OneSignal
YC S11San Francisco, US Β· Founded 2011 Β· 150 employees Β· Hiring Β· 9 known investors
OneSignal provides customer engagement and messaging infrastructure that enables businesses to send personalized, omnichannel communications to their customers at scale. The platform serves mobile app developers and businesses of all sizes across industries.
Also known as Hiptic Β· Hiptic Games
Founders & leadershipΒ· Y Combinator alumni (S11)
OneSignal was founded in 2011 by George Deglin and Long Vo.
Investors Β· 9
Also in the syndicate Β· 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026OneSignal operates a customer engagement and lifecycle messaging platform that lets businesses send and automate communications across mobile push notifications, web push, email, SMS/RCS, in-app messages, and iOS Live Activities from a single system. Core platform capabilities include no-code Journeys workflow automation, audience segmentation and tags, personalization, A/B testing, delivery analytics, deep linking, multi-language sends, confirmed receipt, custom outcomes, and event streams to external systems, plus integrations with third-party CRMs, analytics tools and data pipelines such as Mixpanel, Amplitude, Segment, HubSpot, Adobe Audience Manager and Snowflake.
The product is distributed largely through developer SDKs β Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, Expo, Unity and web β alongside a REST API with official client libraries for .NET, Rust, Go, Ruby, PHP, Java and Python maintained in the company's public GitHub organization. More recently the company has positioned around "autonomous lifecycle marketing," describing an autonomy ladder from manual dashboard use to AI-run campaign operation. Announced AI components include OneSignal AI (an in-product agent that drafts copy, designs emails, analyzes message performance and builds multi-step Journeys), Brand Kit (centralized brand voice, audience and visual guardrails used by the AI) and OneSignal MCP, which exposes platform capabilities to external AI tools and agents.
Founding story
OneSignal grew out of a Y Combinator-backed mobile game studio, Hiptic Games, which went through the Summer 2011 batch. While building mobile applications, the founders found customer engagement tooling inadequate β non-personalized push notifications with no segmentation, personalization or campaign measurement, and email platforms that required uploading CSV lists β so they built the messaging product themselves and pivoted the company toward it, adopting a mission of "democratizing customer engagement."
Business model
OneSignal sells software-as-a-service on a freemium, self-service plus enterprise sales model. A free tier provides unlimited mobile push sends, 10,000 monthly email sends, basic analytics and automation, and beta access to MCP and OneSignal AI. The month-to-month Growth plan starts at $19/month plus channel-based usage fees, while annual Professional and Enterprise plans are custom-priced with volume discounting, dedicated success management, SLAs and premium integrations.
Paid plans combine a fixed platform fee with variable usage charges by channel: mobile push is billed per monthly active mobile user ($0.012 on the Growth plan) with unlimited sends, web push is billed per subscriber ($0.004 on Growth), and email and SMS are billed by send volume (email $1.50 per 1,000 sends after 20,000 free monthly sends on Growth). Professional and Enterprise tiers are sold on annual contracts with custom, volume-based pricing.
Traction
Company-reported figures cite 200,000+ apps powered, 1.5 billion monthly active users reached, 1.3 trillion messages sent per year and one in four app publishers as users. At the 2022 Series C the company reported more than 1.7 million registered marketers and developers, over a million business customers and 10-12 billion messages sent daily, with support for companies in 140 countries. Published customer results include Beach Bum Games (+250% click-through rates, +140% paid user reactivation), Bitcoin.com (+15% average daily transaction attempts, +11% completed transactions) and Betmate (+600% monthly active paying users, +625% user spending per month).
Latest developments
The company has announced an AI strategy centered on autonomous lifecycle marketing, launching OneSignal AI, Brand Kit and the OneSignal MCP (available on the ChatGPT and Cursor marketplaces and via Smithery, with a Claude marketplace listing described as coming soon), all available on the free plan. It has said a OneSignal Slack Agent and an API for creating, editing and analyzing Journeys are planned. Its website messaging and documentation now cover SMS/RCS and iOS Live Activities alongside push, email and in-app channels.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
The company describes itself as the leading omnichannel customer engagement solution and the world's leading notification provider. Company materials state that one in four app publishers uses OneSignal, that it powers about 200,000 apps and 1.5 billion monthly active users, and that it delivers roughly 1.3 trillion messages a year; earlier statements cited over a million businesses, 12 billion messages daily and one in five apps, and at the time of the 2022 Series C, 500,000 mobile applications (nearly 15% of apps) and one in seven mobile apps. It holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating on G2 with category badges including Mobile Marketing Leader and Easiest to Use (Enterprise).
