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Comparison

The best Mautic alternatives

Mautic is the only open-source project here with feature coverage close to the commercial marketing platforms — campaigns, segmentation, landing pages, lead scoring — running on your own PHP and MySQL with no per-contact cost at any size. People leave because administering it is a real job.

Alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and it isn't open source.

19 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Simpler open sourcelistmonk

One Go binary and Postgres, if campaigns to lists is really the job.

Open source with a hosted optionKeila

AGPL, European hosting from €8/mo, unlimited contacts on every tier.

Best for WordPress sitesFluentCRM

A flat annual licence inside your own site, with no server to administer.

Closest commercial equivalentActiveCampaign

The automation depth Mautic aims at, with nobody to page at 3am.

Best when administering it stops payingEmail Bump

Managed sending, flows and a transactional API on one plan. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with Mautic

Mautic's feature list is genuinely impressive for free software. Almost every complaint is about operating it.

You administer PHP, MySQL and cron. And correctly, because Mautic's campaign processing depends on cron running reliably. Misconfigured cron is the single most common cause of campaigns that quietly stop working, and diagnosing it is on you.

Upgrades are known to be involved. Major-version upgrades have a reputation, and the community will tell you so. Budget for them properly rather than assuming a package manager will handle it.

You bring your own sending provider — and own deliverability. Mautic doesn't send. It hands off to SES, Mailgun or SMTP, and blocklist removals, warm-up and inbox placement are entirely yours.

The interface feels its age. Functional and dated next to the commercial tools. If a marketer is going to be in it every day, that's a real cost even though it never appears on an invoice.

The baseline

What Mautic costs

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Free software, your infrastructure

The model

$0
Open sourceLicence — PHP and MySQL, with cron for scheduled processing
Your provider
SES, Mailgun or SMTPSending — Mautic never sends directly
$0
Any numberContacts — No per-contact cost at any list size
Worth knowing

The fine print

  • The largest open-source marketing automation project, with over 10,000 GitHub stars.
  • Campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring.
  • Requires PHP, MySQL and reliable cron — campaign processing depends on it.
  • Self-hosted, so your data stays on your infrastructure.
  • No per-contact pricing, ever, at any list size.
Side by side

All 19, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierWhat it coversLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthThe whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggersProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
listmonkSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeLists, subscribers, campaigns and templatesAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it
KeilaSelf-hostableKeila XS €8/mo for 2,000 emails on the hosted planSelf-hosted — the software is freeCampaigns, a visual editor, segmentation and analyticsAGPL-3.0European Union hosting, or wherever you self-host
FluentCRMSelf-hostable$90/year for one site; $174/year for fiveA free version of the pluginCampaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPressCommercial plugin, with a free editionWherever your WordPress site is hosted
SendySelf-hostable$69 one-time licence; you pay Amazon SES for sendingNot free, but there is no recurring costLists, campaigns, autoresponders and reportsCommercial one-time licenceWherever you host it
MailcoachSelf-hostableHosted from $9.99/mo base, including 2,000 emailsNone; the hosted base plan is $9.99/moCampaigns, lists, automations and transactional sendingCommercial, with a separate self-hosted licenceWherever you deploy the self-hosted version
ActiveCampaignHostedPriced per tier and contact count; no static price table is publishedNone — a 14-day trialThe whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiersProprietaryUnited States (Chicago-headquartered)
BrevoHostedPaid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousandsCampaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pagesProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
MailerLiteHostedComfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automationsCampaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websitesProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
SenderHostedPaid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation includedCampaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiersProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
EmailOctopusHostedPro from $9/mo billed yearly2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus brandingCampaigns, simple automations, landing pages and formsProprietaryUnited Kingdom
MailchimpHostedEssentials $13/mo at 500 contacts250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seatCampaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRMProprietaryUnited States
HubSpot Marketing HubHostedStarter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contactsFree Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chatCampaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRMProprietaryUnited States, with EU hosting available
EngageBayHostedBasic $12.74/user/month on biennial billing, 500 contacts250 contacts, free for teams of up to 15 membersCampaigns, sequences, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus a CRM and helpdeskProprietaryUnited States
GetResponseHostedStarter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)None — a 14-day trial with feature limitsCampaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and coursesProprietaryEuropean Union (Poland)
KlaviyoHostedPriced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messagesCampaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and pushProprietaryUnited States
Customer.ioHostedEssentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figureNone, but early-stage startups can get a full year freeEvent-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-appProprietaryUnited States, with an EU data centre option
LoopsHostedPriced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailCampaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactionalProprietaryUnited States
BentoHosted$29/mo for up to 5,000 active users100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trialCampaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-upsProprietaryUnited States

