head to head · open source
excelize vs mailcheap
excelize has 20,993 GitHub stars, 1,967 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mailcheap has 933 stars, 233 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped today. excelize leads on adoption by 2,150% (20,993 vs 933 stars). excelize is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; mailcheap is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. excelize has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, mailcheap 25%. mailcheap was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (mcp), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| excelize | mailcheap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 933 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 233 |
| 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 mailcheap if
- You want the mailcheap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mailcheap fits your workflow better
About excelize
Excelize is a pure Go library for reading and writing XLAM, XLSM, XLSX, XLTM and XLTX spreadsheets, built for Go developers who need to generate or parse Microsoft Excel 2007 and later workbooks directly from their own code.
read the full excelize overview →
About mailcheap
MailCheap is an open source newsletter application in JavaScript — dashboard, public archive, REST API and MCP server in one Next.js app — for writers, teams and agent builders who want to keep their subscriber list in their own database and pay a sending provider per email instead of paying a platform per subscriber.
read the full mailcheap overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Marketing & Customer Engagement projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Marketing & Customer Engagement field.
Frequently asked questions
Is excelize or mailcheap more popular?
excelize has 20,993 GitHub stars and mailcheap has 933. excelize has the larger community by that measure.
Are excelize and mailcheap free?
Both are open source. excelize is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and mailcheap under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between excelize and mailcheap?
excelize is written in Go and mailcheap 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 mailcheap?
Choose excelize if you want the larger community (20,993 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose mailcheap if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.