Mailrise vs Oncall
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Mailrise | Oncall |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 48 · Fair | 28 · At risk |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,592 | ★ 1,258 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | PagerDuty |
What are Mailrise and Oncall?
Mailrise
Mailrise acts as an SMTP server that receives email alerts from legacy systems and forwards them as push notifications through Apprise. It bridges old monitoring tools to modern notification channels.
- SMTP-to-push bridge
- Apprise integration
- Many notification targets
- Tiny footprint
Oncall
Oncall is a calendar tool for managing on-call schedules and rotations across teams. Developed at LinkedIn, it integrates with paging systems to ensure the right engineer is reachable at any time.
- Calendar-based rotations
- Team and event management
- Paging system integration
- REST API
Mailrise vs Oncall: key differences
Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — MIT for Mailrise versus BSD-2-Clause for Oncall. Mailrise is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Oncall. Oncall is the more established project (first released 2017), while Mailrise arrived in 2021.
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)
Choose Oncall if…
- Simple scheduling model
- Battle-tested at LinkedIn
Watch out for
- Needs Iris for actual paging
- UI is utilitarian
Frequently asked questions
Is Mailrise or Oncall better?
Mailrise is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Oncall if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Mailrise and Oncall free and open-source?
Yes. Mailrise is licensed under MIT and Oncall under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Mailrise and Oncall with Docker?
Mailrise: yes. Oncall: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Mailrise or Oncall?
Mailrise has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Oncall. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.