What is Mautic? The open source marketing automation tool

I first came across Mautic in 2016 and have used it professionally ever since. So, what is Mautic? It is an open source marketing automation platform for people who want full control over their own data and campaigns, without a license fee and without a cap on contacts.

Mautic puts email campaigns, forms, landing pages, automation flows and reports in one place. Because it is open source, you can use it for free and customize it to fit what your company needs.

After years of use, my take is that experienced marketers find the platform easy to work with, while beginners often get lost. Some tools come with a wizard that walks you from point A to point B. In Mautic the components are separate pieces. That gives a lot of flexibility to people who already understand automation, but you need the concepts straight. You do not need advanced technical skills, since you build everything visually, although knowing a little HTML and CSS helps with fine adjustments.

Mautic started as an open source project around 2014. Today the global Mautic community maintains it, with support from Acquia. It puts on your own server the same core functions you find in HubSpot, ActiveCampaign or Marketo: lead capture, email nurturing, behavior tracking, lead scoring and segmentation. There is no monthly license on top.

What is Mautic and how does it work

Mautic is built around automations that connect a company to its customers with less manual work. The usual cycle follows a visitor from the first click until that person becomes a qualified lead the sales team can call.

Capture starts with a form the visitor fills out. The new lead lands in your contact base, where you can segment it by behavior. From there you send personalized email campaigns, and those emails can point to landing pages with a specific action, such as a purchase or a webinar signup. Reports measure every step and show what works and what needs adjusting.

A JavaScript tracking script on your site records the pages, email clicks and downloads of identified visitors. That behavior feeds lead scoring, which gives each contact points so the sales team can call the most engaged leads first. You can also connect Mautic to a CRM, Google Analytics or Salesforce to get the full picture.

What is Mautic used for: the main features

Mautic covers most of what a marketing team expects from an automation platform:

1. Contact management: import, manage and segment your base. Dynamic segments update themselves from filters, and you can still add contacts by hand.
2. Forms: build capture forms and embed them on any site.
3. Email marketing: create and send segmented campaigns, with automation that delivers each message at the right moment.
4. SMS: send personalized text messages to your contacts.
5. Campaign builder: a visual flow editor with conditions, decisions and actions.
6. Lead scoring: automatic points based on behavior and profile.
7. Reports: metrics for emails, campaigns, pages and lead scores.
8. Integrations: a REST API and webhooks connect Mautic to CRMs, WordPress, ecommerce and payment systems.
9. Plugins: because the code is open, you can extend it with ready-made plugins or build your own.

Advantages and the catch

The first advantage is cost. Mautic has no license, and you can adapt it to whatever the company needs. Many SaaS tools limit contacts or emails by plan. Mautic does not, so if you give it more computing power, it keeps scaling.

The community is large and active, so there are plenty of people to answer questions and updates come at a steady pace. It also runs almost anywhere. Mautic uses PHP, MySQL and a web server, which nearly every hosting provider offers, many of them with a ready-made installer.

The catch is that you need a clear grasp of automation concepts, because no assistant guides you from start to finish.

Who Mautic makes sense for

After years with the tool, I recommend Mautic to anyone who fits at least one of these profiles:

• Agencies that run automation for several clients and want a standard setup without paying a separate subscription for each one.
• Companies with large contact bases, where the per-contact pricing of SaaS tools starts to hurt.
• Teams that need full control of their data because of privacy laws such as GDPR or LGPD, or because of internal policy.
• Anyone who needs custom API integrations with in-house systems, including orchestration with n8n.
• Anyone who has, or can hire, the technical help to install and maintain a server.

Mautic is a poor fit if nobody on the team can handle installation, cron jobs, server management, updates and email deliverability. In that case a tool like ActiveCampaign will deliver value faster. Mautic pays back the setup effort in cost and flexibility for medium and large operations. For an occasional newsletter, it is too much work.

Mautic or a SaaS tool?

Most people who search for what is Mautic are really deciding between it and a SaaS tool. SaaS (Software as a Service) products charge a monthly or yearly fee and come ready to use. Mautic is open source, and you install it on your own server. These are the differences that matter:

Free software still has running costs: hosting, an email sending service, a domain and maintenance. Even so, Mautic usually costs much less than a SaaS tool, as long as you can keep the operation running. If you have no IT experience, no infrastructure and no team to help with Mautic, a SaaS tool is probably the better choice. If you want customization, scale and low cost, and you have or can get technical support, Mautic is the right call. I compare it with specific tools in Mautic vs other automation platforms.

How to get started with Mautic

If you decide to try it, this is the path I recommend, without rushing and without putting your real contact base at risk:

1. Download Mautic from the official site or, as I prefer, straight from the project's GitHub.
2. Set up a test instance on an inexpensive VPS. The official documentation has the instructions, and my guide on how to install Mautic covers four methods.
3. Configure the basics: your user account and the email server.
4. Set up the Mautic cron jobs and confirm that sending works. Without them, campaigns and segments do not run.
5. Get familiar with the interface. Add a few contacts by hand or import a .csv file, then build a form and a simple email.
6. Build a first welcome campaign and test it with internal addresses before you point it at real contacts.
7. Integrate with a CRM or Google Analytics if you need to. One CRM I have connected to Mautic that works very well is SuiteCRM, which is also open source.
8. Once the basics work, plan the migration of your existing contact base and keep tracking performance.

Mautic FAQ

What is Mautic?

Mautic is an open source marketing automation platform. You can use it to build lead nurturing flows, send email and SMS, manage landing pages, score leads and integrate with CRMs. There is no license fee because it is free software you can host yourself.

Is Mautic free?

The software is free and open source. The costs come from server hosting, technical setup, an email sending service (Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun) and maintenance. There is also a hosted version with paid plans for teams that do not want to run the infrastructure.

What is Mautic's main difference from HubSpot or ActiveCampaign?

Mautic is open source and self-hosted. You get full control and no monthly license, but you need someone technical to set it up and maintain it. HubSpot and ActiveCampaign are SaaS tools that come ready to use, with support and a friendly interface, and charge a monthly fee that grows with your contact base. For companies with a technical team, Mautic usually costs much less.

What is Mautic a good fit for?

Companies that have, or can get, technical support and want to cut automation costs. It also suits agencies that manage several clients, startups with many leads and a tight budget, and companies that need deep customization of flows and API integrations.

Which integrations does Mautic support?

CRMs such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive through plugins, WordPress through the official plugin, and email services such as Amazon SES, Gmail or any SMTP server. Webhooks and the REST API connect it to almost any other tool.

Free software, real costs

So what is Mautic, in short? An open source platform that brings campaigns, contacts and reports together without a license fee. If you are starting out in marketing automation and have some technical help, it is a good way in.

Keep the word "free" in perspective, though. Running a Mautic server and the services it needs costs money every month, even if it is less than the SaaS options. If you accept that and have the automation concepts clear, Mautic gives you a level of control that closed tools do not offer.