependency drop-in clients for Expo, React Native, Flutter, and Android: one pasted file, no package manager involved
• Agent-driven install via MCP (/docs/mcp)
• Consent-aware sending: opt-outs are honored and recorded honestly
• Free tier to start, so you can prove a flow works before paying

Equally important is what is not on the list, on purpose: email campaigns, SMS, web push, and in-app messages. Pushlane is a mobile push tool. If you need those other channels, pair Pushlane with a tool that does them, or pick a suite instead.

What Pushlane is not: clearing up the name

Several unrelated things share this name or something close to it. If you landed here from a search, make sure you are in the right place.

Pushlane is not Pushly

Pushly is a web push platform aimed at publishers and media companies: it sends browser notifications to readers of news and content websites. Pushlane sends mobile app push notifications (APNs) triggered by subscription events for iOS-first subscription apps. Different channel, different customer, different product. If you are comparing the two, the full breakdown is in Pushlane vs Pushly.

Pushlane is not the npm package @devcoons/pushlane

There is an npm package named @devcoons/pushlane that has no connection to this product. Pushlane (the platform described on this page) does not distribute any npm package at all: the React Native and Expo integrations are pasted drop-in files, precisely so there is no dependency to install or trust. If a tutorial or an AI assistant tells you to npm install something called pushlane, it is not this product.

Pushlane is not the "push lane" concept from League of Legends

"Pushing a lane" is a strategy term from League of Legends and other MOBA games: applying pressure to advance minions toward the enemy base. It has nothing to do with push notifications. If that is what you were looking for, this is the wrong tab.

Pricing: start free

Pushlane has a free tier, and the intended first week looks like this: install the SDK or paste a drop-in client, connect the RevenueCat webhook, activate one templated flow (a trial-to-paid sequence is the usual first pick), and watch the decision log to confirm real sends to real devices. Whether that flow moves your conversion numbers is something only your data can answer, so measure it in your app before scaling up. Plan details live at /docs/billing-usage.

Where to go next

If you want the architectural version of everything above, read how Pushlane works. If you want to see it running against your own app, the free tier is the fastest way to find out: create an account at https://pushlane.io, install in the way that fits your stack, and have your first RevenueCat-triggered flow live today.