Close vs Excalidraw

Close (The inside sales CRM of choice for SMBs) and Excalidraw (Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Excalidraw (rank #103) holds a modest lead over Close (rank #298) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 45). The gap of 10 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Close carries 3,871 GitHub stars across 190 public repos, with 25 repositories active in the last 90 days and 10 external contributors on record. Excalidraw shows 136,744 stars across 25 public repos, 3 active in the last 90 days and 215 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Excalidraw's footprint is roughly 35.3x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Close is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Excalidraw looks better where reach 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.