head to head · open source
excelize vs mailtrain
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars, 1,984 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mailtrain has 5,754 stars, 706 forks, 116 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. excelize leads on adoption by 266% (21,036 vs 5,754 stars). excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; mailtrain is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. excelize has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, mailtrain 12%. excelize was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| excelize | mailtrain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 706 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick excelize if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mailtrain if
- You want the mailtrain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mailtrain fits your workflow better
About excelize
Excelize Introduction Excelize is a library written in pure Go providing a set of functions that allow you to write to and read from XLAM / XLSM / XLSX / XLTM / XLTX files. Supports reading and writing spreadsheet documents generated by Microsoft Excel™ 2007 and later. Supports complex components by high compatibility, and provided streaming API for generating or reading data from a worksheet with huge amounts of data. This library needs Go version 1.25.0 or later. The full docs can be seen using go's built in documentation tool, or online at go.dev and docs reference. Basic Usage Installation If your…
read the full excelize overview →
About mailtrain
Mailtrain v2 Mailtrain is a self hosted newsletter application built on Node.js (v14+) and MySQL (v8+) or MariaDB (v10+). This is version 2 of Mailtrain. It mostly implements all features of v1 and add some more. It is a complete rewrite, so you will have to install it from scratch. If you are upgrading from Mailtrain v1, backup the DB and use it for Mailtrain v2. Mailtrain v2 should be able to upgrade the DB to the new schema. Features Subscriber lists management List segmentation Custom fields Email templates (including MJML based templates) Custom reports Automation (triggered and RSS campaigns) Multiple…
read the full mailtrain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is excelize or mailtrain more popular?
excelize has 21,036 GitHub stars and mailtrain has 5,754. excelize has the larger community by that measure.
Are excelize and mailtrain free?
Both are open source. excelize is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mailtrain under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between excelize and mailtrain?
excelize is written in Go and mailtrain in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, excelize or mailtrain?
Choose excelize if you want the larger community (21,036 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mailtrain if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.