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Novu: the best Open Source alternative to OneSignal in 2026
Novu is a notification infrastructure that unifies email, SMS, push and in-app notifications in a single API with templates and visual workflows, as a self-hostable alternative to OneSignal.
Technical profile
- License
- MIT
- Category
- Dev Tools
- Replaces
- OneSignal
- Tech stack
- NestJSMongoDBRedis
Preview
Public image provided by Novu on its own website.
Key features
- Email, SMS, push and in-app in one API
- Visual notification workflow editor
- Embeddable notification center
Novu vs. OneSignal
Pros
- Unifies every notification channel in one place
Things to consider
- You still need to connect your own delivery providers (SMTP, SMS)
Quick Docker installation guide
Copy this docker-compose.yml, adjust the example passwords and run docker compose up -d on your server. See the full step-by-step guide →
docker-compose.yml
version: "3.9"
services:
novu:
image: novuhq/novu-api:latest
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "3000:3000"
environment:
- MONGO_URL=mongodb://novu-db:27017/novu
- REDIS_HOST=novu-redis
depends_on:
- novu-db
- novu-redis
novu-db:
image: mongo:7
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- novu_mongo_data:/data/db
novu-redis:
image: redis:7-alpine
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
novu_mongo_data: