Keila vs phpList

Both are self-hosted communication - email - mailing lists and newsletters projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

Keila scores 62 against phpList's 50, putting it ahead on the strength of a higher commit volume. That measures project health, not feature fit — phpList may still be the right choice if it does what you need.

	Keila	phpList
Health score	62/100	50/100
Commits (11 mo)	367	17
Commits (last 3 mo)	57	16
Stars	2.2k	872
Latest release	6 Sept 2026	9 Aug 2026
Licence	AGPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0
Built with	Docker	PHP
Typical RAM	1 GB	1 GB

Keila

Reliable and easy-to-use newsletter tool (alternative to Mailchimp and Sendinblue).

62/100

Steady

Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.

Maintenance 23/40

Releases 25/25

Community 10/20

Momentum 4/15

Commit activity more than 57% of tracked projects; popularity more than 52%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

phpList

Newsletter and email marketing with advanced management of subscribers, bounces, and plugins.

50/100

Slowing

Activity has dropped noticeably. Check the repository before committing to it.

Maintenance 4/40

Releases 25/25

Community 6/20

Momentum 15/15

Commit activity more than 9% of tracked projects; popularity more than 32%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted communication - email - mailing lists and newsletters.