Mautic Review

Overview

Mautic is the longest-running open-source marketing automation platform: email, landing pages, forms, segments, campaigns, contact scoring, and multi-channel 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; the trademark is now held by fiscal host Open Source Collective and operations run through an elected Mautic Council, with Acquia and Dropsolid the largest funders. Around 10,500 GitHub stars, eleven bundled plugin packages, and translations into 70 languages reflect that community. The current line is 7.x (7.2.0 shipped in September 2026) and its requirements are serious: PHP 8.2 or newer, minimums raised to MySQL 8.4 and MariaDB 10.11 in the 7.0 release, 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; there is no AI anywhere, and the project's AI Manifesto states plainly that it hosts or maintains no AI services and remains AI-agnostic, so any Mautic AI pitch is a third-party layer rather than a product feature. Integrations are plugin-based: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Dynamics among CRMs, plus WordPress, Twilio, Mailchimp, Gmail and Outlook connectors, Google Tag Manager, Amazon S3, and Zapier. The project's own comparison page positions Mautic for organizations whose automation grows more complex over time and that need control over data governance and infrastructure with predictable costs rather than contact-based fees, while conceding HubSpot for teams that want a polished hosted experience. The software is free; money enters through partner Dropsolid's managed hosting (from € 247.50 a month, 14-day trial, no card) and paid Extended Long Term Support for older versions. The honest costs are operational: upgrades, backups, deliverability, and cron management are yours, and campaigns cannot be moved between instances.

Key Integrations

How to install

1. Composer is the canonical path since Mautic 6: composer create-project mautic/recommended-project:^7.0 some-dir --no-interaction, then php bin/console mautic:install https://m.example.com with database, mailer, and admin flags. The 7.1 install docs still show the older ^5 template, so follow the 7.x recommended-project README.
2. Requirements (mautic.org/mautic-requirements): PHP 8.2 to 8.5 with the xml, mysql, imap, zip, intl, curl, gd, mbstring, and bcmath extensions, npm from 5.0 onward, and, per UPGRADE-7.0.md, MySQL 8.4+ or MariaDB 10.11+ (the requirements page still says 5.7/10.2 and lags the release). max_execution_time needs at least 240 seconds, and admin passwords must be complex since 5.1.
3. Docker: docker pull mautic/mautic (apache and fpm variants, about 615 MB) with compose roles for mautic_web, mautic_worker, and mautic_cron; CLI commands run as www-data inside the mautic_web container, for example docker compose exec --user www-data --workdir /var/www/html mautic_web php ./bin/console mautic:install https://mautic.example.com.
4. Cron is mandatory, not optional: mautic:segments:update, mautic:campaigns:update, and mautic:campaigns:trigger (the docs suggest 15-minute offsets), messenger:consume email for the queue, and optional jobs for broadcasts, imports, webhooks, and IP lookup downloads.
5. Updates are CLI-only: mautic:update:find, then mautic:update:apply and mautic:update:apply --finish, or on Composer installs cache:clear plus doctrine:migration:migrate. The docs' own warning applies before any of it: never update without a working, up-to-date backup. For local development the documented route is DDEV (ddev start).

Requirements

A VPS or dedicated server: the requirements page says shared hosting can impair performance, cause update failures, and limit functionality, and that community support is unlikely for shared hosting setups. Add PHP 8.2+ with nine documented extensions, npm, MySQL 8.4+ or MariaDB 10.11+, and cron as part of the deployment rather than an option. Budget the operational work too: backups before every update, deliverability configuration (bounce management, monitored inboxes, and S/MIME signing are all documented), and the fact that campaigns cannot be moved between instances, so staging strategy needs deciding early.

Best for

Organizations that expect automation and integrations to grow more complex over time and need control over data governance and infrastructure, in the project's own words: in-house marketing ops with developers nearby, agencies running client instances, and regulated or privacy-conscious teams that cannot put contact data in a vendor's cloud and prefer costs tied to real usage rather than contact-based fees.

Not for

Teams without technical staff: browser updates are gone, cron is mandatory, shared hosting is discouraged, and the marketplace does not yet verify plugin version compatibility, so blind plugin installs are warned against. Also not for anyone shopping for AI features, which the project explicitly does not provide, and not for teams that need to copy campaigns between staging and production, which the roadmap lists as currently impossible.

Review notes

Assessed from mautic.org, docs.mautic.org (the 7.1 line), the GitHub repo, Packagist, and Docker Hub in September 2026; we have not run an instance. The release cadence is healthy: 7.2.0 shipped September 2, 2026 and 7.1.3 on July 7, with a stated cadence of monthly patches, quarterly minors, and a major every two years, plus published support windows including a 7.3 LTS due December 2026.

The correction that matters: our earlier record listed AI-powered lead scoring, AI email personalization, and AI campaign optimization. None exist. The project's AI Manifesto states that it does not currently host or maintain any AI services as part of the Mautic project and that Mautic is strictly AI-agnostic. Lead scoring is a deterministic points rule engine. We have emptied the AI feature list rather than soften it.

Second correction: governance and integrations. Our Raleigh, North Carolina headquarters claim has no source anywhere on mautic.org; Mautic has been community-governed since Acquia bought Mautic Inc. in 2019, with the trademark held by Open Source Collective and operations under an elected council. Slack, Google Analytics, and Stripe appeared in our integration list with no docs page or official plugin repo behind them (plugin-slack and plugin-stripe return 404); we replaced them with documented plugins.

Vendor numbers deserve caution on this listing: the homepage claims both 40,000+ and 200K+ companies use Mautic, and its stat counters render placeholder zeros, so we quote neither. The verifiable scale markers are the star count, the 70-language translation effort, and the eleven bundled plugin packages in the core repository.

Verdict

The most complete open-source answer to HubSpot if you have the ops capacity to run it: real campaigns, segments, and scoring under GPL-3.0, no AI, and no shortcuts on maintenance.

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