← Back to home
Comparison · HR

Jorani vs Fountain

A side-by-side editorial comparison of Jorani and Fountain — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

Jorani vs Fountain: at a glance

FeatureJoraniFountain
SectorHRHR
Velocity score0.07.5
Sparks · 30d01
Top themeshr, leave-management, self-hosted, phpfrontline-hiring, ai-agents, automation, recruiting
Last editorial update1h ago7d ago
WebsiteVisit →

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.

Read the full Jorani trajectory →

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.

Read the full Fountain trajectory →

Jorani vs Fountain: editorial side-by-side

J0.0

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.

F7.5

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.

Alternatives to Jorani and Fountain

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 Jorani or Fountain.

See all Jorani alternatives → · See all Fountain alternatives →

Recent activity from Jorani and Fountain

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 7d agoFountainScheduled Tasks in Cue
  2. 7d agoFountainCustomer Configuration for Sam
  3. 7d agoFountainHires count in Source now matches Hire
  4. 7d agoFountainCampaign publishing status and a streamlined campaign experience in Source
  5. 8d agoFountainNew in Fountain: July 8 - 21
  6. 21d agoFountainNew in Fountain: Universal Dashboard goes GA, Hire Go expands, and compliance controls deepen
  7. 3mo agoJoraniSecurity and PHP8.5 support
  8. 3y agoJoraniSecurity and PHP8.2 compat release (No DB Patch)
  9. 5y agoJoraniJorani 1.0 revamps leave balances and documents a Swagger API
  10. 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.5 adds Portuguese and Arabic translations
  11. 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.4 fixes leave transitions and broken ICS feeds
  12. 8y agoJoraniJorani 0.6.3 adds Greek and mandatory rejection comments

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Jorani and Fountain?

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 Jorani better than Fountain?

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 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.

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.