Novu uses environments to separate your development and production workflows. When you create an account, you’ll get two default environments: Development and Production.

Development Environment

Use the development environment to test new notification workflows, validate changes before deploying to production, and experiment with different configurations.

Production Environment

The production environment is your live environment where notifications are sent to real users.

Custom Environments

Custom environments are available in Business and Enterprise plans

Create custom environments to match your development workflow:

  1. Go to the Environments page in your dashboard
  2. Create environments like Staging or QA
  3. Assign unique colors to easily distinguish between environments
  4. Sync changes between environments just like with development and production

The sync process works the same way as between development and production environments.

What’s Unique to Each Environment?

Each environment maintains its own separate:

  • Subscriber list
  • Notification workflows
  • Message history
  • Activity feed
  • Integration settings
  • Notification feeds
  • Brand assets and settings

Environment Credentials

Each environment has two unique identifiers:

  1. Application Identifier

    • Public ID for client-side apps
    • Unique per environment
    • Safe to expose in frontend code
  2. API Secret Key

    • Used for backend API authentication
    • Keep this secure and never expose publicly
    • Different for each environment

Best Practice: Configure these credentials in your application based on the active environment, similar to how you manage other service credentials.

Promoting Changes to Production

You can move changes from development to production in two ways:

  1. Using the Dashboard’s sync interface
  2. Using the Sync API in your CI/CD pipeline