Karma vs Mailrise
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Karma
Alert dashboard for Prometheus Alertmanager
VS
Mailrise
SMTP gateway that forwards email alerts to push services
| Feature | Karma | Mailrise |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,674 | ★ 1,584 |
| First released | 2017 | 2021 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | PagerDuty |
Why pick each one
Choose Mailrise if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.6k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is Karma or Mailrise better?
Neither is universally better. Karma has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Karma and Mailrise free and open-source?
Yes. Karma is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Mailrise under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Karma and Mailrise with Docker?
Karma: yes. Mailrise: yes.