Pushbullet: a startup with great potential

Pushbullet is a cross-platform application that aims to connect multiple devices to create a shared user experience: with it you can share your phone’s notifications to your computers, share files/links/notes between devices, and answer messages on your phone from your computer.

Developed by a six-person startup, it’s been described as a life-changing application. It recently received $1.5 million in seed funding, and it’s expanding rapidly: at the moment is available both on desktop (as a browser extension or application) and mobile.

I tried using it with an Android smartphone and a Macbook: in this case it’s especially useful, because otherwise the communication between the two devices would be quite limited.

Pushbullet on Mac

From my quick testing over a couple of weeks, I can say that it’s fast, smooth, and extremely powerful. With it, I have been able to do a lot of things from my laptop that were previously impossible: send texts; answer messages on multiple applications; receive notifications from other apps. I soon started to wonder how I managed before using it.

Pushbullet notification

Right now there are some inconsistencies between the different channels (browser extensions, desktop app, mobile app), both in terms of functionalities and user experience. Moreover, the number of functions is still limited, because the development is ongoing. Only major messaging apps support the option to reply from other devices. Sometimes you have to dismiss notification on multiple devices, and sometimes you don’t receive notifications. Most of the time, however, the service is reliable enough to provide a great added value to the user experience.

Share notes, links, or files with Pushbullet on Mac

It’s not clear yet how Pushbullet plans to make money, but if they manage to tackle the enterprise market they might have a chance of expanding and growing. I can also imagine a future where they’ve been bought by one of the big players in the smartphone market, buy maybe that would limit the functionalities.

In conclusion, I am really impressed by the app and I think that if they manage to expand, solve the minor bugs they have, and figure out a solid business model, they are onto something.