What is erxes?

erxes (written in lowercase and pronounced "erk-sis", a Mongolian word for galaxy) is a business platform that the project calls an Experience Operating System, or XOS. It combines a shared core with optional plugins for customer conversations, sales pipelines, project work, content and other business functions, with the aim of replacing a set of separate HubSpot, Zendesk or Linear style tools with records that live in one place. It is developed by erxes Inc., whose website is erxes.io, and it can be run on your own servers or on the vendor cloud.

The core contains organisations and permissions, contacts, products, properties and segments, forms and documents, automations and broadcasts. Plugins add the product areas: Frontline (omnichannel inbox, tickets, knowledge base), Sales (pipelines and deals), Operation (projects, cycles and tasks) and Content (headless CMS and web builder). The README also lists Enterprise Edition plugins such as Accounting, Tourism, Property, Team and Finance. The documentation describes the repository, the plugin model and the API.

Architecturally it is an Nx monorepo with a GraphQL federation gateway built on Apollo Router, a core API, per-plugin APIs using GraphQL and tRPC, MongoDB and Redis, BullMQ background workers, and React 18 micro-frontends loaded through Module Federation. The README names Node.js, TypeScript 5.7, Elasticsearch, Rspack, TailwindCSS 4 and pnpm. The one-line installer is a shell script that starts a Docker-based stack, and the deployment guide explains a manual Docker Compose and Nginx layout.

The licence needs reading. The repository LICENSE states that content outside the enterprise directories is available under AGPL-3.0, that Enterprise Edition plugins carry a separate licence, and that erxes may not be hosted as a SaaS that competes with erxes Inc. GitHub therefore reports no standard SPDX licence. The 3.4.15 release of November 7, 2026 added appearance settings with notch layout support and filtering of payment kinds in invoices. This profile rests on repository and website text.

Key capabilities

Core: contacts, products and segments The core stores customers and companies, product catalogues with units, custom properties, tags and dynamic segments that plugins reuse instead of duplicating. The core platform overview maps each module to its API area and extension hooks.
Organisations, users and permissions Team members, structure, brands and role-based access control sit in the core. Session logins use JWTs, with WorkOS single sign-on available, OAuth access tokens for client apps and app tokens for machine access. See authentication and permissions for where each credential is checked.
Frontline: unified inbox Agents work a shared inbox of conversations from the erxes messenger, Facebook, Instagram, email through Cloudflare Email Routing, Discord, SIP calls and a webhook PBX. Conversations can be answered in place or converted into tickets, deals or tasks. The Frontline page lists the modules.
Tickets, forms, surveys and knowledge base Frontline also provides ticket pipelines with statuses, forms and submissions, channel-scoped surveys, response templates, a knowledge base of topics, categories and articles, and help center configuration. A separate help center app publishes the knowledge base.
Messenger widget and client portal A website chat widget connects visitors to the inbox, and a client portal template built with Next.js gives customers a logged-in area. Portal credentials are separate from team member credentials.
Sales plugin Sales runs pipelines, deals, quotes and orders, and captures leads through landing pages, forms, pop-ups or embeds. It is described as covering the work of tools such as HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce, a statement from the vendor that you should test against your own process.
Operation plugin Operation covers projects, milestones, cycles and tasks. A deal in Sales can create tasks in Operation through the shared service interfaces, so a sale and its delivery work can share context.
Content plugin (Enterprise licence) Content is a headless CMS and web builder with templates, translation, a knowledge base and e-commerce or scheduling building blocks. The README marks it as Enterprise Edition only. Its repository includes template previews for e-commerce, tourism and portfolio sites.
Automations and approvals An automation service executes event-driven workflows made of triggers and actions, including webhook and email actions, with approval locks that gate sensitive changes. Plugins register their own triggers through metadata hooks. See automations and approvals.
Broadcasts, email and notifications The core sends broadcasts, notifications and email delivery, and supports bulk import and export for records. Check outbound mail configuration and unsubscribe handling before mass sending.
GraphQL API and integration development External systems can use the federated GraphQL API and tRPC for typed service calls. The API overview and the integration development guide explain endpoints, tokens and webhooks. Introspection and schema composition happen in the gateway.
Plugin development kit A generator creates matching backend and frontend plugin projects with GraphQL schema, tRPC endpoints, Module Federation remote and Docker setup, and a plugin is enabled through the ENABLED_PLUGINS environment variable. The plugin development guide covers metadata extensions, workers and UI components.
One-command installer The README gives a curl-to-bash installer that asks which plugins to start with, serves on port 3000, and on a server can obtain HTTPS for a domain automatically. Running it again upgrades or changes plugins. Read the script before piping it to a shell, and note that it targets Docker.
Manual self-hosted deployment The deployment guide uses Docker Compose, Nginx and Certbot on an x86-64 Linux server, with a MongoDB replica set and persistent Redis. It states that the repository has no ready-made Compose file, that MongoDB is not provisioned by it, and that no tested minimum CPU or RAM is established. See the self-hosting guide and configuration reference.
Container images CI publishes images such as erxes/erxes-next-ui, erxes-next-core-api, erxes-next-gateway, erxes-next-logs and per-plugin API images. The gateway, core API and automations images are linux/amd64 only. Pin a version tag or digest instead of latest.
Local development setup Developers need Node.js 18 or newer, pnpm 8 or newer, MongoDB and Redis. Commands such as pnpm dev:core-api, pnpm dev:apis and pnpm dev:uis start services, with Nx used to build and test individual projects.
Cloud plans and services The vendor pricing page lists an Everything product at 99 USD per month and an Everything plus bring-your-own-key AI product at 250 USD per month, with Sales, Frontline, Operation, Content, Loyalty, Accounting, Mongolian and Payment plugin tiers. Onboarding, migration and support services are sold separately. Confirm current terms on the pricing page.

Where erxes fits

Consolidating customer conversations and CRM

Connect the channels you actually use to Frontline, map existing customers into the core contacts, and decide which conversations become tickets, deals or tasks. Check that a conversation shows the right contact and segment, and that agents with limited roles see only their channels. Plan the migration of historical tickets separately, using the import and export tools.

Running sales pipelines with delivery tracking

Create a Sales pipeline, connect lead forms, and enable Operation so a won deal produces tasks. Test the hand-off with a sample deal. Review which fields move automatically and which do not before the team depends on the workflow.

Self-hosting for data control

Provision a MongoDB replica set, Redis, Nginx and TLS, deploy pinned images for the core and chosen plugins, and keep database backups. Confirm the architecture of each image, because several images are amd64 only, and plan upgrade and migration steps from the upgrades guide.

Building an internal plugin

Generate a plugin, define its GraphQL schema, register metadata for permissions and automations, and enable it in ENABLED_PLUGINS. Check how it reads core records through tRPC instead of reading core collections directly, as the metadata extension guide describes.

Publishing a help center and knowledge base

Write knowledge base articles in Frontline and deploy the help center app. Verify that internal articles do not appear publicly, that search finds recent edits, and that the support widget links to the right topics.

Automating repeated work

Define triggers and actions for routine events such as new contacts or deal stage changes, add approval locks for sensitive edits, and review automation execution history. Test failure behavior, such as an unreachable webhook, before enabling a workflow broadly. Keep the automation list under version control in your own notes, since definitions live in the database and not in the repository.