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Migrating to Natom from another provider

How to switch web push platform without losing your audience: what happens technically, the real-world timeline, and the step-by-step checklist.

The truth no provider likes to tell you

Push subscribers cannot be exported. This is not a limitation of Natom or of your current provider: it is how the technology works. Every push subscription is cryptographically tied to the keys of the provider that created it; an export file of those tokens would be worthless to anyone else. Any platform promising to "import" another one's subscribers is selling something that technically does not exist.

The good news is that migration works anyway, for one precise reason:

The notification permission belongs to your domain, not to the provider. Whoever accepted notifications on yoursite.com accepted them for yoursite.com: the consent stays valid when you change platform. No reader will ever see a second permission prompt.

How the handover works, technically

When a reader subscribed with your old provider returns to your site with the Natom snippet installed, everything happens automatically and silently, within a second:

  1. The snippet sees the notification permission is already granted: no prompt.
  2. It finds the old provider's subscription and removes it (this is the delicate step Natom handles by itself: without it, re-subscription would fail on a key conflict).
  3. It creates the new subscription with Natom's keys and registers it in your audience.

The reader notices nothing. You watch Natom's subscriber counter climb with every visit.

The real-world timeline

Your audience rebuilds at the speed your readers return to the site. On a site with steady traffic, the typical curve looks like this:

Day 0
You swap the snippet. From this moment every visit hands over one subscriber.
Days 1-3
Regular readers return: they are the minority of subscribers but generate most of the opens. Your Natom pushes already have useful reach.
Weeks 2-4
The bulk of your active audience is back. Natom's numbers approach the old provider's real ones (the real ones: see the FAQ on inflated counters).
When you decide
You close the old account. No rush: while active, it can still serve whoever has not returned yet.
The typical migration curve on a site with steady traffic.

The checklist, step by step

The key distinction: the snippet in your pages (collects subscriptions: swap it immediately) versus the old provider's account (can still send to its subscribers: keep it on during the transition).

  1. Prepare Natom: register the site in the dashboard, download natom-sw.js and keep it ready. If you plan to use audiences, prepare the tagging lines in your template too.
  2. Clean swap, in a single site update: remove the old provider's snippet from your pages, add Natom's, upload natom-sw.js to your domain root. Do not keep both snippets together: the service worker receiving notifications is one per domain, so coexistence in the pages simply does not work.
  3. Verify immediately: open the site from a browser already subscribed with the old provider, wait a few seconds, and check the subscriber appears in the dashboard. Then use "Test push" on the site's row.
  4. Two channels during the transition: send from Natom (growing daily) and, if you want, keep sending from the old provider to those who have not returned yet. No reader gets duplicates: each one is subscribed to exactly one of the two, never both.
  5. Close the old account when Natom's numbers satisfy you.
Pick the right moment: do the swap in a period of normal or high traffic, never in a lull. More visits = faster handover.

Frequently asked questions

Will I lose subscribers?

You will lose only those who never come back to your site, meaning subscribers who were not opening your notifications or generating traffic anyway. It is physiological, and it has a positive side effect: per-subscriber metrics (CTR, open rate) typically improve after a migration, because the cleaned-up audience is made of living readers only.

Why did the old provider show more subscribers than I see returning?

Because nearly every counter includes dead tokens accumulated over the years (reinstalled browsers, revoked permissions, retired devices). The number rebuilding on Natom is your real, reachable audience, which is also the one worth reasoning (and paying) on.

Will readers see the permission prompt again?

No, never. The permission belongs to the domain and stays valid. Re-subscription is invisible.

Can I migrate one site at a time?

Yes: migration is per domain, fully independent site by site. Start with a smaller site as a dry run, then do the main one.

What if something goes wrong?

The swap is reversible: put the old provider's snippet back and readers return to it through the very same silent re-subscription mechanism. There is no point of no return.

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