TimeTagger
A time tracker that ships twice a year and spends it on self-hosters.
Comparison · HR
Fountain vs Jorani
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Fountain and Jorani — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Fountain vs Jorani: at a glance
| Feature | Fountain | Jorani |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | HR | HR |
| Velocity score | 7.5 | 0.0 |
| Sparks · 30d | 1 | 0 |
| Top themes | frontline-hiring, ai-agents, automation, recruiting | hr, leave-management, self-hosted, php |
| Last editorial update | 7d ago | 3h ago |
| Website | — | Visit → |
What is Fountain?
Fountain wires autonomous scheduling into Cue and per-customer instances into Sam
Fountain's frontline-hiring platform is layering AI agents onto its core products: Cue, the assistant users prompt for hiring insight, and Sam, a workforce-facing agent. This cycle both agents get meaningfully more capable — Cue can now run recurring work on its own schedule, and Sam becomes a configurable per-customer instance. Alongside the agent work, Fountain is reconciling data between its Source and Hire products so hire counts finally agree.
What is Jorani?
A dormant leave-management app returns with an MIT relicense and a hard break from its own API
Jorani is a self-hosted leave and overtime management app built on legacy CodeIgniter PHP. After a three-year gap, v1.0.4 arrives labelled a maintenance release but is anything but conservative: it relicenses from AGPL to MIT, moves the repository to a new organization, and deletes the Basic Auth REST API, the client-side password encryption layer and MySQL 5.7 support. The database schema is untouched, so the disruption is entirely in licensing, packaging and interfaces rather than data.
Fountain vs Jorani: editorial side-by-side
Fountain
7.5HR
Fountain wires autonomous scheduling into Cue and per-customer instances into Sam
◆ Current state
Fountain's frontline-hiring platform is layering AI agents onto its core products: Cue, the assistant users prompt for hiring insight, and Sam, a workforce-facing agent. This cycle both agents get meaningfully more capable — Cue can now run recurring work on its own schedule, and Sam becomes a configurable per-customer instance. Alongside the agent work, Fountain is reconciling data between its Source and Hire products so hire counts finally agree.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is agent-native frontline hiring: Fountain is moving Cue from a reactive prompt box toward an operator that acts on a cadence without being asked, and turning Sam into tenant-specific configuration rather than one shared assistant. The parallel Source/Hire data-unification and campaign-lifecycle work is the connective tissue that makes those agents trustworthy across the suite.
◆ Prediction
Expect Cue's autonomous task surface to widen — more task types, triggers, and outputs — and Sam's per-customer configuration to deepen. Continued Source/Hire consolidation suggests the two products keep converging on a single data model.
Jorani
0.0HR
A dormant leave-management app returns with an MIT relicense and a hard break from its own API
◆ Current state
Jorani is a self-hosted leave and overtime management app built on legacy CodeIgniter PHP. After a three-year gap, v1.0.4 arrives labelled a maintenance release but is anything but conservative: it relicenses from AGPL to MIT, moves the repository to a new organization, and deletes the Basic Auth REST API, the client-side password encryption layer and MySQL 5.7 support. The database schema is untouched, so the disruption is entirely in licensing, packaging and interfaces rather than data.
◆ Where it's heading
The long arc is a small project shedding weight. Releases through 2017 filled in the workflow model — cancellation states, SSO, mandatory rejection comments, a steady stream of translations. Version 1.0.0 in 2020 rebuilt the leave-balance engine and documented an OpenAPI surface, and the two releases since have been almost entirely security and PHP-version compatibility. v1.0.4 continues by removing rather than adding, including the very API 1.0.0 had documented, and folds the old tree under a legacy/ directory — which reads as groundwork for a replacement rather than a destination.
◆ Prediction
The legacy/ layout and the withdrawn REST API point to a new API and a non-legacy codebase as the next move; the entries don't indicate on what stack, or when.
Alternatives to Fountain and Jorani
Other HR 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 Fountain or Jorani.
Wagepoint
Wagepoint's news is its accountant channel, not its software
Ever Gauzy
Ever Gauzy turned its dashboard into a composable canvas, then filled it with 47 widgets in a week.
iCIMS
iCIMS publishes labor-market research on a cadence its product changelog never matches.
Zelt
UK HR and payroll software running a pure search-acquisition feed
Teamtailor
An ATS opening its pipeline to AI assistants while screening moves into every stage
See all Fountain alternatives → · See all Jorani alternatives →
Recent activity from Fountain and Jorani
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 7d agoFountainScheduled Tasks in Cue ⚡
- 7d agoFountainCustomer Configuration for Sam
- 7d agoFountainHires count in Source now matches Hire
- 7d agoFountainCampaign publishing status and a streamlined campaign experience in Source
- 8d agoFountainNew in Fountain: July 8 - 21
- 21d agoFountainNew in Fountain: Universal Dashboard goes GA, Hire Go expands, and compliance controls deepen
- 3mo agoJoraniSecurity and PHP8.5 support ⚡
- 3y agoJoraniSecurity and PHP8.2 compat release (No DB Patch)
- 5y agoJoraniJorani 1.0 revamps leave balances and documents a Swagger API
- 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.5 adds Portuguese and Arabic translations
- 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.4 fixes leave transitions and broken ICS feeds
- 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.3 adds Greek and mandatory rejection comments
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Fountain and Jorani?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Fountain is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 0.0), with 1 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 Fountain better than Jorani?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Fountain is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other HR products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Fountain?
Top Fountain alternatives in HR are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Fountain alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fountain for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Jorani?
Top Jorani alternatives in HR are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Jorani alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/jorani for the full list with editorial commentary on each.