OneSignal positions on ease and speed of implementation β same-day integration via SDKs or an AI setup prompt, no-code message and journey builders β combined with a single platform spanning push, web push, email, SMS/RCS, in-app messaging and Live Activities, rather than email-first tooling with weak cross-channel support. It emphasizes a substantial free tier (unlimited mobile push sends), low entry pricing, powerful APIs and headless operation via MCP, and an AI layer that automates campaign drafting, sending, testing and optimization within customer-defined brand guardrails.
Technology
The platform is delivered through native and cross-platform SDKs (Android/Kotlin, iOS/Objective-C and Swift, website/TypeScript, Flutter, React Native, Expo, Unity) and a documented REST API with OpenAPI specifications and official Go, Rust, Ruby, PHP, Java, Python and .NET clients. Underlying concepts include Users, Subscriptions, External IDs and OneSignal IDs for identity resolution across channels, tags for custom metadata, and dynamic segmentation. Recent AI work includes an in-product agent, a Brand Kit configuration layer and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server distributed via the ChatGPT and Cursor marketplaces and Smithery, enabling headless use of the platform.
Go-to-market
Distribution is developer-led and self-service: teams install an SDK or copy an AI integration prompt and can start on a free plan without sales contact, upgrading to the $19/month Growth tier as usage grows. Larger accounts are handled by a sales organization ("Talk to sales", contact-sales Professional and Enterprise tiers, jump-start onboarding and dedicated success managers). The company also supports the funnel with developer documentation, open-source SDK repositories on GitHub, a blog, YouTube channel and community channels, and markets through G2 category ratings and badges.
B2C companies and app publishers of all sizes, from startups on the free tier to large enterprises, with marketers, growth teams and developers as primary users. Referenced verticals include mobile gaming, fintech, health and wellness, retail and media. Named customers include Zynga, USA Today, Bitcoin.com, Upwork, Tribune, Whole Foods, Philips, DHL, Royal Caribbean, Porsche, Nexstar, Peapod, Beach Bum Games and Betmate.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco per its Y Combinator profile, with listed offices in San Mateo, CA; New York, NY; London, UK; and a partner presence in Singapore. Roles are advertised as US-remote. The company states it serves customers in 140 countries and has used funding to expand in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
History
The company entered Y Combinator in Summer 2011 as mobile game studio Hiptic Games before pivoting into customer messaging infrastructure, and later participated in YC Growth (S20). It expanded from push notifications into email, SMS, in-app messaging and Journeys automation, raised a $50 million Series C led by BAM Elevate in September 2022 with participation from SignalFire and Zach Coelius, and added Jamie McGurk of BAM Elevate to its board. It announced support for iOS Live Activities in December 2022 and an investment from ServiceNow Ventures in February 2023. Most recently it launched an AI product line β OneSignal AI, Brand Kit and OneSignal MCP β around a strategy it calls autonomous lifecycle marketing.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Founder mafia
The OneSignal mafia β7 people who came through OneSignal went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors Β· 5
by search overlap
Companies competing with OneSignal for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 5
launches, deals, and filingsOneSignal announced $50 million in Series C funding led by BAM Elevate with participation from existing investors SignalFire and Zach Coelius, to fund omnichannel messaging and orchestration, the Journeys workflow tool, email capabilities, analytics, and geographic expansion in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
$50M source β
In conjunction with the Series C, Jamie McGurk, COO at BAM Elevate and formerly a Managing Partner at Coatue Management and Operating Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined OneSignal's board of directors.
OneSignal announced an AI product line: OneSignal AI, an in-product agent that generates message copy, designs emails, analyzes performance and builds multi-step Journeys; Brand Kit, a centralized configuration for audience, voice, tone and visual guardrails; and OneSignal MCP, available on the ChatGPT and Cursor marketplaces and via Smithery, enabling headless use of the platform. All are available on the free plan.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- OneSignalonesignal.com Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does OneSignal do?
- OneSignal is an omnichannel customer engagement platform for mobile/web push, email, SMS/RCS, and in-app messaging.
- Who founded OneSignal?
- OneSignal was founded by George Deglin, Long Vo in 2011.
- Who are OneSignal's investors?
- OneSignal's investors include Coelius Capital, Hemisphere Ventures LLC, HubSpot Ventures, NewView Capital, Nimble Partners, SignalFire, Y Combinator, Yes VC.
- Where is OneSignal headquartered?
- OneSignal is headquartered in San Francisco, US.