Dropbox vs Fastmail

Dropbox and Fastmail (Open-source software developed at Fastmail.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Dropbox (rank #257) holds a narrow lead over Fastmail (rank #430) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (47 vs 40). The gap of 7 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Dropbox carries 61,045 GitHub stars across 247 public repos, with 29 repositories active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors on record. Fastmail shows 6,316 stars across 38 public repos, 12 active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Dropbox's footprint is roughly 9.7x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Dropbox is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Fastmail 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.