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams tired of send multipliers, seat limits and paid add-ons

Contact-priced marketing automation with the transactional API included rather than sold as an add-on. Sending isn't a multiple of your list size, seats aren't rationed, and unsubscribed contacts stop counting toward the bill.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • No send multiplier. Most of this list caps you at 10–15× your contact count; sending here is uncapped under fair use.
  • Unlimited team seats on every plan, including free — seats are the quiet upsell everywhere else.
  • Unlimited sending domains, also on every plan.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop being billable, so the number you pay for is your real audience.
  • The transactional API, SMTP and inbound email are included, not add-ons.
  • A CLI, an MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
What to watch for
  • No sales CRM — no pipelines, deals or lead scoring. If you're replacing ActiveCampaign's sales side, this isn't it.
  • No SMS or WhatsApp. Email and inbound email only.
  • No landing page or form builder.
  • US-only sending; no EU data region.
  • A much smaller integration catalogue than the incumbents' hundreds of connectors.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers.
02AGPL-3.0

listmonk

Best for: Newsletters at volume, on hardware you already pay for

A single Go binary and a Postgres database that will push millions of newsletters through whatever SMTP you point it at. Mature, fast, and list-first by design.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Over 22,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
  • One binary plus Postgres — no queue broker, no Redis.
  • Handles very large lists on modest hardware.
  • No per-contact cost at any size.
What to watch for
  • No automation builder. It sends campaigns to lists.
  • Bring your own SMTP and your own deliverability.
  • No CRM, no ecommerce data, no landing pages.
  • The admin UI is functional rather than beautiful.
03AGPL-3.0

Keila

Best for: Privacy-minded newsletters that want open source with a hosted option

AGPLv3, self-hostable, and unusual among open-source tools in offering a straightforward European hosted plan — with unlimited contacts at every tier and the option to send through your own server.

Starts at
Keila XS €8/mo for 2,000 emails on the hosted plan
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Campaigns, a visual editor, segmentation and analytics
Data region
European Union hosting, or wherever you self-host
What it does well
  • Unlimited contacts and projects on every hosted tier — you pay for sends, not list size.
  • Genuinely open source and self-hostable, with a hosted option if you'd rather not.
  • You can use Keila's sending or point it at your own server.
  • Priced in euros on European hosting, from €8/mo.
What to watch for
  • No lifecycle automation — campaigns and segments rather than branching flows.
  • A small project with a small ecosystem and few integrations.
  • Self-hosting means Elixir, Postgres and your own sending provider.
  • No transactional API for a product.
04Commercial plugin, with a free edition

FluentCRM

Best for: WordPress sites that want the CRM inside WordPress

A WordPress plugin rather than a SaaS. Contacts, sequences and automations live in your own WordPress database, and you bring your own sending provider — so the licence is a flat annual fee no matter how big the list gets.

Starts at
$90/year for one site; $174/year for five
Free tier
A free version of the plugin
Marketing
Campaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPress
Data region
Wherever your WordPress site is hosted
What it does well
  • Flat annual licence — unlimited contacts, no per-contact pricing at all.
  • Data stays in your own WordPress database.
  • Deep integration with WooCommerce, LearnDash, membership plugins and the rest of the ecosystem.
  • The genuine answer to 'ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress'.
What to watch for
  • It doesn't send email. You still pay Amazon SES, Mailgun or similar underneath.
  • Sending at volume from WordPress cron is fragile; large lists need care.
  • Deliverability is entirely your problem.
  • If your site goes down, so does your marketing automation.
05Commercial one-time licence

Sendy

Best for: Large lists on a one-off licence and Amazon SES rates

A $69 one-time PHP application you install on your own hosting, which sends through your Amazon SES account. No subscription, ever, at any list size.

