We’re excited to share that Novu is partnering with Maily, an open-source email block editor that’s making waves in the developer world. This partnership is a perfect fit for us both—and more importantly, for the general state of next-generation email editors—and here’s why.

The story behind Maily (and why we love it)

Maily was born out of a real problem that its builder and maintainer, Arik Chakma (Twitter/X), faced: building better emails with less hassle. During a vacation (yes, seriously!), Arik had the lightbulb moment. He was tired of the clunky drag-and-drop email editors out there, so he built something better. Maily’s block editor focuses on creating a seamless experience, allowing you to build emails without constantly reaching for your mouse. Much like how dominant tools like Notion implement block editors, but with one key difference: Maily is React-based and outputs functional React-email components.

For anyone who’s ever struggled with rigid email tools, this hits close to home. Designing emails has traditionally been as challenging as designing Inboxes or notification worklflows. It shouldn’t be.

It’s the same origin story for Novu—our team built Novu to solve the notification management headaches we faced ourselves. That’s why when we came across Maily, we knew it was going to be a perfect fit.

Why Maily? A shared focus on developer and user experience

At Novu, we’re all about making things easier for developers without sacrificing the User Experience (UX) or Developer Experience (DX). That’s what drew us to Maily. It doesn’t just give you a tool; it gives you the right tool. The block editor experience feels intuitive—keyboard shortcuts, easy editing, and no drag-and-drop frustrations. It’s like how you use Notion: you just start typing and everything works the way you expect.

Both Novu and Maily are obsessed with making sure developers can work faster and smarter, which is why we knew this partnership was a no-brainer. By combining our strengths, we’re setting out to streamline how notifications and email templates are created.

How we’re working together

This isn’t just a one-off partnership. We’re going all-in to bring Maily’s tech into Novu’s forthcoming new workflow GUI, and we’re going to create a ton of useful capability around it. Here’s what’s in store:

• Seamless integration: Maily’s email block editor will be directly integrated into Novu’s dashboard. Imagine designing and editing sleek emails or react-based notifications in a fraction of the time.
• Open source innovation: Like Novu, Maily is open-source, which means the community is at the heart of it all. Together, we’ll be working with our users to keep improving, building features that developers actually want and need, including more templated examples you can literally just copy and use in your own notifications projects.
• Block-editing notifications (not just email) leadership: Email designers typically stink. We want Novu to be the absolutely best way to interact with your end users, and designing, editing, and hydrating rich, captivating notifications requires a UX and DX that we’re collectively prepared to provide.
• Funding: Novu is financially supporting the Maily project to help make it truly ready for prime-time, and the thousands of new users it will see when integrated into Novu’s dashboard and workflow editor.

What’s next?

We’re just getting started! Over the coming month, we’ll be rolling out new features, resources, and announcements as this partnership evolves. This is just the beginning of how we’re bringing more power and flexibility to developers when it comes to building emails and managing notifications.

We can’t wait to share more with you, and we’re confident that this partnership will bring both Novu and Maily to new heights.

Stay tuned for more updates, and if you haven’t checked out Maily yet, you can play with it live, or head over to GitHub to star the repo.