Our verdict on Mautic

Mautic is the right tool when an adult site needs real automation, such as nurturing free signups into paying members, and has someone to run a VPS. Lead scoring and behavior-based branching come with no license fee.

Expect a learning curve: a VPS, several cron jobs and a release every month make it far more work to run than a hosted newsletter tool.

The mautic.org home page on a blue background, headlined “Free your marketing with Mautic”, with “Get started today” and “Explore features” buttons and “Unlimited contacts” and “Omnichannel” badges — Mautic

Building a signup-to-member funnel in Mautic

Mautic's campaign builder lets you map a sequence visually: a contact enters through a form or a segment, then gets emails based on opens, clicks and page visits. Points score each contact's interest and can trigger actions, and stages track where they are in the funnel. You also get dynamic segments, A/B tests, frequency rules, a preference center and landing pages.

For a paysite, that covers the classic flow: a free trial signup, a reminder a few days later if no purchase follows, and a suppression rule for contacts who stop opening.

Mautic hosting requirements

The project says Mautic should not be installed on shared hosting, so plan on a VPS or dedicated server. Mautic 7 runs on PHP 8.2 through 8.5 with MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.2 or later, Apache or Nginx, npm and nine PHP extensions, imap and intl among them. Several cron jobs are mandatory, including segment updates and campaign triggers, and the docs recommend staggering them a few minutes apart.

Managed Mautic pricing at Dropsolid

Mautic's managed plans are sold by Dropsolid, its official hosting partner. The Essential plan costs €247.50 a month billed annually or €275 quarterly for 50,000 contacts, 100 emails a minute and a shared IP, and Professional starts at €1,237 a month with a dedicated IP. Prices are in euros only.

Relays and bounce handling

Mautic does not deliver mail itself. You connect an SMTP relay or an email API, chosen and paid for separately. Bounces come back either through an IMAP inbox, which does not work with Gmail or Amazon SES, or through webhooks from Elastic Email, SparkPost, Mandrill, Mailjet, SendGrid or Amazon SES.

How often Mautic needs updating

Mautic ships a patch release every month, a minor release every three months and a major release every two years. The latest is 7.2.1, released in late September 2026. Support for 7.2 ended with that month, and 7.3, announced as the next long-term release for the third quarter, is not out yet. Once it ships, it gets security fixes through the end of 2027, and paid extended support after that.

Mautic strengths and limitations

Strengths

Real automation with points, stages and branching.
Free when self-hosted, no contact cap.
Very active project with monthly releases.

Limitations

Managed hosting bans pornographic content.
A VPS and cron jobs to maintain.
Frequent upgrades to keep up with.
IMAP bounces fail with Gmail and SES.

Lighter alternatives to Mautic

If you only send newsletters, listmonk runs from one binary and PostgreSQL. MailWizz covers autoresponders and IP warmup for $79 once, on a simpler PHP stack.