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A one-binary mail server learning to behave like production infrastructure.
Comparison · Comms
Friendica vs Mailu
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Friendica and Mailu — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Friendica vs Mailu: at a glance
What is Friendica?
Friendica keeps betting on being the fediverse node that speaks everyone else's protocols.
Friendica is a self-hosted decentralised social platform, released on calendar versions two or three times a year with codenames and a consistent structure: a handful of highlights, a security-fix credit, and a pointer to the changelog. The recent run — 2023.12, 2024.03, 2024.08, 2024.12, 2026.01, 2026.05 — shows the cadence thinning, with a full year between 2024.12 and 2026.01. Nearly every release credits externally reported security issues, most recently from Doyensec working with Mastodon.
What is Mailu?
A mail server whose entire visible output is patching other people's code.
Mailu is a self-hosted mail suite shipped as a Docker compose stack, and the 2024.06.x branch shown here is its maintenance line. Every release in the window is a single-issue patch — a Roundcube bump, a CVE fix, an autoconfig tweak. The cadence looks high at ten pinned releases in five months, but each carries one change.
Friendica vs Mailu: editorial side-by-side
Friendica
0.0COMMS
Friendica keeps betting on being the fediverse node that speaks everyone else's protocols.
◆ Current state
Friendica is a self-hosted decentralised social platform, released on calendar versions two or three times a year with codenames and a consistent structure: a handful of highlights, a security-fix credit, and a pointer to the changelog. The recent run — 2023.12, 2024.03, 2024.08, 2024.12, 2026.01, 2026.05 — shows the cadence thinning, with a full year between 2024.12 and 2026.01. Nearly every release credits externally reported security issues, most recently from Doyensec working with Mastodon.
◆ Where it's heading
Two lines of work dominate. The first is connectors: an initial Bluesky bridge in 2023.05 made bi-directional by 2023.12, Tumblr support maintained throughout, and ATproto account integration plus Bridgy Fed support improved in 2026.05. The second is Channels — the user-defined algorithm for sorting the network stream — introduced in 2023.12 and given performance and sorting work in every release since. Running against both is a deliberate pruning of legacy: OStatus dropped in 2024.12 after the project measured how few servers still needed it, and the fancybox addon deprecated alongside it.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to continue the ATproto and Bridgy Fed integration work and further Channels performance tuning, with the accessibility review started in 2026.01 producing more fixes. Given the year-long gap before 2026.01, the cadence itself is the uncertain part.
Mailu
5.0COMMS
A mail server whose entire visible output is patching other people's code.
◆ Current state
Mailu is a self-hosted mail suite shipped as a Docker compose stack, and the 2024.06.x branch shown here is its maintenance line. Every release in the window is a single-issue patch — a Roundcube bump, a CVE fix, an autoconfig tweak. The cadence looks high at ten pinned releases in five months, but each carries one change.
◆ Where it's heading
Most of what Mailu ships is downstream maintenance of its bundled components, Roundcube above all, which drove three of these ten releases. The project's own work here is defensive: escaping user-controlled fields in generated sieve scripts, setting X-Forwarded-By, adapting to Microsoft's new autodiscover. This is a product in steady-state operation, where the release notes track what upstream broke rather than what Mailu decided to build.
◆ Prediction
The next pinned release will most likely be another Roundcube or Alpine bump, since component upgrades triggered half the releases here. These entries say nothing about what is happening on the main branch.
Alternatives to Friendica 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 Friendica or Mailu.
diaspora
The original federated social network now ships roughly once every two years.
mailcow
Six releases, and every one of them is a security update in some form.
Element iOS
Renamed Element Classic, this client now ships one small fix every few months
Twilio
Twilio is selling trust: branded calls, scoped keys, and stricter sender vetting.
Notion
Notion is turning Custom Agents into event-driven workers with their own runtime and billing.
See all Friendica alternatives → · See all Mailu alternatives →
Recent activity from Friendica and Mailu
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6d agoMailuAutoconfig fix for modern K-9 Mail
- 8d agoMailuRoundcube 1.6.17 closes two CVEs
- 13d agoMailuSets X-Forwarded-By in response to a GHSA advisory
- 27d agoMailuAdmin UI keeps form values on failed submit
- 1mo agoMailuEscapes sieve fields, fixing autoreplies with special characters
- 2mo agoMailuRoundcube 1.6.16 and carddav 5.1.3 close CVE-2026-49217
- 2mo agoFriendicaFriendica 2026.05 deepens ATproto and Bridgy Fed support
- 6mo agoFriendicaFriendica 2026.01 adds sortable channels and admin block-list portability
- 1y agoFriendicaFriendica drops OStatus support in 2024.12 ⚡
- 1y agoFriendicaFriendica 2024.08 adds Zabbix and Grafana monitoring endpoints
- 2y agoFriendicaFriendica 2024.03 adds OCR-generated image descriptions
- 2y agoFriendicaFriendica 2023.12 makes the Bluesky bridge two-way and ships Channels ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Friendica 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 Friendica 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 Friendica?
Top Friendica alternatives in Comms are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Friendica alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/friendica 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.