I was eagerly awaiting GPush for iPhone, the application that promised push notifications for Gmail. It’s received a lot of press to hype it up, but after owning it for 2 days and only getting about 4 hours of consistent service from it, I have to strongly recommend that everyone avoid purchasing this app for now.
When I first installed it yesterday, it failed to work with my Google Apps account. I installed it, then uninstalled it, then reinstalled it with no luck. I then set up a new regular Gmail account, had my normal email forward to that account, and entered that account’s credentials into a freshly installed copy of GPush. This time it worked… but only intermittently and only until about 5pm yesterday when it suddenly stopped working completely, so I uninstalled it.
This morning, I thought I’d give it another chance, and I reinstalled it, launched it, and re-entered the information for my Google Apps account. I was hopeful this afternoon when I tweeted that it suddenly started working. I was surprised to find it continuing to work an hour later. Then, after about 4 to 5 hours of the app working like a charm, it suddenly went entirely silent with no push updates arriving for any emails. It hasn’t worked since, again, around 5pm.
There’s a gallery below that shows the progress from launching the app, the app asking for permission to use your location (I’m not sure why this is needed for the apps functionality), the app then asking for permission to send you push notifications, then an error message noting that you haven’t yet entered in your Gmail credentials (something that it hasn’t allowed you to do yet), followed by the first two messages repeated again after you enter your credentials, then finally a confirmation message appearing that tells you have successfully registered your device. These last several messages are repeated again whenever you launch the app (which you end up doing when it continues to fail to work). Does that sound cumbersome, confusing, and as if it is a poorly planned user interface? It is.
When I first emailed the support email regarding the problems I was experiencing yesterday, Yoni Gontownik, who is part of the management team for Tiverias Apps, the team behind the application, emailed me back with the following note:
“Thank you for following up with us. Yesterday, we beta tested, with over 1000 people connected to our servers and we received very positive responses. Today, we have received some emails dealing with notification issues. If you are not receiving notifications, please make sure you are not in airplane mode. Once that is set, please try to restart your phone, change GMail password, resubmit credentials, and make sure that push notification in the iPhone settings are turned on. If you continue to run into issues, please contact us again at support@tiveriasapps.com and will direct your problem to the technical support team, who is working on fixing existing bugs.
1000 people connected to their servers sounds to me like they probably didn’t really test this to run at scale enough before launching, which is probably not a bad assumption, considering that they had launched the app over a week ago originally and took it down in order to make sure their servers were ready. However, their support page notes today:
“Yesterday we launched GPush with our servers fully scaled to meet the needs of a growing customer base. At its peak usage, our servers were at 2% of server load. Yet, some users have experienced connection and notification issues. We are aware of these issues and are working on resolving them as quickly as possible.
Alerts working flawlessly for 4 hours this afternoon feels like one of two things:
- Either after fixing the issue that was preventing my Google Apps account from properly updating, the server began encountering scaling issues and shut down.
- Or, after fixing the issue that was preventing my Google Apps account from properly updating, someone else accidently unfixed the fix.
In either case, I hope that Tiverias Apps will soon solve all these problems, so that I will feel good about my purchase, and so I’ll be able to recommend their app. Right now, I not only cannot recommend it, but I feel it necessary to warn everyone against wasting $0.99 on GPush at this time. The app currently is rated at about 2 stars on the App Store with multiple people complaining about the app not working.
However, I also am wondering when Google intends to allow Google Sync to offer Push Mail notifications and thereby render GPush obsolete and unnecessary.
UPDATE: I just received an email in response to the support email that I sent in linking to this post:
“Thanks for following up and letting us know about your issue. We apologize that this app is not currently working for you, and we are aware that some users are having issues. Just know that our programming team is currently working on recreating/isolating the issues and resolving them on our test server. We also recommend you hold off on using the program for a day or so, as our programming team fixes the unexpected issues. Thanks for your patience.
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Interesting review, thanks for the warning. I was tempted to get this until I thought about what it actually does. Since this is really just a popup notification and not true Push Gmail (like Nuevasync) I think I will pass. Being notified of an email might be a bit useful, but not if it hasn’t actually arrived on my iPhone.
“Google Sync to offer Push Mail notification”
Do you think Google would actually offer Push notifications for Gmail? Or simply Push Gmail. I can’t imagine Google actually providing the popup notifications like Gpush does.
Google Sync already offers Push support for contacts and for calendar with a note that GMail support is not yet offered. If they do offer it it will act just like any current Push mail solution works: when new mail arrives it will play a sound and update the badge count on the Mail.app.
Nice write up. I did the same thing, I downloaded gpush as soon as it went live in the app store after reading several glowing reviews, set it up, and was immediately disappointed. I uninstalled and reinstalled once (I didn’t go nearly as far as you did) before deciding that Tiverias just needs to get their act together on server scaling.
I hope they do, it’s a great idea, but my recommendation is exactly in line with yours: “Don’t waste your money yet.”
I bought it. I got credentialed. It has never worked. I would assume it was user error but the thing has like 0 actual setup requirements other than getting the “yes you’ve been recognized” message. Whatever … $1? But still, Google, you should be doing smarter things with your brand name. Why let it out if it doesnt work?
Another option for GMail push on the IPhone is gPhushed (http://bit.ly/2XZhW)