Proton Bridge
Proton Bridge spends its first release in ten weeks on crashes, memory bounds and dead code
Comparison · Comms
Chanty vs Maddy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Chanty and Maddy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Chanty vs Maddy: at a glance
What is Chanty?
Chanty's feed is an HR statistics content mill, not a product changelog
Every entry in the window is a marketing article — referral, theft and satisfaction statistics roundups, plus a run of competitor-alternatives listicles published in a single batch. Nothing here describes a change to the messaging product itself.
What is Maddy?
A one-binary mail server learning to behave like production infrastructure.
maddy is an all-in-one SMTP and IMAP server written in Go, aimed at people who want a working mail host without assembling Postfix, Dovecot and a policy daemon themselves. The 0.9 line moved quickly — 0.9.0 through 0.9.5 between late March and late May — with the sequence following a recognisable shape: a feature release, an immediate patch for a broken integration, a security release, then cleanup. Configuration is directive-based, and much of the changelog concerns the behaviour of individual modules like auth.ldap, check.rspamd and check.dnsbl.
Chanty vs Maddy: editorial side-by-side
Chanty
2.5COMMS
Chanty's feed is an HR statistics content mill, not a product changelog
◆ Current state
Every entry in the window is a marketing article — referral, theft and satisfaction statistics roundups, plus a run of competitor-alternatives listicles published in a single batch. Nothing here describes a change to the messaging product itself.
◆ Where it's heading
The publishing effort is going into search-driven HR and collaboration content aimed at buyers comparing team chat tools, with the alternatives posts targeting Slack, Yammer, Jive, Google Chat and Skype by name. Product direction cannot be read from this feed at all.
◆ Prediction
Expect more statistics roundups and comparison listicles; the feed gives no basis for predicting anything about the product.
Maddy
0.0COMMS
A one-binary mail server learning to behave like production infrastructure.
◆ Current state
maddy is an all-in-one SMTP and IMAP server written in Go, aimed at people who want a working mail host without assembling Postfix, Dovecot and a policy daemon themselves. The 0.9 line moved quickly — 0.9.0 through 0.9.5 between late March and late May — with the sequence following a recognisable shape: a feature release, an immediate patch for a broken integration, a security release, then cleanup. Configuration is directive-based, and much of the changelog concerns the behaviour of individual modules like auth.ldap, check.rspamd and check.dnsbl.
◆ Where it's heading
The project is systematically removing the compromises that made early versions convenient. Obsolete SASL LOGIN was disabled by default, the STARTTLS plaintext fallback was dropped, the maddyctl symlink behaviour and the implicit run command were deleted after four years of deprecation warnings, and libdns providers that have not kept up with 1.x are being cut. Running the other way is operational maturity: no-downtime config reload, queue-length metrics, OpenMetrics fixes, systemd readiness reporting, and SLSA build attestations on release artifacts. This is a project moving from hobbyist-friendly to operator-friendly, and accepting breakage to get there.
◆ Prediction
0.10.0 is already scoped by the deprecations announced in 0.9.1 — expect the flagged libdns providers to be removed and gandi to require Bearer tokens. Given the 0.9.x pattern, a feature release followed quickly by an integration fix is the likely shape.
Alternatives to Chanty 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 Chanty or Maddy.
Stalwart
Stalwart is chasing mail RFCs and its own storage layer at the same time
Mux
Every manual control Mux ships now arrives with a Robots workflow that does it for you
Netcore Cloud
Netcore's feed remains a demand-generation channel; ten entries, zero product releases.
mailcow
mailcow's release notes are almost entirely upstream security currency.
Openfire
Openfire keeps its XMPP server current without changing what it is.
See all Chanty alternatives → · See all Maddy alternatives →
Recent activity from Chanty and Maddy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoChantyEmployee Referral Statistics 2026: The Data Behind Your Company’s Hidden Talent
- 1mo agoChantyEmployee Theft Statistics 2026: What Numbers Say About Trust, Temptation, and People We Hire
- 1mo agoChantyCountries With the Best Work-Life Balance in 2026: The Statistics Behind the Good Life
- 1mo agoChantyEmployee Satisfaction Statistics 2026: What the Numbers Tell Us (And What They Can’t)
- 1mo agoChanty10 Surprising Yammer Alternatives [True or False?]
- 1mo agoChantyTop 11 Jive Alternatives for Team Collaboration
- 2mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.5 fixes nested pipeline logging and systemd reload reporting
- 3mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.4 removes the maddyctl symlink and implicit run command
- 4mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.3 patches an LDAP injection flaw in auth.ldap
- 4mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.2 fixes an rspamd panic on unspecified tls_client
- 4mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.1 flags libdns providers for removal in 0.10.0
- 4mo agoMaddymaddy 0.9.0 adds no-downtime configuration reloading ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Chanty and Maddy?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Chanty is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 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 Chanty better than Maddy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Chanty is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 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 Chanty?
Top Chanty alternatives in Comms are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Chanty alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/chanty 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.