Knock vs shadcn/ui
Notifications-as-a-service: in-app feeds, email, push, SMS, chat via one API
vs. Beautifully designed React components you copy-paste into your app
Pricing tiers
Knock
Developer
Free forever. 10K messages, 500 guide users, 500 AI credits/month.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$250/mo. 50K messages, 2.5K guide users, 2K AI credits. Remove branding.
$250/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. White-label, i18n, data warehouse, Datadog, SCIM, SAML, HIPAA/BAA.
Custom
shadcn/ui
OSS (MIT)
$0. MIT license. Free forever. No signup. Components copy-pasted into your repo and owned by you.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Knock vs oss on shadcn/ui.
| Metric | Knock | shadcn/ui |
|---|---|---|
| guide users | 2500 users | — |
| guide users overage | $0.05/user USD/user | — |
| messages monthly | 50000 messages/mo | — |
| messages overage | $0.005/message USD/message | — |
Features
Knock · 13 features
- AI Agents — Autonomous notification drafting & workflow generation.
- Batch + Digest — Group notifications into digests on schedule or window.
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord.
- Email — Send via SendGrid/Postmark/Resend/Mailgun/AWS SES as relays.
- Guides — In-product messaging, announcements, modals, banners.
- i18n / Localization — Translate templates by user locale.
- In-App Feed — Notification inbox with React/Vue/iOS/Android drop-in components.
- Multi-tenancy — Per-tenant branding, preferences, quiet hours.
- Outbound Webhooks — Subscribe to delivery events.
- Preferences — User + tenant preference center with granular controls.
- Push — iOS (APNs), Android (FCM), Expo, Web Push.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Telnyx, Vonage as providers.
- Workflows — Visual notification orchestration (branch, batch, delay, throttle).
shadcn/ui · 12 features
- 50+ Components — Button, dialog, dropdown, form, table, etc.
- Accessibility — WAI-ARIA compliant.
- Blocks — Full-page layouts ready to use.
- Charts — Composable Recharts wrappers.
- CSS Variables — Themeable via --primary, --background, etc.
- Custom Registries — Publish your own components via registry spec.
- Dark Mode — Built-in toggleable theme.
- Form Components (react-hook-form) — Integrated with react-hook-form + Zod.
- MCP Server — Query component catalog from AI agents.
- Radix UI Primitives — Headless accessibility foundation.
- shadcn CLI — Scaffold + add components.
- Themes + Theme Editor — CSS vars-based color system.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Knock | shadcn/ui |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Knock CLI | shadcn CLI |
| SDK | knockapi (Python), knockapi (Ruby), knock-elixir, knock-go, knock-java, @knocklabs/node, @knocklabs/react | — |
| REST | Knock REST API | Component Registry |
| MCP | Knock MCP Server | shadcn MCP Server |
| OTHER | Outbound Webhooks | Docs + Component Browser, Theme Customizer |
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