meijer.works

MagicBell

MagicBell is a leading notification infrastructure platform powering user notifications for high-profile clients like Disney, Pitch, and GitBook. It simplifies notification delivery across channels like SMS, email, in-app, Slack, and more, ensuring end-users only receive notifications on their preferred channels.

magicbell

Challenge

Modern applications require sophisticated notification systems to keep users informed without overwhelming them. The core challenges MagicBell solves include:

  • Ensuring users only receive notifications once, on their preferred channels (e.g., reading a notification in-app prevents duplicate emails or SMS).
  • Providing developers with an intuitive API to integrate notifications into their applications seamlessly.
  • Scaling notification delivery for high-profile clients with complex requirements and large user bases.
  • Building a powerful, user-friendly dashboard to manage notifications, projects, and analytics.

Solution

As the Founding Frontend Engineer, I played a pivotal role in shaping MagicBell’s platform. Key contributions included:

  • Frontend Migration: Migrated the frontend from React-on-Rails to Remix, allowing the frontend and backend to be developed independently. This improved developer productivity and frontend performance.

  • SDK Development: Created multiple JavaScript SDKs to streamline integration for developers, including:

    • magicbell: The core JavaScript API client.
    • @magicbell/cli: A CLI tool for developers.
    • @magicbell/embeddable: A hosted inbox
    • @magicbell/react: React components to easily built customized inboxes

  • Code Generators: Automated SDK creation based on the OpenAPI specification, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency across SDKs.

  • Smart Delivery: Implemented "smart delivery" using Sidekiq for scheduling notification pipelines. This allowed customers to configure complex delivery plans, such as:

  • Split Inbox: Added advanced features like split inboxes to the React SDK, enabling users to organize notifications by category or topic.

  • Dashboard Development: Built a robust dashboard for configuring projects, exploring analytics, and managing users, broadcasts, and deliveries.

Results

MagicBell’s platform delivered measurable value to its clients:

  • High Adoption: Major clients like Disney (Hulu), Pitch, and WinAmp adopted MagicBell to handle their notification needs.
  • Scalability: The infrastructure efficiently handled large-scale notification pipelines across multiple channels.
  • Developer Productivity: The APIs, SDKs, and CLI tools significantly reduced the time and effort required for developers to integrate notifications into their applications.

Lessons Learned

  1. Focus on Primitives: Getting the foundational building blocks right is essential for building a scalable and flexible platform.
  2. Team Insights: Working with developers from renowned companies like reinforced that good engineering practices and collaboration are universal, regardless of company size or fame.
  3. Value of Automation: Automating SDK generation saved significant development time while maintaining quality and consistency.

Conclusion

MagicBell redefines how notifications are managed, enabling its clients to deliver user-centric notifications effortlessly. By focusing on scalability, flexibility, and developer experience, the platform became a trusted partner for some of the most recognizable names in tech and entertainment.