Fastmail vs Rippling

Fastmail (Open-source software developed at Fastmail.) and Rippling (We make it unbelievably easy to manage your team's payroll, benefits, computers, and apps.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Fastmail (rank #430) holds a narrow lead over Rippling (rank #455) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (40 vs 39). The gap of 1 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Fastmail carries 6,316 GitHub stars across 38 public repos, with 12 repositories active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors on record. Rippling shows 156 stars across 11 public repos, 1 active in the last 90 days and 11 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Fastmail's footprint is roughly 40.5x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Fastmail is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Rippling looks better where code quality 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.