‘Thing’ is referring to the idea that many devices or ‘things’ within your home automation platform might also be useable as a way to play notifications. For example, you could play a spoken message over a Sonos speaker or Amazon Echo device.
They’re both great push notification systems. Here’s a couple of comparison points that come to mind.
Pricing
- Pushbullet offers 500 messages per month for free
- Upgrading to Pro unlocks unlimited messages along with a few extra features
- Pushover is a one-time fee of $5 per platform (eg. once for Android, once for iOS, once for web)
- There’s a 10,000 message monthly limit per ‘app’, but most people are unlikely to hit it
OS Support
- Pushbullet only works with Android + Chrome
- Pushover works with Android + iOS + Chrome
Additional Options
- Pushover has some neat additional options like Sounds and Priority that can be useful
- eg. messages that continually repeat until you acknowledge them
- Pushbullet has some neat features like notification mirroring (from your phone to PC)
I started using Pushbullet years back for other things, so I’ve continued to use it. I tend to use it for a variety of things - NodeRED notifications, pushing webpages from my phone to my PC for easier reading, etc.
I think @James uses both as I have him setup on some of my NodeRED flows with Pushbullet and I’ve heard him praise some of the neat delivery features of Pushover like the sounds and priority settings.