Meeri
The comparison merchants ask about most
When Shopify merchants evaluate push notifications, the first question is almost always the same: "Why would I switch from email? Email already works." It's a fair question. Email is familiar, well-supported, and has years of best practices behind it. But the comparison isn't about switching — it's about understanding what each channel does well and where it falls short.
Open rates: it's not even close
Email open rates for e-commerce hover around 15–25% depending on list health and subject line quality. Web push notifications, delivered directly to the device screen, see open rates of 50–90%. The reason is structural: a push notification appears on screen and must be acknowledged. It cannot be quietly ignored in an inbox.
Click-through rates and conversion
Higher open rates don't automatically mean higher conversions — but in this case, they tend to correlate. Because push notification recipients are already engaged (they opted in, they saw the notification, they clicked), the traffic that arrives back on your Shopify store tends to be higher intent.
Email click-through rates for cart recovery campaigns typically range from 3–8%. Push notification click-through rates for the same use case commonly land between 10–20%. The compounding effect of higher open rates and higher CTR means push typically drives significantly more recovered revenue per message sent.
Reach: email's structural advantage
Email's advantage lies in its ubiquity. Every shopper has an email address. Push notifications, by contrast, require an opt-in from a browser that supports them — which today means most modern desktop and Android browsers, with iOS support having expanded significantly in recent years.
Critically, push opt-in rates tend to be higher than email opt-in rates for the same audience. Because subscribing requires only a single browser click (no form, no typing), conversion on the opt-in prompt is simpler. However, push reach is still limited to people who subscribe while browsing on a compatible device, which means email retains an advantage for reaching your historical customer list.
List building speed
This is where push has a meaningful structural advantage for growing stores. Building an email list requires forms, incentives, and ongoing effort. Building a push subscriber list happens automatically — every visitor who accepts the browser prompt becomes a subscriber, with no email address collected and no barriers to entry.
For a store with significant organic or paid traffic, a push subscriber list can grow quickly. The opt-in prompt appears naturally as part of the browsing experience, and interested shoppers subscribe in one click.
When email wins
- You have an established, highly engaged email list built over years
- You need to send long-form content like newsletters or product guides
- You're targeting customers who made purchases before push was available
- Your audience is predominantly mobile iOS users (push support is more limited)
When push wins
- You want to reach abandoners within minutes of them leaving the store
- You need to grow a recovery channel without requiring account creation
- You're running time-sensitive promotions where immediacy matters
- Your email list is small but your site traffic is substantial
The answer: use both together
The merchants who recover the most abandoned cart revenue don't choose between push and email — they orchestrate both in a coordinated sequence. A push notification fires within minutes of abandonment. An email follows within an hour for shoppers who have provided an address. The two channels complement each other rather than compete.
The goal isn't to pick a winner. It's to ensure that when a shopper walks away from your store, you have more than one way to bring them back.
Meeri handles the push side of this equation automatically — setting up cart recovery, browse abandonment, and promotional campaigns in minutes, while your existing email platform handles the inbox side. The combination produces more recovered revenue than either channel alone.