How Mautic Gives Small Businesses Enterprise Marketing Tools (Without the Enterprise Price Tag)

If you're running a small business and paying Mailchimp $60/month for 2,500 contacts, you've probably done the math and winced. And if you've looked at HubSpot's Marketing Hub at $890/month for "Professional" features, you might have laughed out loud. Marketing automation is supposed to help small businesses compete with the big players. Instead, the pricing models of most SaaS tools actively punish you for growing.

Here's what most people don't realize: the core features you actually need (email campaigns, contact segmentation, lead scoring, landing pages) have been available in an open-source tool called Mautic for years. And in 2026, it's more capable than ever.

What Is Mautic, Exactly?

Mautic is the world's largest open-source marketing automation platform. Think of it as your own private version of Mailchimp, HubSpot, and ActiveCampaign combined, running on your infrastructure, with no per-contact fees and no feature gates.

It handles:

• Email marketing with a drag-and-drop builder and A/B testing
• Contact management with unlimited contacts and custom fields
• Lead scoring to prioritize your hottest prospects
• Campaign workflows with a visual builder for multi-step automations
• Landing pages and forms with progressive profiling
• Multi-channel outreach including email, SMS, web notifications, and social media
• Real-time visitor tracking so you know exactly who's browsing your site

The key difference? Mautic is open-source under the GPL license, backed by a community of over 1,000 contributors. No license fees, no per-contact pricing, no surprise invoices.

The Real Cost of SaaS Marketing Tools

Let's put some numbers on the table. Here's what you'd pay for 5,000 contacts with popular marketing platforms:

That's not a typo. Mautic on Elestio costs $16/month for infrastructure with no contact limits, no per-user fees, and every feature unlocked from day one.

The catch? There's no catch, but there is a trade-off: you're responsible for your own instance. That's where managed hosting comes in.

Why "Self-Hosted" Doesn't Mean "Do It Yourself"

The phrase "self-hosted" used to scare people. It conjured images of server racks, SSH terminals, and late-night debugging sessions. In 2026, that picture is outdated.

Platforms like Elestio deploy Mautic as a fully managed service. You click a button, choose your server size, and get a running Mautic instance in under three minutes. Elestio handles:

• Automated backups and disaster recovery
• SSL certificates and security patches
• Software updates and OS upgrades
• 24/7 monitoring with alerts
• Custom domain setup

You focus on writing campaigns and nurturing leads. The infrastructure takes care of itself.

Five Things Small Businesses Do with Mautic

1. Welcome Sequences That Convert

When someone downloads your lead magnet or signs up for your newsletter, Mautic can trigger a multi-step email sequence automatically. Day 1: welcome email. Day 3: case study. Day 7: special offer. No manual sending, no forgetting to follow up.

2. Contact Scoring That Prioritizes Your Sales Team's Time

Mautic assigns points based on behavior. Someone opened three emails and visited your pricing page? They get a high score. Your sales team sees who's ready to buy instead of guessing.

3. Segmentation That Actually Makes Sense

Create segments based on any combination of data: industry, company size, pages visited, emails clicked, form submissions. Then send targeted campaigns to each segment instead of blasting your entire list.

4. Landing Pages Without a Separate Tool

Mautic includes a landing page builder. No need for Unbounce or Leadpages subscriptions. Create, test, and publish pages that feed directly into your marketing workflows.

5. GDPR Compliance Built In

Mautic includes consent tracking, preference centers, and data subject access request handling. When you self-host, your customer data stays on your servers in your chosen jurisdiction. No third-party data processing agreements needed.

Mautic vs. Mailchimp: The Features That Matter

For a small business running email campaigns and basic automation, here's how Mautic stacks up:

The gap widens as you grow. At 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp's Standard plan jumps to around $190/month. Mautic stays at $16/month because your contact count doesn't affect your infrastructure cost.

Getting Started in Three Steps

1. Deploy Mautic on Elestio by selecting it from the marketplace. Choose a provider (2 CPU / 4 GB RAM minimum) and click "Deploy."
2. Import your contacts from your existing platform. Mautic supports CSV import and has native integrations with major CRMs.
3. Build your first campaign using the visual workflow builder. Start simple: a welcome email triggered by form submission.

What Mautic Won't Do

Transparency matters, so here's what you should know. Mautic's interface has a steeper learning curve than Mailchimp's polished UI. It won't hold your hand with pre-built templates the way paid tools do (though community templates exist). And while Mautic handles the automation logic, you'll need a transactional email provider or a self-hosted SMTP relay like Mailu for actual email delivery.

That said, for businesses spending $100+ per month on marketing tools and outgrowing their starter plans, the migration pays for itself almost immediately.

The Bottom Line

Marketing automation shouldn't be a luxury reserved for companies with enterprise budgets. Mautic puts the same tools (email campaigns, lead scoring, segmentation, landing pages, multi-channel outreach) into the hands of any business willing to own their marketing stack.

At $16/month for unlimited contacts on Elestio, the question isn't whether you can afford Mautic. It's whether you can afford to keep paying per-contact fees that grow every time your business does.

Thanks for reading! If you want to give Mautic a try, deploy it on Elestio and see for yourself. See you in the next one.