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Comparison · Collab
Excalidraw vs Mattermost
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Excalidraw and Mattermost — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Excalidraw vs Mattermost: at a glance
What is Excalidraw?
Excalidraw library cadence is glacial — v0.18 in March 2025, then silence; feed is mostly GitHub-profile noise.
The captured changelog tracks the npm library at github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw, not the hosted app at excalidraw.com. The library has shipped four substantive releases over two-and-a-half years: v0.16.1 (Sep 2023), v0.17.0 (Nov 2023), v0.17.3 (Feb 2024), and v0.18.0 (March 2025). The latest entry is from April 2026 but is a GitHub-profile scraping artifact, not a release. Half the feed is GitHub user-profile pages ('Sorry, something went wrong') that landed instead of release content.
What is Mattermost?
Mattermost ships v11.8 compliance controls amid heavy sovereign-defence content
Mattermost's feed mixes genuine releases with a steady stream of sovereign-collaboration and defence thought-leadership essays and partnership PR (Whitespace, archTIS, Arqit). The substantive release this window is v11.8 — classification banners, automated data-spillage reporting, and mobile ephemeral mode — squarely aimed at regulated and mission-critical operators.
Excalidraw vs Mattermost: editorial side-by-side
Excalidraw
1.3COLLAB
Excalidraw library cadence is glacial — v0.18 in March 2025, then silence; feed is mostly GitHub-profile noise.
◆ Current state
The captured changelog tracks the npm library at github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw, not the hosted app at excalidraw.com. The library has shipped four substantive releases over two-and-a-half years: v0.16.1 (Sep 2023), v0.17.0 (Nov 2023), v0.17.3 (Feb 2024), and v0.18.0 (March 2025). The latest entry is from April 2026 but is a GitHub-profile scraping artifact, not a release. Half the feed is GitHub user-profile pages ('Sorry, something went wrong') that landed instead of release content.
◆ Where it's heading
v0.18.0 was the high-water release — command palette, multiplayer undo/redo, editable element stats, text wrapping, and laser pointer. Since then the library has been quiet for over a year while the hosted app at excalidraw.com presumably continued to evolve through unversioned deploys. This pattern suggests the team has shifted investment toward the SaaS product and integrations, with the open-source library treated as a stable embedding target rather than the frontier of feature work.
◆ Prediction
The library will likely see another minor release rather than going dormant — there is too much downstream embedding (Notion, Obsidian, etc.) for it to fully fall behind the SaaS app — but expect months between releases, not weeks. The feed-source issue is fixable: the crawler should target the GitHub Releases API or RSS, not the HTML release pages and contributor profiles that produce the current noise.
Mattermost
7.5COLLAB
Mattermost ships v11.8 compliance controls amid heavy sovereign-defence content
◆ Current state
Mattermost's feed mixes genuine releases with a steady stream of sovereign-collaboration and defence thought-leadership essays and partnership PR (Whitespace, archTIS, Arqit). The substantive release this window is v11.8 — classification banners, automated data-spillage reporting, and mobile ephemeral mode — squarely aimed at regulated and mission-critical operators.
◆ Where it's heading
Mattermost is doubling down on secure, self-hosted collaboration for defence, government, and regulated industries — compliance tooling in the product, sovereign-AI and post-quantum partnerships around it. The product arc is incremental hardening of an already security-focused platform; the directional bets show up as partnerships and essays more than as single releases.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued compliance and data-governance features in point releases, with more defence-sector partnership announcements framing the strategy.
Alternatives to Excalidraw and Mattermost
Other Collab 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 Excalidraw or Mattermost.
Anytype
Anytype's 0.55 cycle is a steady grind on chat, with code blocks the headline
Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat is methodically migrating off Meteor DDP toward a REST core
Front
Front is rebuilding the shared inbox around AI agents and omnichannel reach.
Claromentis
Claromentis's feed is secure-AI and compliance thought-leadership, not a release log.
Powell Software
Powell Software's feed is digital-workplace marketing and PR, not release notes.
See all Excalidraw alternatives → · See all Mattermost alternatives →
Recent activity from Excalidraw and Mattermost
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoMattermostWhen the Archive Answers Back
- 2d agoMattermostMattermost and Whitespace Partner to Advance Operational AI and Secure Mission Collaboration for Defence
- 4d agoMattermostHow to Improve Internal Audit Workflows
- 10d agoMattermostMultiplayer Tool Calling for Secure Operations: Who Approves, Who Sees, Who Runs the Tool
- 11d agoMattermostMattermost v11.8: Classification Banners, Data Spillage Reporting, Mobile Ephemeral Mode & More
- 15d agoMattermostWhen the Agent Belongs to the Team That Uses It
- 2mo agoExcalidrawGitHub profile scrape (feed artifact, not a release)
- 1y agoExcalidrawv0.18.0 (2025-03-11) ⚡
- 1y agoExcalidrawGitHub profile error page (feed artifact)
- 1y agoExcalidrawv0.18.0 (duplicate feed entry)
- 2y agoExcalidrawv0.17.3 (2024-02-09)
- 2y agoExcalidrawv0.17.3 (2024-02-09)
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Excalidraw and Mattermost?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Mattermost is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 1.3), 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 Excalidraw better than Mattermost?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Mattermost is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 1.3), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Excalidraw?
Top Excalidraw alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Excalidraw alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/excalidraw for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Mattermost?
Top Mattermost alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Mattermost alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mattermost for the full list with editorial commentary on each.