A notification service provides means to send a notice to many persons at once. For example, if a flood were likely, residents of a community could be warned it time to evacuate. If a school were suddenly closed for the day, students or parents could be told not come to school, or told to report to an alternate location. American Airlines can notify passengers by cellphone two hours before a flight's departure with information on the flight's status and gate number.

When notification services are used for emergency notification, they are often called Emergency Mass Notification Services (EMNS).
Notification services and emergency notification services can provide a wide range of options, including:

• Notifications may be by e-mail, telephone, fax, text messages, etc.
• Identical messages may be broadcast, or the messages may be personalized.
• The notification service equipment may be owned by the sender, or may owned by a service provider.
• A message may, or may not require a response.

See also

• Apple Push Notification Service
  Apple Push Notification Service
  The Apple Push Notification Service is a service created by Apple Inc. that was launched together with iOS 3.0 on June 17, 2009. It uses push technology through a constantly-open IP connection to forward notifications from the servers of third party applications to the Apple devices; such...
  
  
• Android Cloud to Device Messaging Service
  Android Cloud to Device Messaging Service
  Android Cloud to Device Messaging is a push notification service that helps developers send data from servers to their applications on Android devices which launched together with Android 2.2 by Google. The service provides a simple, lightweight mechanism that servers can use to tell mobile...
  
  
• Boomerang Software Framework
  Boomerang Software Framework
  Boomerang is a notification framework for professional developers that provides a service oriented infrastructure and a rapid developmentinterface. The infrastructure supports e-mail out, twitter out , printers, fax servers, file/ftp servers, incoming e-mail and twitter in...
  
  
• Blackboard Connect
• SQL Server Notification Services
  SQL Server Notification Services
  SQL Server Notification Services is a platform developed by Microsoft for the development and deployment of notification applications based on SQL Server Technology and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Notification Services offers a scalable server engine on which to run notification applications,...
  
  

External links

• Example of Emergency Mass Notification System used by University of Missouri
• An example of a web-orented notification service provider