We are building a Node.js service which will need asynchronous support for tasks like sending emails. Here's our evaluation:

• kue
  • https://github.com/Automattic/kue
  • Good: Seems well documented
  • Good: Supports retries and backoff
  • Good: Uses Redis so 1 less thing to maintain
  • Bad: Only supports Redis so have to wary of key eviction at later stages of growth
  • Bad: Slow to resolve issues
    • http://isitmaintained.com/project/Automattic/kue
    • Resolution time: 15 days, Open issues: 10%
• BUSMQ
  • https://github.com/capriza/node-busmq
  • Bad: Doesn't seem battle-tested enough (e.g. low stars, low issues, low PRs)
  • Good: Fast issue resolution
    • http://isitmaintained.com/project/capriza/node-busmq
    • Resolution time: 22 hours, Open issues: 3%
• Bull
  • https://github.com/OptimalBits/bull
  • Good: Has UIs
    • https://github.com/OptimalBits/bull#uis
  • Really bad: Sloooow issues resolution
    • http://isitmaintained.com/project/OptimalBits/bull
    • Resolution time: 21 days, Open issues: 25%
• node-resque, port of Ruby's resque library
  • https://github.com/taskrabbit/node-resque
  • Good: Seems battle-tested (e.g. high issues, high PRs)
  • Bad: Documentation isn't that straightforward but I think we need to run both a worker and a scheduler
  • Good: Quick issue resolution
    • http://isitmaintained.com/project/taskrabbit/node-resque
    • Resolution time: 22 hours, Open issues: 5%
• We are skipping RabbitMQ and ZeroMQ research for now, focusing on Redis so we can reduce upfront DevOps workload

Probably going to go with kue; it's had 500 issues and 200 PRs closed so it should be stable.

I'm not sure why but I don't want to settle on resque. Let's call it personal stubborn-ness/caution for now.