Quickstart guide

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Welcome to OneSignal

Whether you’re migrating from another platform or starting fresh, this guide will help you set up your account and send your first message in just a few steps. If you haven’t already, create your account to get started.

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Create your organization

Your organization is the central hub for managing apps, channels, and billing. Use different organizations for staging vs. production, or for apps with separate billing needs.

Create your organization which should reflect your company, project, and/or environments (staging vs production).

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Add an app

After setting up your organization, create your first app. You can add as many apps as needed.

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Best practices

• Use descriptive names (e.g., “Retail App - Production”).
• Create separate apps for different environments (Production, Staging, Development).
• Each app can support multiple messaging channels (mobile push, web push, email, SMS).

Name your app something descriptive, indicating the project and/or environment.

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Set up your channels

Choose your first messaging channel and follow the setup guide. You can add more channels to the same app at any time.

Supported channels:

• Push notifications: Web, iOS, Android, Huawei, Amazon
• In-app messages: Rich, interactive messages within your app
• Email: Transactional and marketing emails
• SMS: Text messaging for time-sensitive alerts
• Live activities: Dynamic updates for iOS

Pick your first channel and follow the setup guide. Once complete, add more channels to the same app!

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Understand users and subscriptions

As users engage with your app, they’re assigned a OneSignal ID (user ID) and Subscription IDs (for each device or contact method).

• A single user can have multiple subscriptions (e.g., mobile, web, email, SMS).
• Users are anonymous until identified with an External ID.

Your Audience > Subscriptions page where you can find your user's subscriptions.

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Collect user data with tags

Use tags to store user data or track events. Tags enable advanced use cases with Segments and Message Personalization.

Common tag examples:

• User properties: first_name, city, subscription_tier
• Behaviors: cart_abandoned, last_login_date, onboarding_complete
• Preferences: notification_frequency, theme_preference

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Build segments

Create dynamic segments using tags and behavior data, such as “Last session greater than a week” or “Added item to cart”.

Example segment creation with User Tag filter.

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Send messages

Design and send messages across the channels you’ve set up. You can save drafts or reuse templates for future campaigns.

Image showing push editor message contents.

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Set your users on a journey

Use Journeys to send automated, multi-step campaigns based on user behavior—such as onboarding, abandoned carts, winback flows, and more.

Example of an Abandoned Cart Journey.

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Measure impact with analytics

Track the performance of your messaging campaigns and understand user engagement with OneSignal’s analytics.

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Key analytics capabilities

• Campaign performance: View delivery rates, open rates, and conversion metrics.
• User engagement: Analyze how users interact with your messages over time.
• A/B test results: Compare different message variations to optimize performance.
• Custom event tracking: Monitor specific actions triggered by your messages.