Migrate from Magicbell to SuprSend

SuprSend's API first approach simplifies migration of users, templates, workflows, preferences and Inbox implementation from Magicbell to SuprSend. This guide provides a structured migration plan with steps to facilitate a smooth transition.

Mapping Magicbell's Concepts with SuprSend Concepts

1. Project and Workspace Setup

MagicBell's Project maps to SuprSend's Workspace. By default, when you sign up on SuprSend, you will have Staging & Production workspace setup, which can be linked to your respective projects in Magicbell. If you need more workspaces, like Pre-Production, reach out to our support team at [email protected].

2. Configuring Channel Providers as Vendors

In MagicBell, downstream providers are set up as Channel Providers. In SuprSend, these are referred as Vendors and can be configured via vendor tab from right navigation panel on SuprSend dashboard. Check full list of supported Channel types and providers here.

3. Migrate Users to Subscribers

MagicBell's Users translate to SuprSend's Subscribers. Magicbell supports user identification via email or external ID, while SuprSend uses distinct_id as the only identifier as there can be multiple emails attached to a user or it can be changed with time. If you are using email identifier in Magicbell, pass the same in distinct_id and also set email channel separately using $email key. Use SuprSend's API or SDK to create or update subscriber profiles with the information from your MagicBell user base.

You can also identify recipients inline in workflow trigger without having to migrate all users at once.

4. Migrating Notification Inbox

Inbox Implementation in SuprSend is similar to Magicbell. Though, we take security quite seriously and HMAC authentication is a must for subscriber authentication in SuprSend. You can quickly implement it using customizable drop-in react components or have your custom implementation with headless library.

5. Notification templates

Templates in Magicbell are designed at category level. In SuprSend, Templates are independent resources and defined in workflow step. Categories are assigned in context to workflows (to apply preference settings). This way, you can start with a basic setup and keep refining your preference categories and workflow logic over time, without having to make any changes in your set resources.

You can create templates on the SuprSend dashboard using an intuitive WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to design even complex notification use cases with ease.

6. Setup Broadcasts as Workflows

Broadcasts in Magicbell translate to Workflows in SuprSend. While Magicbell supports only single-step triggers, you can design multi-step workflows in SuprSend with advanced options —like delays, batching, conditional branches, throttling and timezone awareness. You can design Workflows on SuprSend dashboard and just keep the trigger in your code. This way, workflow logic is decoupled from code and can be easily modified on the fly.

SuprSend also has a Broadcast capability, but it’s specifically used for one-time campaigns sent to a targeted list of users.

7. Smart Delivery

In SuprSend, Smart Channel Routing (akin to MagicBell’s Smart Delivery) is embedded within the workflow rather than defining it a category level. This gives you flexibility to customize trigger sequence at notification level rather than tying it to the category.

8. Preference Categories

In Magicbell, users can opt-out from category and channel level. SuprSend supports more granular preference control down to channel, category, channel within a category and notification frequency (immediately, daily, weekly). Further, in magicbell, {{unsubscribe_url}} in email notifications is powered by topics and unsubscription happens at topic level. To unsubscribe from multiple topics, user will have to go to the email linked to that topic and unsubscribe from it. In SuprSend, the same categories shown in preference centre, are visible on unsubscription page as well, giving users granular unsubscription control. Also, you don't have to define topics and categories separately to power in-app preference page vs hosted unsubscription page.

Magicbell organizes most resources at the category level, whereas in SuprSend, categories are linked to workflows, enabling flexible configuration of resources within workflows rather than limiting configurations to categories.

9. Topics and Subscriptions

Topics and Subscriptions are managed with lists in SuprSend in terms of sending notification to a group of users by just defining the topic. Other topic functionalities like threading, batching can be achieved within workflow. Topic unsubscription can be handled by preference categories and available to users via hosted preference page.
Notification can be sent to lists via broadcast. List can be updated programatically via API, synced from third party like Mixpanel, via csv upload, or in an automated manner using database connector. Check all list update methods here.

10. Additional SuprSend Concepts (not available in Magicbell)

• Tenants: If your application supports multi-tenancy, you can use tenants in SuprSend to trigger per-tenant notifications, set per-tenant preferences, render per-tenant Inbox feed and route notifications via tenant vendors.
• Objects: Use objects to trigger notification to non-user entities (like departments, teams, and projects) and their subscribers. Objects are really powerful at handling hierarchical subscriptions and to send notifications to group channels like group email, slack channel and group Inbox feed.
• Tracking and Monitoring: SuprSend provides extensive logging capabilities where you can dig deep into each workflow execution and track analytics to gauge overall notification performance. Along with this, you also get audit logs to keep track of user activities on SuprSend dashboard.
• Third party integrations for data-in and out: In addition to first-party integrations with notification delivery platforms, we also offer connections with customer data platforms (CDPs) (Segment, Mixpanel) and S3 connector to sync notification data back into your warehouse.
• Vendor Fallback: Configure vendor and channel fallbacks in SuprSend for reliable delivery and broader audience reach.

Migrating data from Magicbell to SuprSend

Now that you have a clear understanding of how MagicBell concepts translate to SuprSend, you can start migrating your data. With SuprSend's APIs and bulk endpoints, you can easily migrate your notifications into SuprSend.

We recommend moving your data in the following order for a smooth transition:

1. Create your assets and resources in Staging workspace

Start your setup in the staging workspace for a thorough testing of notifications before making them live for your production users.

2. Configure Vendors

Configure vendors for the channels of your choice on SuprSend dashboard -> vendor page. You can also start with a single channel (e.g., email) and add other channels later. Adding channels doesn't require any changes in your codebase. All you have to do is update template of that channel and use multi-channel delivery node in your workflows to ensure that it picks the newly set channel for delivery.

3. Map Preference Categories

If you are using magicbell's preference centre, map the same categories in SuprSend dashboard -> Developers -> Preference categories section. Once configured, publish these categories for use in workflows.

4. Create Workflows and templates

Design workflows that mirror your MagicBell broadcast logic and create template for each of these triggers on SuprSend dashboard. If you have a large number of templates, our support team is available to assist you with template migration.

5. Sync Users

You can migrate your users all at once using user APIs or SDK or just pass recipient information in workflow trigger to gradually sync users in SuprSend with each notification trigger. Mapping Magicbell User profile in SuprSend involves:

• Mapping user identifiers: If email is used as an identifier in MagicBell, pass it as distinct_id in SuprSend and also set email channel separately using $email key. External id can directly be set as distinct_id in SuprSend.
• Mapping User channels and properties:
  • Channels are defined with $<channel> keys ($email, $sms, $slack...) in SuprSend and can support multiple channels in an array.
  • In Magicbell, fixed properties are passed at parent level whereas custom properties are passed in custom_attributes key . In SuprSend, you can pass both fixed and custom properties at parent level. with fixed properties starting with $.

6. Trigger Notification

Till this point, all the resources have been migrated to SuprSend. You can now setup workflow triggers in your backend code to invoke workflows created on SuprSend dashboard. If you are using Lists and broadcast, use broadcast API to trigger broadcast.

7. Test & Deploy

Thoroughly test all notification use cases in staging workspace. Once tested, you can clone the resources to production workspace to make it live for your end users and gradually shift your notification traffic to ensure a seamless switchover from MagicBell to SuprSend.