Self-Hosted and Novu Cloud

Better together

Community Self-Hosted is where the community comes together with our development teams to improve notifications for everyone. Novu Cloud is our commercial offering, and where we extend the capabilities of the Community Self-Hosted and make them accessible and consumable by all teams and businesses. Most simply, the Community Self-Hosted is how you test and experiment with notifications infrastructure, and Novu Cloud is how you press the easy button for all things notifications.

Key differences

Our goal is always provide a functional, powerful, and complete notifications infrastructure platform, whether you opt to self host or use our cloud offering. However, certain features we build into Novu Cloud are not available in the Community Self-Hosted. When this happens, it’s for several reasons:

We rely on a paid third-party service provider
The feature is complex and requires significant investment (read: money!) time to build and maintain
The feature is primarily targeted at the largest and most sophisticated of use cases, and supporting these in self-hosted environments is challenging

Current matrix

Below you will find a table that outlines the best available Novu Cloud Tier, compared to the available Community Self-Hosted capabilities.

General Capabilities

Features	Community Self-Hosted	Novu Cloud
Activity feed retention	Infrastructure dependent	✅
Block-based email editor	✅	✅
Channels: Email, In-app, SMS, Chat, Push	✅	✅
Code-based Framework workflows	✅	✅
Custom environments	❌	✅
Digest	✅	✅
GUI-based workflows	✅	✅
Max workflows	Infrastructure dependent	Custom
Provider integrations	Infrastructure dependent	Unlimited
Subscribers	Infrastructure dependent	Unlimited
More than 2 environments	❌	Custom
Environment variables	❌	✅

Inbox

Features	Community Self-Hosted	Novu Cloud
Bell component	✅	✅
Inbox component	✅	✅
Inbox content component	✅	✅
Notifications component	✅	✅
Remove Novu branding	❌	✅
Snooze	❌	✅
User preferences component	✅	✅

Email

Features	Community Self-Hosted	Novu Cloud
Email activity tracking (delivery and engagement events)	❌	✅
Remove Novu branding	❌	✅
Multiple email layouts	✅	✅
Block-based email editor	✅	✅
HTML email editor	✅	✅

Account Administration and Security

Features	Community Self-Hosted	Novu Cloud
Email/password authentication	✅	✅
Custom SAML SSO, OIDC providers	❌	✅
Max team members	1	Custom
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)	❌	✅
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)	❌	✅
Social sign-in (Google, GitHub)	❌	✅

Compliance

Features	Community Self-Hosted	Novu Cloud
Custom security reviews	❌	✅
Data Processing Agreements	❌	Download DPA & SCC template
GDPR	Installation dependent	✅
HIPAA BAA	❌	✅
SOC 2 / ISO 27001	❌	✅

For compliance certifications, data residency, and security documentation, see Security and Compliance.

Ready to Scale? Upgrade to Novu Cloud

If you’re currently self-hosting Novu, Novu offers an Enterprise Edition offering for self-hosted users and a managed cloud based deployment. Contact Us to learn more.

Why Upgrade to Novu Cloud?

Zero Infrastructure Management
- No server maintenance, scaling headaches, and deployment complexities
- Focus on what matters most - building your product
- Let our team handle the heavy lifting
Enterprise-Grade Features at Your Fingertips
- Access advanced security features including SAML SSO and MFA
- Benefit from enterprise compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA)
Always Up-to-Date
- Automatic updates and improvements
- Access to the latest features and security patches
- No more manual upgrades or maintenance windows
Support
- Expert assistance for seamless migration
- Priority support for your team
- Custom security reviews and compliance guidance

​Better together

​Key differences

​Current matrix

​General Capabilities

​Inbox

​Email

​Account Administration and Security

​Compliance

​Ready to Scale? Upgrade to Novu Cloud

​Why Upgrade to Novu Cloud?