Developer ecosystem comparison
EL
Element
@element-hq
Rank #190
Score 50
SaaS

Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.

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Element vs Productboard

Developer ecosystem comparison across GitHub activity, SDKs, documentation, community, reach and momentum.

Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) and Productboard (Make things that matter, together. See also @productboardlabs) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Element (rank #190) holds a modest lead over Productboard (rank #625) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 33). The gap of 17 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Element carries 34,608 GitHub stars across 137 public repos, with 33 repositories active in the last 90 days and 97 external contributors on record. Productboard shows 90 stars across 87 public repos, 8 active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Element's footprint is roughly 384.5x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Element is the stronger read for anyone weighting community. Productboard makes more sense for teams already using its adjacent tools. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.

Side-by-side metrics

MetricElementProductboard
Ranking
Overall rank#190#625
Pillars
Overall5033
Code7441
Education5830
Community5116
Reach5022
Momentum6048
Builder experience00
Signals
Stars34,60890
Forks7,55979
Public repos13787
Active repos (90d)338
External contributors972
Avg polish7532
Avg AI-readiness5034

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