Push Notifications vs Email Alerts for Breaking Events
If your alerting workflow has only one channel, you are accepting unnecessary risk. Push and email do different jobs.
When Push Wins
- Breaking market moves and threshold breaches.
- Operational incidents that need immediate triage.
- Short-lived windows where reaction time changes outcome.
When Email Wins
- Audit trail and searchable history.
- Long-form context and source summaries.
- Lower-priority alerts that should not interrupt focus.
Best Practice: Channel Pairing
Use push for urgent signals and email for confirmation + archive. This combination gives speed and traceability.
Simple Policy Template
- Urgent: push + email
- Important, not urgent: email only
- Experimental watches: email only until tuned
Common mistake
Teams often disable push after a noisy week. The real fix is watch quality and dedupe tuning, not removing your fastest channel.
Build a Better Alert Stack
Start with both channels enabled, then tune thresholds and watch text until noise drops. Keep push for the watches tied to direct decisions.