MagicBell

Best Self Hosted Alternatives to MagicBell

A curated collection of the 3 best self hosted alternatives to MagicBell.

MagicBell is an in-app notification platform providing a multichannel Notification API, SDKs and UI components to build notification inboxes, real-time alerts, delivery routing, preference management and observability across email, push, SMS and chat.

Alternatives List

#1
ntfy

ntfy

ntfy is a lightweight HTTP pub-sub service to send push notifications to phones, desktops, and browsers via PUT/POST or a REST API.

ntfy screenshot

ntfy (pronounced “notify”) is a simple HTTP-based publish/subscribe notification service. It lets apps, servers, and scripts send push notifications to phones, desktops, and web browsers using straightforward HTTP requests.

Key Features

  • Publish messages to topics via HTTP PUT/POST
  • Topics are created dynamically by publishing or subscribing
  • Web app for browser subscriptions with desktop notifications
  • Push delivery to mobile clients (Android and iOS apps are available)
  • Works well for automation and server-to-user alerts without complex integrations

Use Cases

  • Send server and backup job notifications from shell scripts or cron jobs
  • Application alerting (deployments, monitoring events, CI results) via a simple REST-style interface
  • Personal notification hub for homelab events and device automation

Limitations and Considerations

  • If used without accounts/reserved topics, topic names function like shared secrets and should be hard to guess

ntfy is a pragmatic choice when you want a minimal, reliable notification pipeline based on plain HTTP. It is well-suited for automation scenarios and for teams or individuals who prefer a simple pub-sub model over heavy messaging platforms.

28.2kstars
1.1kforks
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#2
Notifo

Notifo

Open-source multi-channel notification service with REST API, management UI, templates and channel abstraction for email, web, push and SMS; built with ASP.NET Core and React.

Notifo screenshot

Notifo is an open-source, multi-channel notification service for applications, e-commerce and publishing scenarios. It provides a REST API and a management UI to create templates, manage users and subscriptions, and deliver notifications across channels.

Key Features

  • Rich REST API with OpenAPI-style documentation for creating events, users and subscriptions
  • Management UI for notification templates, users, projects, subscriptions and settings
  • Email template support with MJML and Liquid-style templating
  • Channel abstraction with adapters for Email (Amazon SES), Web (SignalR / sockets), Web Push, Mobile Push (Firebase) and SMS (MessageBird)
  • Reliable delivery with retry mechanisms, queues and schedulers for undelivered or unconfirmed notifications
  • Topic-based subscription model (hierarchical topic paths) and per-topic user preferences
  • Tracking of read/confirmed notifications and delivery reporting
  • Web plugin / overlay to embed notifications into client applications

Use Cases

  • Customer alerts and marketing notifications for e-commerce (price drops, order updates)
  • Real-time notifications for collaboration and task management systems (project/task events)
  • Publishing and news delivery where users subscribe to topics or categories for updates

Limitations and Considerations

  • Project is marked beta: some channels/features (notably mobile push and email integrations) have limited production usage
  • Currently relies on MongoDB as primary datastore; multi-database support is planned but not complete
  • Provider ecosystem is limited out of the box (specific providers implemented; adding new email/SMS providers requires development)
  • Tests and automated API/UI test coverage are limited and further hardening of queues/schedulers is recommended

Notifo is suitable for teams wanting a self-hostable notification platform with topic-based subscriptions and multi-channel delivery. It combines an ASP.NET Core backend and a React/TypeScript frontend and is intended for integration into web and mobile applications.

845stars
82forks
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#3
Operational

Operational

Open-source event tracker for tech products: ingest key events, send push notifications, run webhook actions, and monitor critical workflows in real time.

Operational screenshot

Operational is an open-source event tracking and alerting tool designed for product teams and SaaS operators to monitor critical events and receive real-time notifications. It focuses on high-value operational events (signups, cronjobs, payments, webhooks) rather than broad product analytics.

Key Features

  • Real-time timeline of incoming events with push notifications to web and mobile (PWA) clients
  • Action Buttons on events to trigger webhooks or run actions within your product
  • Support for nested contexts (events-in-events) to represent complex workflows
  • Lightweight SDKs for easy ingestion from applications and services
  • Built with a simple stack (Node.js / Express backend, Vue 3 frontend) and stores data in MySQL via Prisma; optional analytics/backends can be added
  • Designed for low dependencies and straightforward self-hosting using Docker or standard Node tooling

Use Cases

  • Receive immediate alerts for high-priority product events such as new signups, payments, or failed jobs
  • Debug and trace webhooks or cronjobs by ingesting and inspecting structured JSON event payloads
  • Provide on-call or operations teams a lightweight timeline and actionable events to resolve incidents quickly

Limitations and Considerations

  • Not a replacement for full product analytics platforms; optimized for tracking key operational events rather than high-volume behavioral analytics
  • SDK coverage is smaller than large analytics vendors; additional language wrappers may be required for some stacks

Operational provides a focused, developer-friendly way to surface and act on critical events in your product. It is built to be easy to self-host, extend, and integrate into existing workflows.

422stars
13forks
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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running