Keila vs Sympa

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 Sympa's 41, putting it clearly ahead on the strength of a higher commit volume and a larger community. That measures project health, not feature fit — Sympa may still be the right choice if it does what you need.
KeilaSympa
Health score 62/100 41/100
Commits (11 mo) 367 63
Commits (last 3 mo) 57 18
Stars 2.2k 315
Latest release 6 Sept 2026 14 Aug 2026
Licence AGPL-3.0 GPL-2.0
Built with Docker Perl
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

2025-10: 3 commits 2025-11: 57 commits 2025-12: 20 commits 2026-01: 78 commits 2026-02: 17 commits 2026-03: 20 commits 2026-04: 71 commits 2026-05: 44 commits 2026-06: 42 commits 2026-07: 2 commits 2026-08: 13 commits

Sympa

Mailing list manager.

41/100
Slowing

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

Maintenance 9/40
Releases 25/25
Community 3/20
Momentum 4/15

Commit activity more than 21% of tracked projects; popularity more than 16%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 0 commits 2025-11: 0 commits 2025-12: 1 commits 2026-01: 0 commits 2026-02: 0 commits 2026-03: 44 commits 2026-04: 0 commits 2026-05: 0 commits 2026-06: 0 commits 2026-07: 0 commits 2026-08: 18 commits

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.