You've likely been there: what starts as a "simple notification feature" quickly spirals into building an entire infrastructure from scratch. When you're comparing options like a notifications SDK, you want to know which one will actually save you months of development time instead of creating more headaches.

The truth is, most teams underestimate just how complex notification systems become once you factor in real-time delivery, email fallbacks, user preferences, and mobile push notifications. Let's break down how Liveblocks and Velt stack up for notifications, so you can make the right choice for your project.

TLDR:

• Liveblocks provides notification infrastructure but requires extensive frontend development

• Velt offers complete notification components with both frontend and backend in one SDK

• Velt delivers notifications in 10 lines of code vs thousands with infrastructure-only solutions

• Most teams ship faster with ready-made notification components than building from APIs

How Liveblocks Notifications Work

Liveblocks takes an API-first approach to notifications, focusing primarily on backend infrastructure while leaving most of the frontend work to you. Their system focuses on inbox notifications that users receive, which you then display in your application to create notification trays and user interfaces.

The platform automatically generates notifications from other Liveblocks products like comments and presence, but you can also send custom notifications through server functions. When events occur, Liveblocks uses webhooks to trigger your API endpoints, creating "notification" events that you handle on your backend.

Here's where it gets complex though. While Liveblocks handles the data layer, you're responsible for building the entire notification UI experience. That means creating notification lists, designing interaction patterns, handling read/unread states, and building the visual components that users actually see.

The inbox notifications group multiple activities together and evolve over time, which makes sense for email notifications to avoid flooding users. But this grouping logic adds another layer of complexity when you're building the frontend experience.

Liveblocks provides solid notification infrastructure, but teams often underestimate the development effort required to create polished notification experiences that users actually engage with.

For teams with dedicated frontend resources and specific design requirements, this approach offers flexibility. You get full control over the notification experience, but you're also responsible for building and maintaining all the user-facing components.

How Velt Notifications Work

Velt takes a completely different approach with our notifications SDK. Instead of just providing APIs, they give you both the frontend components and backend infrastructure in one integrated package.

The platform includes pre-built notification components that you can drop into your application with minimal code. We're talking about an in-product inbox, email notifications for re-engagement, and notification badges that work out of the box. No need to build notification lists, design interaction patterns, or handle complex state management.

Here's what makes Velt different: our notifications integrate smoothly with other collaboration features. When someone leaves a comment, mentions a user, or joins a huddle, the notification system automatically handles the entire flow. The commenting SDK and notifications work together without additional integration work.

The implementation is straightforward. You add the Velt SDK to your project, configure your notification preferences, and the components handle everything from real-time updates to email fallbacks. The system supports mentions, reactions, thread notifications, and custom notification types through the same unified interface.

What's particularly useful is how Velt handles the complexity of notification preferences and delivery. Users can control what notifications they receive, how they want to be notified, and the system respects those preferences across all notification types. This level of user control typically requires major development effort with API-first solutions.

The quick implementation guide shows how teams can have working notifications in under an hour, compared to weeks or months of development with infrastructure-only approaches.

Development Complexity and Implementation

Let's be honest about the development effort required for each platform. With Liveblocks, you're building a notification system from scratch using their APIs as the foundation. That means designing UI components, handling real-time updates, managing notification states, and creating all the interaction patterns users expect.

The inbox notifications that Liveblocks provides group activities together, which sounds simple but adds complexity when you're building the frontend. You need to handle how these grouped notifications display, how users interact with them, and how the grouping logic affects the overall user experience.

With Velt, most of this work is already done. The SDK includes notification components that handle real-time updates, state management, and user interactions. You can customize the appearance to match your brand, but the core functionality works immediately.

The difference in implementation time is huge. Teams using infrastructure-only solutions often spend 2-3 months building notification features that work well across different devices and use cases. With component-based solutions, you're looking at days or weeks to get the same functionality.

This goes beyond initial development too. Maintaining notification systems requires ongoing work as you add new notification types, handle edge cases, and optimize for different user behaviors. Component-based solutions handle much of this maintenance automatically through SDK updates.

Feature Completeness and Ecosystem Integration

Liveblocks handles core collaboration infrastructure well, but notifications are just one piece of a complete collaboration experience. Teams often need additional features like live huddles, video recording, AI transcription, contextual commenting, and strong notification systems that work together smoothly.

With Liveblocks, you're typically integrating multiple solutions to create a complete collaboration experience. Their notifications work within their ecosystem, but you'll need additional tools for features like video calls, screen recording, or advanced commenting workflows. Each integration adds complexity and maintenance overhead.

Velt provides 25+ collaboration features including notifications as part of a unified system. When someone starts a video huddle, leaves a contextual comment, or shares their screen, the notification system automatically handles all these events without additional integration work.

The ecosystem integration extends to customization as well. With Velt's complete customization options, you can modify notification behavior, appearance, and delivery preferences while maintaining consistency across all collaboration features.

This completeness matters more than teams initially realize. Users expect notification systems to handle all collaboration activities consistently. When you're piecing together multiple solutions, creating that consistent experience requires substantial additional development work.

For teams building specific use cases like document collaboration, design reviews, or data analysis tools, having all collaboration features work together through unified notifications greatly improves the user experience.

When to Choose Each Platform

The choice between Liveblocks and Velt often comes down to your team's resources and timeline. If you have dedicated engineering, PM, and design resources for collaboration features, Liveblocks' infrastructure approach gives you maximum flexibility to build exactly what you want.

But honestly, most teams underestimate the development effort required for polished notification experiences. Building notification systems that users actually engage with involves complex decisions about timing, grouping, delivery preferences, and cross-platform consistency.

Choose Liveblocks when:

• You have dedicated frontend developers for collaboration features who want to build it out

• Your notification requirements are highly unique or unusual

• You have time for 2-3 months of notification development and ongoing maintenance

Choose Velt when:

• You want to ship notification features quickly without extensive development

• Your team prefers focusing on core product features rather than collaboration infrastructure

• You need notifications that integrate smoothly with other collaboration tools

• You want ongoing feature updates and maintenance handled through SDK updates

The Liveblocks to Velt migration is straightforward if you decide to switch later, but starting with a complete solution often makes more sense for most teams.

Consider your specific use cases and whether notification complexity is worth the additional development effort. For most SaaS products, notifications are important but not the primary value proposition.

FAQ

How long does it take to implement notifications with each platform?

With Liveblocks, expect 2-3 months for a complete notification system including frontend components, email integration, and mobile support. Velt notifications can be implemented in a few days to a week, depending on customization requirements.

Can I customize the notification appearance with both platforms?

Liveblocks gives you complete control since you're building the UI from scratch. Velt provides extensive customization options through themes, templates, and custom styling while maintaining the underlying functionality.

Which platform handles email notifications better?

Liveblocks requires you to build email notification templates and delivery logic yourself. Velt includes email notifications with customizable templates and automatic delivery based on user preferences.

How do the platforms handle notification preferences and user controls?

With Liveblocks, you need to build preference management systems yourself. Velt includes built-in user preference controls for notification types, delivery methods, and timing preferences.

Conclusion

Building notification systems is more complex than most teams initially realize, but you don't have to tackle it from scratch. While both platforms offer solid solutions, Velt provides complete notification infrastructure that handles real-time delivery, email fallbacks, user preferences, and mobile push notifications out of the box. You can implement a complete notifications SDK without the months of development headaches. Velt makes it easy to ship sophisticated notification features so you can focus on what makes your product unique.