Starts at
$69 one-time licence; you pay Amazon SES for sending
Free tier
Not free, but there is no recurring cost
Marketing
Lists, campaigns, autoresponders and reports
Data region
Wherever you host it
What it does well
  • $69 once. No monthly fee at any subscriber count, forever.
  • Amazon SES rates underneath — roughly $1 per 10,000 emails.
  • Runs on ordinary PHP and MySQL hosting, like WordPress.
  • Multi-brand support makes it popular with agencies.
What to watch for
  • You install, update and secure it yourself.
  • You bring your own SES account and own the deliverability entirely.
  • Automation is autoresponders, not branching journeys.
  • The interface is functional and dated.
06Commercial, with a separate self-hosted licence

Mailcoach

Best for: Developers who want unlimited contacts and their own sending provider

From the Spatie team. Hosted Mailcoach is pay-as-you-go with unlimited contacts, lists and automations, and it will send through your own provider for half the per-email rate. A self-hosted licence is sold separately.

Starts at
Hosted from $9.99/mo base, including 2,000 emails
Free tier
None; the hosted base plan is $9.99/mo
Marketing
Campaigns, lists, automations and transactional sending
Data region
Wherever you deploy the self-hosted version
What it does well
  • Unlimited contacts, lists and automations on the hosted plan.
  • $0.001 per email if you bring your own sending provider, $0.002 if Mailcoach delivers.
  • A self-hosted licence exists for teams who want their own infrastructure.
  • Built by a well-regarded open-source team, with the code quality that implies.
What to watch for
  • Pay-as-you-go means a big send month produces a big bill.
  • No free plan.
  • Smaller ecosystem and integration catalogue than the mainstream tools.
  • Self-hosted pricing isn't published on the hosted pricing page.
07Hosted service

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Teams that need marketing and sales automation in one system

The deepest automation builder in the mid-market, with a CRM alongside it. Four tiers, priced on contacts, with sending capped at a multiple of your list and most of the interesting parts sold as add-ons.

Starts at
Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers
Data region
United States (Chicago-headquartered)
What it does well
  • Automation depth that most of this list doesn't match.
  • Marketing and sales in one system, with custom objects on Enterprise.
  • Over 1,000 integrations.
  • Free migration and onboarding, and no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contacts: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.
  • Seats are rationed — 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise.
  • Starter limits automations to 5 actions each.
  • CRM, transactional email and SMS are paid add-ons on top of the plan.
  • No free plan, and the price scales with contacts whether or not you email them.
08Hosted service

Brevo

Best for: Large lists you email infrequently, and teams that want EU-based billing

Formerly Sendinblue. The structural difference from almost everything else here is that Brevo meters emails sent rather than contacts stored — so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep.

Starts at
Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume
Free tier
300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Priced on emails sent, not contacts stored — the cheapest way to hold a large, rarely-mailed list.
  • French company with EU data handling, which settles a lot of procurement reviews.
  • SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and landing pages included in the platform rather than bolted on.
  • The free plan is genuinely usable for a small list.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 300-a-day ceiling is a hard daily wall, not a monthly allowance.
  • Breadth over depth — the automation builder is less capable than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Deliverability on shared infrastructure gets mixed reports; warm up carefully.
  • The interface carries the scars of a product that has absorbed a lot of modules.
09Hosted service

MailerLite

Best for: Small teams who want a clean builder and a cheap entry price

The most consistently recommended ActiveCampaign alternative for people who found ActiveCampaign too much. Well-designed, inexpensive, and the Power plan drops the send multiplier entirely.

Starts at
Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
Free tier
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Power removes the send cap entirely — unlimited monthly emails and unlimited seats.
  • $12/mo entry is among the cheapest real plans in this category.
  • The editor and templates are genuinely pleasant to use.
  • 24/7 support even on the cheaper paid tier.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 subscribers and 3 active automations — small.
  • Comfort caps you at 50 active automations and a 10× send multiple.
  • Automation logic is shallower than ActiveCampaign's; complex branching gets awkward.
  • No sales CRM.
10Hosted service

Sender

Best for: The most generous permanent free plan in marketing email

Free forever at 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails — with automation, landing pages, forms and transactional sending included rather than held back for paid tiers.

