ntfy Hosting: Your Own Push Notification Server

ntfy (pronounced "notify") is an open-source server for push notifications over plain HTTP. A backup script, a cron job, a home server or a CI pipeline sends a message to a topic, and every phone, desktop or browser subscribed to that topic gets it. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in a couple of minutes. You get:

• ntfy 2.34.0 with its web app, on an HTTPS address like yourname-x7k2.devoster.app.
• Private by default. Access control is on with everything denied, sign-up is off and the web app requires a login. Nobody reads or publishes without an account.
• An admin user, admin, with a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard and access to every topic.
• Web push for browser notifications while the web app is closed, and attachments up to 15 MB each.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, reset the admin password, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? Install ntfy on it from VPS Control, after a quick check of the OS, ports 80 and 443 and free disk, or reinstall the server with it; both are free. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

Publishing is an HTTP POST to https://your-address/topic. With an access token instead of your password in scripts, it looks like this:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer tk_..." \
  -H "Title: Backup finished" -H "Tags: white_check_mark" \
  -d "Nightly backup of db01 completed in 4 min" \
  https://yourname-x7k2.devoster.app/backups

Headers add the rest: a priority from min to urgent, tags that show as emoji, a click URL, action buttons, an attachment (send a file with -T), or scheduled delivery with an At or Delay header.

Many tools can post to ntfy directly, including Uptime Kuma and changedetection.io, and any tool that can send a webhook can reach it. Messages are cached for 12 hours by default, so a phone that was offline catches up when it reconnects.

Install the ntfy app, add your server's address, log in, and subscribe to your topics:

• Android (Google Play or F-Droid). The app keeps its own connection to your server, so messages go straight from your VPS to the phone.
• iOS. Apple delivers push notifications to the ntfy app only from ntfy.sh, the project's public server. This install is set up for that: for each message, ntfy.sh receives a poll request carrying only the message ID and a hash of the topic, never the content. The iPhone then fetches the message itself from your server.
• Web. The web app on your address shows messages and, with web push enabled in the browser, notifies you while the tab is closed.

Desktop users can also subscribe from the command line or any tool that reads ntfy's JSON stream.

Everything is denied until you allow it. The admin can read and write every topic; for anyone else, and for scripts, use ntfy's own command line over SSH, run inside the app's container from /opt/devoster/app:

• docker compose exec ntfy ntfy user add alice creates a user (it asks for the password).
• docker compose exec ntfy ntfy access alice backups rw lets that user read and write one topic.
• docker compose exec ntfy ntfy token add alice creates an access token for scripts, so no password sits in a crontab.

You can make a single topic readable by everyone if you want a public feed; the rest stay private. Attachments are kept for a few hours and their total size is capped at a share of the disk, so a chatty script can't fill the server.

Very little. ntfy is a single Go program with SQLite files for users and the message cache. Nano handles a household, a homelab or a team's alerts comfortably.

You can upgrade from the panel later without reinstalling. One thing to plan for: if ntfy runs on the same server it reports about, it can't tell you when that server is down. Put it on its own small VPS.

No email in this install. ntfy can forward messages to email and accept messages by email, but both need a mail server, and outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans. Use the apps, web push or the web app.

We test new ntfy versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if ntfy doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically. Users, tokens, access rules and web push subscriptions carry over. Auto-update can be switched off.

ntfy is dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 and GPLv2, and Devoster isn't affiliated with the project. The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security and who has access to which topic are your responsibility. When is this the wrong choice? If you need to notify thousands of end users of your own mobile app, build on Apple's and Google's push services directly.