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Comparison · Comms
Brosix vs Maddy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Brosix and Maddy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Brosix vs Maddy: at a glance
What is Brosix?
Brosix follows its communities launch with a referral push and a private-room how-to.
Brosix is a 20-year-old team messenger. Its main recent product moves were private channels and communities for clients and partners in April and audio and video calling in the mobile apps in May. Since then the feed has carried a summer referral campaign offering three free months per referred team, and a post showing how to use per-employee private rooms as distribution groups for IT and HR, a workaround built from existing rooms rather than a new feature.
What is Maddy?
maddy's latest release is a security fix, five months after its last feature work.
maddy is an all-in-one Go mail server for SMTP and IMAP. Its most recent release, 0.9.6 in October, requires explicit trust for PROXY protocol headers and closes an auth misconfiguration that could skip password checks. Before that, the 0.9 line ran from March to May: no-downtime config reload in 0.9.0, an LDAP injection fix, and removal of long-deprecated commands.
Brosix vs Maddy: editorial side-by-side
Brosix
0.0COMMS
Brosix follows its communities launch with a referral push and a private-room how-to.
◆ Current state
Brosix is a 20-year-old team messenger. Its main recent product moves were private channels and communities for clients and partners in April and audio and video calling in the mobile apps in May. Since then the feed has carried a summer referral campaign offering three free months per referred team, and a post showing how to use per-employee private rooms as distribution groups for IT and HR, a workaround built from existing rooms rather than a new feature.
◆ Where it's heading
After shipping communities and mobile calling, Brosix has shifted to growth and use-case content. The distribution-groups post shows the gap: it describes a shared-inbox workflow the product does not offer natively.
◆ Prediction
Unclear from the feed; the last product release was in May, and the July posts give no hint of what ships next.
Maddy
0.0COMMS
maddy's latest release is a security fix, five months after its last feature work.
◆ Current state
maddy is an all-in-one Go mail server for SMTP and IMAP. Its most recent release, 0.9.6 in October, requires explicit trust for PROXY protocol headers and closes an auth misconfiguration that could skip password checks. Before that, the 0.9 line ran from March to May: no-downtime config reload in 0.9.0, an LDAP injection fix, and removal of long-deprecated commands.
◆ Where it's heading
The project is moving from convenient defaults to safer ones, accepting breaking changes on the way. Older conveniences such as SASL LOGIN, STARTTLS plaintext fallback and the maddyctl symlink have been removed, and 0.9.1 flagged several DNS providers for removal in 0.10.0. Two of the last four releases were security fixes.
◆ Prediction
0.10.0 is scoped by the deprecations announced in 0.9.1: expect the flagged DNS providers to go and gandi to require Bearer tokens. The five-month gap gives no date for it.
Alternatives to Brosix and Maddy
Other Comms products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Brosix or Maddy.
Grain
Grain adds consent controls and rule-based privacy as its meeting data reaches more AI tools.
Converse.js
Converse.js 14.0.1 fixes OMEMO:2 group decryption broken by Chromium 153.
Element iOS
Element Classic now asks its own users to move to Element X, if their server opts in.
VerneMQ
VerneMQ follows its year-in-the-making 2.2.0 with a quick round of subscription fixes.
Session
Session survived its funding scare; now Pro is on hold and Protocol v2 is the bet.
See all Brosix alternatives → · See all Maddy alternatives →
Recent activity from Brosix and Maddy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.6 fixes PROXY trust and auth bypass misconfig
- 3mo agoBrosixSummer Referral Campaign 2026: Earn 3 Free Months for Every Team You Bring to Brosix
- 3mo agoBrosixHow to set up IT and HR distribution groups with private rooms
- 5mo agoBrosixBrosix Turns 20: Two Decades of Keeping Team Communication Simple
- 5mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.5 fixes nested pipeline logging and systemd reload reporting
- 6mo agoBrosixAudio and Video Calls Are Now Available on Brosix Mobile Apps
- 6mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.4 removes the maddyctl symlink and implicit run command
- 6mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.3 patches an LDAP injection flaw in auth.ldap
- 7mo agoBrosixNew in Brosix: Build Private Channels and Communities — for Teams, Clients, and Partners ⚡
- 7mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.2 fixes an rspamd panic on unspecified tls_client
- 7mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.1 flags libdns providers for removal in 0.10.0
- 8mo agoBrosixTurn Recommendations Into Passive Income with the Brosix Partner Program
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Brosix and Maddy?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Brosix and Maddy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Brosix better than Maddy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Brosix and Maddy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Comms products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Brosix?
Top Brosix alternatives in Comms are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Brosix alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/brosix for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Maddy?
Top Maddy alternatives in Comms are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Maddy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/maddy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.