Migrate from Courier to Novu

1. Create your workspace: Sign up for Novu Cloud. You'll automatically get isolated Development and Production environments.
2. Connect your providers: In the Novu Dashboard, navigate to the Integrations Store. Reconnect the ESPs (SendGrid, Postmark), SMS gateways (Twilio), and Push providers (FCM, APNS) you were using in Courier.

You need to sync your Courier Profiles to Novu Subscribers. The easiest way to handle this is a Lazy Migration:

Instead of exporting and importing thousands of users manually, simply update your backend to pass the user's details (email, phone, name) inline when you trigger a notification. Novu will automatically create or update the Subscriber on the fly.

If you prefer to sync ahead of time, you can easily script it:

import { Novu } from '@novu/api';
const novu = new Novu({ secretKey: 'YOUR_NOVU_API_KEY' });
 
// Translating a Courier profile to a Novu subscriber
await novu.subscribers.create({
  subscriberId: 'usr_123', // Your internal user ID
  email: '[email protected]',
  phone: '+15551234567',
  data: {
    subscriptionTier: 'premium' // Custom data
  }
});

You can also use the Bulk Import API to import your subscribers in bulk.

In Courier, you link Automations to Templates. In Novu, you recreate these as Workflows. You have two great options for building them:

Option A: The Dashboard Visual Builder If your product or marketing team loves managing notifications visually, they will feel right at home in the Novu Dashboard. You can drag and drop Email, SMS, and In-App steps, add Delays and Digests, and edit message content directly in the browser. Read more on how to manage workflows in the Novu Dashboard.

Option B: Code-First with Novu Framework If your engineering team wants more control, you can use @novu/framework to define the same workflows directly in your codebase using TypeScript.

A simple code-first example:

import { workflow } from "@novu/framework";
 
export const weeklyDigestWorkflow = workflow('weekly-digest', async ({ step }) => {
  // Replaces Courier's digest node
  const digestResult = await step.digest('batch-events', () => ({ amount: 7, unit: 'days' }));
 
  // Replaces Courier's send node + template
  await step.email('send-summary', async (controls) => {
    return {
      subject: `Your Weekly Activity Summary`,
      body: `You have ${digestResult.events.length} new updates this week.`,
    };
  });
});

If your app uses Courier's Inbox component, swapping it for Novu's is incredibly simple. Novu's Inbox provides out-of-the-box real-time updates and unread counts.

npm install @novu/react

import { Inbox } from "@novu/react";
 
export default function NotificationCenter() {
  return (
    <Inbox
      applicationIdentifier="YOUR_NOVU_APP_ID"
      subscriberId="usr_123"
      // We recommend using HMAC encryption in production for security
      subscriberHash="HMAC_HASH_GENERATED_ON_BACKEND" 
    />
  );
}

With your workflows ready and integrations connected, it's time to replace your courier.send() API calls with Novu trigger calls.

import { Novu } from '@novu/api';
const novu = new Novu({ secretKey: 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY' });
 
// Replaces courier.send()
await novu.trigger({
  workflowId: 'weekly-digest',
  to: { 
    subscriberId: 'usr_123',
    // Pass details inline for easy lazy migration
    email: '[email protected]' 
  },
  payload: {
    activityType: 'login'
  }
});

Final Validation: Send test events using your Novu Development API key. Monitor the Execution Logs in the Dashboard to verify everything works flawlessly. Once you're confident, switch to your Production API key and you're fully migrated!