Starts at
Paid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiers
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 15,000 free monthly emails — the largest free allowance in this comparison.
  • The free plan includes automation, which most competitors reserve for paid tiers.
  • SMS on paid plans, with free credits on Standard and Professional.
  • Transactional sending is part of the platform.
What to watch for
  • Paid prices weren't rendering on their pricing page when we checked, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Smaller company and integration catalogue than the well-known names.
  • Automation depth is closer to MailerLite than ActiveCampaign.
  • A very generous free tier means a broad shared sender base — warm up carefully.
11Hosted service

EmailOctopus

Best for: The cheapest way to email a list of a few thousand people

Deliberately minimal and priced accordingly. No CRM, no funnels, no ecommerce data model — a list, a campaign, a simple automation, and a bill that stays small.

Starts at
Pro from $9/mo billed yearly
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding
Marketing
Campaigns, simple automations, landing pages and forms
Data region
United Kingdom
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 10,000 free emails a month — ten times most free tiers.
  • Pro adds unlimited users, which is rare at $9/mo.
  • Reports kept forever on Pro, against 30 days on free.
  • Nothing to learn. It does one thing.
What to watch for
  • Free puts EmailOctopus branding on your email and limits you to 1 landing page and 1 form.
  • Automation is basic — no branching journeys.
  • No CRM, no SMS, no ecommerce data.
  • Not the tool you grow into.
12Hosted service

Mailchimp

Best for: Teams who need the name procurement already recognises

The default answer for a decade, now part of Intuit. Enormous integration catalogue, and a pricing model built around send multipliers and seat counts that gets expensive at the top.

Starts at
Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat
Marketing
Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The largest integration catalogue in the category.
  • Template and content tooling that non-marketers can use without training.
  • Predictive segmentation and reporting on Standard and above.
  • Every agency and freelancer already knows it.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 sends — a demo, not a plan.
  • Send multipliers apply: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
  • Seats are rationed at 1 / 3 / 5 until Premium, which is $350/mo at 500 contacts.
  • You pay for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them yourself.
13Hosted service

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies buying a CRM and getting marketing with it

Not really an email tool — a CRM platform with marketing attached. The free tier is real and useful; the jump to the tier with the automation people actually want is one of the steepest in software.

Starts at
Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts
Free tier
Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat
Marketing
Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM
Data region
United States, with EU hosting available
What it does well
  • The free CRM is genuinely free and genuinely useful.
  • Starter at $7/mo per seat is the cheapest entry on this page.
  • One system for marketing, sales, service and content.
  • The reporting and attribution an executive team will ask for.
What to watch for
  • Professional is $800/mo with a $3,000 mandatory onboarding fee. Enterprise is $3,600/mo plus $7,000 onboarding.
  • Unlimited workflows — the actual automation — start at Professional.
  • Additional core seats are $45/mo each.
  • Marketing contacts are billed separately from CRM contacts, which surprises people.
14Hosted service

EngageBay

Best for: Small teams who want a HubSpot-shaped suite at a tenth of the price

An all-in-one marketing, sales and service suite priced per user rather than per contact. The free tier is unusually functional and explicitly allows teams of up to fifteen.

Starts at
Basic $12.74/user/month on biennial billing, 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts, free for teams of up to 15 members
Marketing
Campaigns, sequences, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus a CRM and helpdesk
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • A free plan that allows fifteen team members — almost unheard of.
  • CRM, marketing and helpdesk in one suite at a fraction of HubSpot's price.
  • Growth at $55.24/user/month includes 5,000 contacts and real marketing automation.
  • Per-user pricing means a big quiet list doesn't inflate the bill.
What to watch for
  • Per-user pricing gets expensive fast for a large team.
  • Headline prices are biennial; monthly billing costs more.
  • Free is 250 contacts with 2 lists, 5 forms and 2 email sequences.
  • The breadth means individual modules are less polished than the specialists'.
15Hosted service

GetResponse

Best for: Course creators and anyone who needs webinars in the same tool

An all-in-one that includes things nobody else bundles — webinars, course hosting, a website builder — with unlimited sending on every plan.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with feature limits
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses
Data region
European Union (Poland)
What it does well
  • Unlimited monthly email sends on every plan, including the $19 entry tier.
  • Webinars, courses and a website builder in the same subscription.
  • Polish company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
  • Abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels on Marketer.
What to watch for
  • Starter allows exactly 1 automation workflow — the automation is really on Marketer at $59/mo.
  • No free plan.
  • Users are capped at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator.
  • Breadth means some modules feel less finished than the email core.
16Hosted service

Klaviyo

Best for: Ecommerce, where revenue attribution per email is the point

The ecommerce standard. Deep Shopify and store-data integration, segmentation built on purchase behaviour, and reporting that ties sends to revenue better than anything else here.

