Novu

What is Novu?

Novu is open source notification infrastructure that sends product notifications across channels — email, SMS, push, chat, and an in-app inbox — from a single API and workflow. Instead of wiring up SendGrid, Twilio, and Firebase separately, you define one workflow and Novu handles routing, batching, user preferences, and delivery through the providers you plug in.

What is Novu best for?

Developers who need to send transactional and product notifications across several channels without building the plumbing themselves. It fits teams that want one place to manage notification logic, an embeddable in-app inbox, and the option to keep customer data on their own infrastructure rather than a third-party messaging cloud.

What can Novu do?

• Send across five channels from one workflow: email, SMS, push, chat (Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord), and an in-app inbox
• Connect 79+ delivery providers, including SendGrid, Twilio, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Resend, and Mailgun
• Drop in a prebuilt, embeddable Inbox component (React today; Vue, Angular, and React Native in progress)
• Build multi-step workflows with conditions, delays, and channel fallbacks in a visual editor
• Batch bursts of events into one message with the digest engine
• Let end users manage their own notification preferences per channel
• Self-host the full stack with Docker, or use the managed Novu Cloud

Where does Novu fall short?

• Open-core, not fully open source. The core is MIT-licensed, but enterprise features (SAML/OIDC SSO, RBAC, advanced data residency) live behind a commercial license, so the self-hosted free tier isn’t feature-complete for larger orgs.
• You still bring your own providers. Novu is the orchestration layer, not a delivery network — you supply and pay for SendGrid, Twilio, or an SMS gateway. It removes the plumbing, not the per-message provider bills.
• Younger ecosystem than incumbents. Compared to long-established messaging APIs, the SDK and integration surface is still maturing, and non-React inbox components are not all shipped yet.

Is Novu free?

Yes — Novu is free to self-host under the MIT license, with unlimited notifications; you only pay your own delivery providers and server costs. Novu Cloud has a free tier (10,000 workflow runs/month, up to 20 workflows), then paid plans: Pro from $30/month, Team from $250/month, and custom Enterprise pricing.

What does Novu replace?

Novu is a self-hosted alternative to hosted notification and customer-messaging platforms like Twilio, OneSignal, and Braze. It centralizes the same multi-channel delivery, user preferences, and messaging workflows, but you run it on your own infrastructure and route through providers you choose instead of paying platform fees on top of delivery.

FAQ

Is Novu open source? Yes — the core is licensed under MIT and the code is public. It follows an open-core model, so some enterprise features (SSO, RBAC, advanced data residency) require a commercial license.

Can I self-host Novu for free? Yes. Self-hosting the MIT core is free and supports unlimited notifications; you only pay for your server and the delivery providers you connect. Novu Cloud is the paid, managed alternative.

Is Novu a good Twilio or OneSignal alternative? For teams that want to own their notification stack, yes — you get multi-channel workflows, an in-app inbox, and full data control. If you’d rather not run infrastructure, a hosted platform is simpler out of the box.

What do I need to run Novu? A server with Docker. The self-hosted stack runs the API, worker, and web dashboard against its own datastores (MongoDB and Redis), plus API keys for whichever email, SMS, or push providers you want to send through.