After migrating from another web push provider, why aren't my previous subscribers showing up in Pushwoosh?

When you migrate to Pushwoosh from a different web push provider, your existing subscribers are not automatically imported and will not appear in your Pushwoosh dashboard immediately. This is expected behavior.

A user who previously granted notification permission on your domain is only registered as a subscriber in Pushwoosh when they visit your website again after you have installed the Pushwoosh Web SDK.

To make sure these returning visitors are subscribed automatically without being prompted again, keep the autoSubscribe parameter enabled in your initialization code (it is true by default). The SDK detects the existing browser permission and subscribes them silently.

Your subscriber count will grow gradually as more of your audience returns to the site.

Example SDK Initialization

window.Pushwoosh = window.Pushwoosh || [];
Pushwoosh.push(['init', {
    logLevel: 'error', // or 'debug' for testing
    applicationCode: 'YOUR_PUSHWOOSH_APP_CODE',
    apiToken: 'YOUR_DEVICE_API_TOKEN',
    safariWebsitePushID: 'YOUR_SAFARI_WEBSITE_PUSH_ID', // only needed for legacy Safari (macOS 10.14-12)
    autoSubscribe: true,
    serviceWorkerUrl: '/pushwoosh-service-worker.js'
}]);

Important: apiToken must be a Device API Token generated in your Pushwoosh Control Panel and granted access to this project. Projects created from April 2025 onwards enforce device authentication, so an init call without a valid device API token will be rejected and no subscribers will appear at all.

As long as this code is active on your site, users who previously subscribed with your old provider will be added to your Pushwoosh audience on their next visit.