Starts at
Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published
Free tier
250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages
Marketing
Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Best-in-class ecommerce data model — orders, products and browsing drive segments directly.
  • Revenue attribution per flow and per campaign, out of the box.
  • SMS and push in the same platform as email.
  • Predictive analytics on customer lifetime value.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 profiles and 500 sends a month.
  • Priced on active profiles, and the definition of active is broader than 'subscribed'.
  • It gets expensive fast as the list grows; that's the standard complaint.
  • Overkill, and overpriced, if you aren't an ecommerce store.
17Hosted service

Customer.io

Best for: Product teams sending lifecycle email off real product events

The technical end of this list. You pipe in events and objects, and build messaging on top of your actual data model rather than a list. Powerful, and priced for companies that already know they need it.

Starts at
Essentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
None, but early-stage startups can get a full year free
Marketing
Event-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app
Data region
United States, with an EU data centre option
What it does well
  • 1 million emails a month included on the entry plan — sending is not the constraint.
  • Data model built on events and objects, not lists and tags.
  • Extra profiles are $0.009 each, so growth is predictable.
  • The startup programme gives qualifying companies a year at no cost.
What to watch for
  • You need engineers. This is not a tool a marketer sets up alone.
  • Pricing above Essentials is a sales conversation.
  • No landing pages, forms or CRM — it assumes those live elsewhere.
  • Overbuilt for a straightforward newsletter.
18Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced, opinionated, and quick to set up, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Less configurable than ActiveCampaign by design.

Starts at
Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending included rather than billed as a second product.
  • Genuinely fast to set up — hours, not a fortnight.
  • The free plan runs a small product.
  • Clean, modern interface with no legacy modules.
What to watch for
  • Free adds Loops branding and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing sits behind a slider, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Automation is deliberately simpler than ActiveCampaign's.
  • No CRM, SMS or landing pages.
19Hosted service

Bento

Best for: SaaS and store teams who want marketing and transactional at a very low flat price

A small, opinionated platform with unusually blunt pricing: $29/mo for up to 5,000 active users with unlimited sends, automations and seats, and transactional email metered separately at cents per thousand.

Starts at
$29/mo for up to 5,000 active users
Free tier
100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trial
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-ups
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • $29/mo covers 5,000 active users with unlimited marketing sends, automations and seats.
  • Transactional at $5/mo to 12,500 emails, then $0.09 per 1,000 — among the cheapest anywhere.
  • A 30-day trial with no charge during it.
  • Deliverability tooling and analytics included rather than upsold.
What to watch for
  • Small company; fewer integrations and less public track record.
  • Bento Chat is a separate $30/mo add-on and requires the marketing platform.
  • Marketing and transactional are metered separately rather than as one plan.
  • Less polished than the established names, which is the trade for the price.
FAQ

Mautic alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Mautic alternative?

Staying open source: listmonk if the job is really newsletters, Keila if you want a hosted European option alongside, FluentCRM if the site is WordPress and you'd rather not run a server.

Going commercial: ActiveCampaign is the closest on automation depth, and we're the option where sending, deliverability and a transactional API are included.

Is Mautic hard to run?

Harder than listmonk and easier than a mail server. PHP, MySQL and a correctly configured cron job, plus upgrades that have a reputation for being involved.

It's entirely doable with someone who administers servers. It is not a set-and-forget install, and pretending otherwise is how people end up with campaigns that stopped firing a month ago.

Does Mautic send email itself?

No. It hands off to Amazon SES, Mailgun or an SMTP provider you configure, so the licence is free and the sending isn't.

That also means deliverability — warm-up, blocklists, inbox placement — is entirely your responsibility.

When administering it stops paying

The same automation, without the cron job

Campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and a transactional API on one contact-priced plan, with Amazon SES and deliverability handled. 5,000 contacts free.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

Email Bump vs MauticThe head-to-head, including where Mautic is the better buy.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.