I’ve toyed a bit with IFTT but the notifications seemed highly unreliable. I just want a free service, that can send a few notifications per day within 1h of the actual event. Faster would be nicer, but beggars can’t be choosers.
With IFTT-WebHook I get about 30% of the notifications, sometimes immediately, sometimes after hours, sometimes never.
I only want to know when the front door is opened and when there is mail, nothing fancy. I could just probably send me an email instead, but was wondering if there is something that plays nice with both Android and iOS, is free, doesn’t use up too much battery and doesn’t cause missed notifications.
Pushbullet is free, reliable and easy to set up.
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I like pushbullet and I use it all the time, however, they don’t have an iOS app anymore.
Easy solution, get an Android phone 
Alternatively, I had heard good things about Telegram but haven’t used it myself.
I’ve used Telegram, but the Hass app is even better.
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I have a lot of Android devices, including my main phone. I just don’t want to paint myself into a corner.
I might give Telegram a try, it seems more versatile.
I don’t know what to say about the app, I’ve used a bit on my main phone, but it keeps waking up and displaying notification, even though I’ve disabled all the sensors. Plus, I’m behind a number of routers and did not set up an internet-facing port. The resons for that are complicated a.t.m., but I’ve reverted to using the web page instead of the app, for now.
i’m looking for something that will would work on android auto
The companion app works on Android and iOS. However Android auto may be a problem.
Pushover. The app is paid (per platform) but the service is free unless you are sending very high numbers of events.
You can send images, differing priority notifications (including “critical alerts” on iOS and alerts that override Do Not Disturb on Android).
I’ve been using Pushover from various systems at home since 2014 and for infrastructure alerts at work since 2017. The HA integration is solid and reliable, and Pushover has a useful API for calling direct from scripts etc.
I’m using Telegram as well. Messages arrive instantly nearly every time as you would expect from an instant messaging platform. Telegram operates a highly-available infrastructure around the globe and is completly free of charge.
You have to create a bot by talking to BotFather. Everyone owning a Telegram account can create bots. These bots do have a rate limit in terms of “number of messages per second” (see https://core.telegram.org/bots/faq#my-bot-is-hitting-limits-how-do-i-avoid-this).
Telegram doesn’t allow you to do fancy notifications with custom action buttons but you can send various types of media (up to 50 MB per file for bots (source: Bot FAQ)).
you could look into Node.Red - free SW that you can run on something local and that will connect to all sort os stuff (including posting messages and stuff) and that will react to a trigger as soon as it happens. It’ll also allow you to link just about anything to just about anything and has supported plugins and stuff to make life easy
this talks about how to get started https://www.juanmtech.com/get-started-with-node-red-and-home-assistant/
I think the answer lies in the fact that there are 70 notification integrations. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#notifications