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.
Not the right match-up?
Mailrise
SMTP gateway that forwards email alerts to push services
VS
Oncall
Calendar-based on-call scheduling and team management
| Feature | Mailrise | Oncall |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 1,584 | ★ 1,256 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| 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 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.