head to head · open source
Krayin vs mailcheap
Krayin has 24,009 GitHub stars, 1,665 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mailcheap has 933 stars, 233 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped today. Krayin leads on adoption by 2,473% (24,009 vs 933 stars). Krayin is written in PHP under MIT; mailcheap is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. Krayin has attracted 7% 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.
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
| Krayin | mailcheap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 933 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 233 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Krayin if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- 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 Krayin
Krayin is a free, MIT licensed, self hosted customer relationship management framework built on Laravel and Vue.js, intended for small and medium businesses and enterprises that want to run customer, lead, and sales management on their own infrastructure.
read the full Krayin 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Krayin or mailcheap more popular?
Krayin has 24,009 GitHub stars and mailcheap has 933. Krayin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Krayin and mailcheap free?
Both are open source. Krayin is licensed under MIT and mailcheap under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Krayin and mailcheap?
Krayin is written in PHP 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, Krayin or mailcheap?
Choose Krayin if you want the larger community (24,009 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mailcheap if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.