For notifications I would normally use Redis and PubSub. Then you need an app server, a way of scaling this, centralized logging, etcetera. You end up with an overengineered system for which you need three fulltime developers. Can we do better?

I use Firebase. This is a suite of lots of things, inluding:

• free CDN and SSL
• easy OAuth
• a free tier
• good scaling

It includes the Firebase realtime database which I will use. You can register a new firebase based app only and start building quickly.

Some packages in combination with React:

• reactfire
• react-redux-firebase
• firebase

I use Pyrebase on the Python backend.

In the frontend, I use redux-saga, a redux middleware for handling side effects. It communicates directly with the API.

Demo code: https://github.com/adaschevici/firebase-demo

Twitter: @_arturdas.