Push Notifications without Apple Push Notification Service?

Question

Can one use a 3rd party service to send Push Notifications without relying on the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)?

If it is a requirement that one use the APNS service, is it simply a requirement for App Store approval or is it a technological limitation?

I have seen other questions, such as this one: Apple push notification without Apple Server, but it mainly deals with sending files and is several years old.

Answer 1

Apple requires you to use APNS to send push notifications to devices. This cannot be done without APNS, if you found a way around this then Apple would most likely reject the app.

Click here to read the documentation. When you register for push notifications you are actually getting the device token for your app on that specific device from APNS, therefore that is an APNS specific token and you will need to use APNS to send the notification.