Mautic
The flagship open-source marketing automation suite: email, campaigns, lead scoring, and landing pages, self-hosted under GPL-3.0.
About
Mautic is the longest-running open-source marketing automation platform: email campaigns, landing pages, forms, segments, campaigns, contact scoring, and multichannel messaging across email, SMS, web notifications, and mobile push, all self-hosted under GPL-3.0. Started in 2014, it has been community-governed since Acquia acquired Mautic Inc. in May 2019, with the trademark held by Open Source Collective and operations run through an elected Mautic Council. Around 10,700 GitHub stars, eleven bundled plugin packages, and translations into 70 languages reflect that community.
The current line is 7.x (7.2.0 shipped September 2026) and its requirements are serious: PHP 8.2 or newer, MySQL 8.4 or MariaDB 10.11, npm for asset builds, mandatory cron jobs for segments, campaigns, and the email queue, and command-line-only updates since browser updating was removed in 5.0. Shared hosting is explicitly discouraged. Campaigns, segments, and points-based lead scoring are deterministic rule engines; the project's AI Manifesto states it hosts no AI services and remains AI-agnostic, so any Mautic AI pitch is a third-party layer. Integrations are plugin-based: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Dynamics, WordPress, Twilio, and Zapier. The software is free; money enters through partner Dropsolid's managed hosting (from EUR247.50/month) and paid Extended Long Term Support for older versions.
What it can do
- Visual campaign builder
- Email campaigns and autoresponders
- Landing pages and forms
- Dynamic segments
- Points-based lead scoring
- A/B testing
- Multichannel messaging (email, SMS, push)
- Plugin-based CRM integrations
- Contact timeline and activity tracking
- 70+ language translations
Setup
Provision a VPS, install PHP 8.2+, MySQL 8.4/MariaDB 10.11, and Composer/npm dependencies, then run the Mautic installer via CLI and configure cron jobs.
Prerequisites
VPS or server (not shared hosting); PHP 8.2+, MySQL 8.4+/MariaDB 10.11+; command-line comfort; an SMTP provider for sending.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 7/10
Scored 7/10 (TIER verified, metrics-v1). Evidence: open-source codebase fully inspectable on GitHub (~10,700 stars); version 7.2.0, requirements, and governance documented in a third-party methodology review; community governance since the 2019 Acquia acquisition. Strengths: genuine data ownership and no per-contact fees, large plugin ecosystem, deterministic automation (no AI hype), 70 languages. Docked for: (1) serious self-hosting burden — CLI-only updates, cron jobs, modern PHP/MySQL requirements; (2) no hosted free tier; official managed hosting starts around EUR247.50/month; (3) UX trails polished SaaS competitors per reviewers. License: GPL-3.0; free software, self-hosted.
★ 10,726 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 7.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 9.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 7.0/10
- · Started 2014; community-governed since Acquia acquired Mautic Inc. in May 2019
- · ~10,700 GitHub stars; 70 language translations
- · Version 7.2.0 shipped Sept 2026; requires PHP 8.2+, MySQL 8.4/MariaDB 10.11+
- · CLI-only updates since 5.0; shared hosting explicitly discouraged
- · AI Manifesto: hosts no AI services, remains AI-agnostic
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.