Knock or Sendora — pick the trade-off, not the marketing.
Knock is purpose-built notification infrastructure — channel routing, preference center, frequency caps. Excellent at its job. Standalone. You still bring identity (Auth0), audiences (Segment), consent (OneTrust). Sendora's Automation workflows already fan out across the Email + Push + SMS modules in one step, reading the same audiences + (for email broadcasts) the platform-layer consent gate. One tenant, no second event pipeline. Note: Sendora's standalone preference center + per-user fallback chains are not yet shipped — Workflows + Audiences cover the common case ("send email if push fails", "only enrol opted-in users").
Notification infrastructure. Channel-agnostic API + preference center. You wire identity + audiences yourself.
Workflows fan out across Email + Push + SMS in one step, reading the same audiences + consent state Sendora already holds.
Side-by-side
| Capability | Knock | Sendora |
|---|---|---|
| Channel-agnostic single-call API | ✅ `notify()` | ❌ — use Automation workflow with email/push/sms steps instead |
| Per-channel fallback chains | ✅ declarative | Via workflow branch step (manual) |
| Frequency caps + quiet hours (TZ-aware) | ✅ unified | Per-module (Push has it; Email + SMS do not) |
| Preference center out of box | ✅ | ❌ — roll your own from Consent module ledger |
| Liquid templating | ✅ | Per-channel templates (Email + Push) |
| Identity provider in same tenant | ❌ | ✅ Auth Service |
| Consent enforcement at platform layer | Manual plumbing | ✅ Email broadcasts (Push + SMS in next release) |
| Send timeline visible inside Support inbox | ❌ | ✅ — cross-module timeline |
| Pricing model | Per-MTU tier | Bundle, 21 other modules |
Why teams switch to Sendora
- You'd otherwise pair Knock with Auth0 + OneTrust + Segment + Customer.io — Sendora collapses 5 vendors into 1.
- Consent enforcement is real at the Email send path today (opt-in `enforce_consent` toggle) — no per-channel "do I have consent?" check.
- Notifications timeline appears in the Customer profile + Support inbox automatically.
When Knock is the right call
- You specifically need Knock's channel-agnostic `notify()` API + declarative fallback chains today. Sendora plans this but currently ships fan-out via Automation workflows (multi-step) instead.
- You need Knock's polished preference center UI — Sendora ships the Consent ledger, not a user-facing preference center widget.
- You're not running Sendora for anything else — Knock as a standalone notification layer is a clean choice.
Common questions
Does Sendora have a single-call `notify()` API like Knock?
Not today. The platform-layer way to ship multi-channel is an Automation workflow: trigger event → email step → branch on delivery → push step → branch → sms step. Steps share templates + audiences. A unified `notify()` helper is on the roadmap once the preference-center surface lands.
What about the preference center?
Sendora has a Consent ledger (per-purpose grants + revocations + audit log) + send-time enforcement on email broadcasts. A user-facing preference-center widget is not built; you'd render one from the `consent.record()` SDK call.
Knock is purpose-built for notification infra. Why pick Sendora?
If notifications-as-infra is all you need + you bring identity / audiences / consent from elsewhere, Knock is a clean answer. If you'd otherwise stitch Knock + Auth0 + OneTrust + Segment, Sendora collapses the stack — even with the fan-out shape difference.
Automation
Event-triggered journeys with 8 step types — Email / Push / SMS / Webhook / Update Profile / Wait / Branch / AI — over the same event taxonomy every other module already emits.
Customer.io + Iterable + Braze run journeys but only over the data they have. Sendora journeys run over Sendora data — every event from every module (Analytics, Auth, Support, Push delivery, Email bounce, CSAT rating, KB view, anomaly detection) lands on the same event bus the workflow trigger reads. Branch on a profile trait, send via Email or Push or SMS, update a trait, fire a webhook, run an AI generate/decide/extract step, wait for a delay — 8 step types implemented in `step-executor.ts`. Trigger model is single: `{ eventType, filters }` with wildcard matching. Audience-join, CSAT detractor, KB view all become triggers because each emits a canonical event the workflow can subscribe to.
Switch from Knock. Keep your weekend.
Free plan covers real product use, no credit card. Bulk hash import for auth, CSV import for profiles, schema-validated event import for analytics — Data Sync module handles the migration in a day.