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Comparison · Comms
Brosix vs Mailu
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Brosix and Mailu — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Brosix vs Mailu: 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 Mailu?
Mailu's October: patched PHP for webmail, and a resolver that reports DNS failures
Mailu's 2024.06 branch shipped six pinned releases in October, each tied to a single issue. Three dealt with the resolver: handling the DNSSEC KSK rollover, then making the healthcheck fail on SERVFAIL, re-shipped once. Three were webmail: Roundcube 1.6.20, mitigations for the PHP2Shell CVEs, and then the patched PHP runtime. Late September releases fixed boolean settings that could not be turned off and stale webmail sessions after switching accounts via SSO.
Brosix vs Mailu: 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.
Mailu
5.0COMMS
Mailu's October: patched PHP for webmail, and a resolver that reports DNS failures
◆ Current state
Mailu's 2024.06 branch shipped six pinned releases in October, each tied to a single issue. Three dealt with the resolver: handling the DNSSEC KSK rollover, then making the healthcheck fail on SERVFAIL, re-shipped once. Three were webmail: Roundcube 1.6.20, mitigations for the PHP2Shell CVEs, and then the patched PHP runtime. Late September releases fixed boolean settings that could not be turned off and stale webmail sessions after switching accounts via SSO.
◆ Where it's heading
The project remains in one-fix-per-release maintenance on the 2024.06 line, with upstream webmail and PHP security driving much of the cadence. Nothing in the entries points to a new main release.
◆ Prediction
The next releases will most likely follow upstream Roundcube or PHP security fixes, as three of the last six did.
Alternatives to Brosix and Mailu
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 Mailu.
Session
Session survived its funding scare; now Pro is on hold and Protocol v2 is the bet.
Misskey
Misskey moves to Sentry v11 and keeps shipping security fixes in its monthly releases.
Apprise
Apprise 2 is out: notify() returns a result object, and 2.1 takes the catalog to 170 services.
RSS.com
RSS.com's changelog is back after ten months, with listener voicemail for podcasts.
mailcow
mailcow's monthly releases are mostly upstream security updates with small UI work
See all Brosix alternatives → · See all Mailu alternatives →
Recent activity from Brosix and Mailu
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 10d agoMailuMailu ships patched PHP for PHP2Shell CVEs
- 11d agoMailuMailu mitigates PHP2Shell webmail CVEs
- 13d agoMailuMailu 2024.06.65: Roundcube 1.6.20 update
- 18d agoMailu2024.06.64 re-ships the resolver healthcheck fix
- 20d agoMailu2024.06.63 makes the resolver healthcheck catch SERVFAIL
- 21d agoMailu2024.06.62 handles the DNSSEC KSK rollover
- 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
- 6mo agoBrosixAudio and Video Calls Are Now Available on Brosix Mobile Apps
- 7mo agoBrosixNew in Brosix: Build Private Channels and Communities — for Teams, Clients, and Partners ⚡
- 8mo agoBrosixTurn Recommendations Into Passive Income with the Brosix Partner Program
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Brosix and Mailu?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Mailu is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Brosix better than Mailu?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Mailu is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. 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 Mailu?
Top Mailu alternatives in Comms are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Mailu alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mailu for the full list with editorial commentary on each.