Notificator – Alerts & Notifications

No. Dashboard delivery and the plugin's setup and management features work without one. An API key is needed only for mobile push or MQTT delivery.

A template is an editable starting point. It does not listen for an event by itself. A notification is the saved, enabled rule that listens for an event and delivers an alert through your selected channels.

No. Hook discovery runs on your WordPress installation. Optional observation stores metadata such as execution counts and argument types, not argument values.

The plugin does not send raw hook arguments as a complete payload. It sends the notification content and metadata described under External Services. Rendered placeholder values become part of the notification and may contain personal or sensitive information. Review each remote notification before enabling it.

Create an account in the Notificator web dashboard (beta), or download Notificator Project for iPhone or iPad from the Apple App Store and register in the app. The dashboard is the quickest way to manage API keys, review connected notifications, monitor devices, and configure account-level delivery settings. Use the same credentials on both. No app installation is required for a web account, API keys, or the shared inbox. Notificator is also coming to Google Play for Android, but that release is not publicly available yet.

Install and sign in to the Notificator mobile app, create a WordPress Plugin API key, and add that key in the plugin's Settings tab. Enable Mobile push on the notifications you want on your phone and make sure the app has notification permission.

Yes. HiveMQ Cloud is the only MQTT provider supported by the current release. HiveMQ offers a free Serverless plan with no credit card required, subject to HiveMQ's current limits and terms. Create an account at https://console.hivemq.cloud/, choose Create Serverless Cluster, and open the cluster overview. Copy the cluster URL and enter only its hostname in Notificator. Under Access Management, create a Publish Only username and password for WordPress and a separate Publish and Subscribe credential for the device. Enable MQTT delivery under Settings > MQTT broker, then enter the hostname, publisher username, password, and topic prefix. New configurations default to notificator-project. The device must use the same cluster and topic prefix. If your Notificator account already has a saved MQTT connection, the plugin detects it after an API key is enabled and uses it automatically. The saved password remains in the hosted service and is never returned to WordPress. Choose Use a different broker when you want to configure a local connection instead. The password is encrypted locally using keys derived from this WordPress installation. It is excluded from exports, logs, diagnostics, and saved retry payloads. For an MQTT-enabled delivery, the plugin decrypts it only while preparing the HTTPS request to the Notificator API.

No. Notificator is free and open source, and we intend to keep its current features free. We may introduce optional new features or hosted services in the future, but they will not remove or place the functionality available today behind a paywall.

Yes. Integrations can register documented events with notificator_companion_register_event() and provide templates through notificator_companion_register_templates. See the repository README and integration guide for complete examples.

Yes. Export configured notifications as JSON from Tools and import them on another site. You can merge with the destination setup or replace it. Review plugin availability, hooks, placeholders, API keys, and delivery channels before enabling imported notifications.

Deactivation keeps the configuration. Deleting the plugin through WordPress removes all plugin-owned settings, notifications, activity, scan caches, scheduled jobs, user metadata, and transients, including across multisite. The Tools dialog also provides a test reset that keeps saved API keys and the custom MQTT connection.