37signals vs ForestAdmin

37signals (HEY! It's in Basecamp!) and ForestAdmin (Forest Admin provides an off-the-shelf admin panel based on a highly-extensible API plugged into your application.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

37signals (rank #122) holds a narrow lead over ForestAdmin (rank #165) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (54 vs 51). The gap of 3 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), ForestAdmin is slightly ahead of 37signals. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), ForestAdmin is ahead of 37signals. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), 37signals is clearly ahead of ForestAdmin. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), 37signals is clearly ahead of ForestAdmin. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), 37signals is ahead of ForestAdmin.

37signals carries 113,857 GitHub stars across 236 public repos, with 48 repositories active in the last 90 days and 298 external contributors on record. ForestAdmin shows 3,415 stars across 87 public repos, 14 active in the last 90 days and 9 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but 37signals's footprint is roughly 33.3x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

37signals is the stronger read for anyone weighting community. ForestAdmin looks better where education is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.