At Synop, we don’t usually talk about all the work happening behind the scenes. Most of the time, what matters is the outcome: fleets that are charged, managed, and ready to roll without anyone needing to babysit chargers, chase down logs, or worry about whether systems will hold up when things scale.

But there’s a core piece of our platform that’s worth highlighting because it’s one of those hidden but powerful engineering innovations that directly improves day-to-day fleet operations: our Synop-built OCPP gateway.

We’ve worked hard to continually make the platform stronger, easier to use, and faster to evolve. We’ve now transitioned all chargers on our platform to our own OCPP infrastructure that transforms how we scale, operate, and deliver capabilities to customers.

Below is a look at why having our own OCPP gateway is so powerful—and how it translates into a better charging experience.

The invisible work that creates peace of mind

OCPP is the communication layer between chargers and the software that manages them. When it’s working well, it’s invisible. When it isn’t, everything gets harder: charger commands fail, logs lag, and diagnosing issues becomes a time sink.

Our goal is simple: customers should have total confidence their fleets will be route-ready when needed. The OCPP gateway is one of the most important foundations for making that possible at scale, because it influences nearly everything that happens between “the charger’s installed” and “the vehicle is ready.”

A scalable and resilient platform

Charging networks don’t stand still. Fleets and depots expand, demand grows, and what works for a small deployment can start to fracture under the realities of large, complex operations.

Our gateway is built on a modern foundation specifically designed to handle that growth without compromising performance or stability:

Designed to scale with growth

As customer networks grow, OCPP traffic grows with it: more chargers mean more sessions, more events, and more commands. Our architecture is built to support limitless fleet/depot scale and complexity, growing with real-world demand while maintaining consistent performance for mission-critical operations.

Predictable rolling updates (without disruption)

One of the hardest parts of operating critical infrastructure is deploying improvements quickly and without introducing instability.

The gateway supports continuous remote software updates to ensure we can smoothly cut over charger traffic and maintain predictability of system load. This helps reduce risk and avoids the “big switch” moments that can cause operational surprises.

High availability for one unified OCPP architecture across cloud and on-premise

A charging platform only works if chargers stay connected and responsive. The gateway is built with high availability as a core assumption, ensuring chargers remain online, connected, and operational.

This matters in the real world where connectivity can be imperfect (e.g., from cloud or grid interruptions) and where downtime isn’t just inconvenient but can affect routes and service commitments. 

Imperfect connectivity is why Synop supports both cloud gateway deployments and on-premise SynopLink devices. Having a unified OCPP technology powering both means we can deliver improvements faster and more consistently in both cloud and on-site instances.

Instead of maintaining separate stacks and feature paths, we can make one improvement and bring it everywhere. That’s how you move faster without fragmenting the platform.

Improving customers' operations

Scaling and resilience are important, but the gateway also enables features that make daily operations and maintenance smoother, especially when it comes to interoperability and diagnostics:

Support for OCPP 2.0.1 (while staying compatible)

The gateway supports OCPP 2.0.1, keeping Synop aligned with the latest standard while maintaining interoperability with existing OCPP 1.6 chargers. For fleets operating mixed hardware environments, this matters: standards evolve, but real-world deployments rarely upgrade overnight.

Smarter handling of temporarily offline chargers

In the real world, chargers can go offline for a variety of reasons. A common pain point across charging operations is what happens to commands during those offline moments. With our gateway, commands sent while a charger is offline are safely stored and automatically delivered once the charger reconnects.

That means fewer manual retries, fewer “did it go through?” moments, and fewer operational workflows built around connectivity blips.

Faster, more reliable logs for diagnostics and support

Operations and maintenance can be painful in EV charging, especially when diagnosing intermittent issues. Logs are often delayed, hard to search, or incomplete. And when troubleshooting mission-critical deployments depends on finding the right needle in a haystack, every minute matters.

With our gateway, logs:

• Are available almost instantly
• Are faster to search
• No longer suffer from historical parsing issues that can slow down diagnosis

We also built our own log service to support deep analysis: it can retain logs indefinitely and handle messages of essentially unlimited length, which removes constraints that often limit visibility in other systems.

Our clean and accessible log stream is paired with an AI-driven log viewer/analyzer that makes it faster and easier to understand what happened, why, and what to do about it, providing quicker troubleshooting for customers.

What this means for customers

All of these improvements support a few things customers care about every day:

• More confidence at scale: the platform stays consistent as networks grow and incorporates both legacy and new equipment.
• Less disruption from change: rolling updates and high availability reduce surprises.
• Better support outcomes: a complete collection of instantly visible logs and AI-assisted analysis shorten time-to-resolution.
• More reliable operations in imperfect conditions: offline command handling reduces manual intervention.
• Faster delivery of improvements: unified architecture brings features to both cloud and on-premise deployments.

We don’t always call attention to platform foundations. But the Synop-built OCPP gateway is a great example of the kind of behind-the-scenes work that directly improves customer experience without customers ever being aware it’s happening. 

It strengthens the core of our platform, makes us scalable and reliable, and keeps our cloud and on-premise deployments aligned so we can continue supporting larger, more complex charging networks as the industry evolves.

And most importantly, it helps deliver what matters most to our customers: peace of mind that fleets will be ready when they’re needed.