Mautic’s year in review 2025

2025 was Mautic’s second full year as an independent open source project, and it’s been a year of significant growth, hard-won achievements, and important lessons learned.

We shipped major releases, achieved our first profitable conference, secured external funding, and expanded our community reach. We also faced serious financial challenges that forced difficult decisions and a fundamental re-evaluation of our operational model.

Let’s explore what we’ve accomplished together over the last twelve months, celebrate our successes, and acknowledge where we’ve struggled.

Mautic 6.0 Orion Edition ships

March brought the general availability release of Mautic 6.0 ‘Orion Edition’, marking the next step in our product evolution. Following the new release strategy we announced in 2024, Mautic 6.0 had a deliberately shortened support cycle to help us catch up with Symfony releases while continuing to provide users with stability and security.

Since the 6.0 GA release, we’ve shipped seven bug fix releases (6.0.1 through 6.0.7), demonstrating our commitment to maintaining the platform and responding to community feedback.

Building toward Mautic 7.0 Columba Edition

Throughout 2025, significant effort went into developing Mautic 7.0, our next Long Term Support release. We released the alpha version in July following productive collaboration at the Prague Community Sprint, followed by beta in October and two release candidates in November and December.

Mautic 7.0 General Availability has been released on 20th January 2026, marking a major milestone as our next four-year stable release version. This release includes the completed Phase 1 of the Campaign Library initiative, bringing powerful new capabilities for working with marketing campaigns and building the foundations for the second phase.

We also maintained the Mautic 5 series throughout the year with eight bug fix releases (5.2.2 through 5.2.9), ensuring users on our previous LTS version continued receiving security updates and stability improvements.

Campaign Library Phase 1 ships in Mautic 7

A significant achievement this year was completing Phase 1 of the Campaign Library initiative, funded by the NLNet Foundation. This feature, which ships in Mautic 7.0, represents the culmination of work and dedicated development effort funded by our first major external grant.

The Campaign Library, once completed, will fundamentally improve how users can share and deploy marketing campaigns, building on the Mautic Marketplace infrastructure developed in previous years. We’re delighted to share that we’ve secured Phase 2 funding from NLNet to continue this work, which will see us building the complete user interface for the Campaign Library throughout 2026.

Community Sprint in Prague

July brought our community together in Prague for an intensive sprint, generously sponsored by Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing. This gathering proved incredibly productive, with teams working to finalize Mautic 7.0 alpha and conducting comprehensive product quality reviews.

Working in pairs, contributors systematically reviewed every user action in Mautic, documenting bugs, UX improvements, and confusing elements. Several issues were fixed and merged during the sprint itself, while the broader backlog continues to guide our improvement efforts.

The sprint also enabled rapid decision-making on critical technical questions, including PHP 8.4 support timelines and changes to our default installation method as we move toward a Composer-first approach.

Mautic World Conference 2025: our first profitable conference

November’s Mautic World Conference in London represents a watershed moment for Mautic. For the first time in our project’s history, we achieved profitability on our flagship conference event.

With approximately 80 in-person attendees at Sea Containers followed by a two-day online conference, we welcomed 12 sponsors and generated strong ticket sales. The conference brought in just under $25,000 in revenue against just under $23,000 in expenses, resulting in a profit of approximately $2,000.

Beyond the financial success, all 12 sponsors have expressed interest in returning for 2026, and attendee feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We’ve already confirmed the same venue for the first week of November 2026.

I must acknowledge, however, that this success came at significant cost to our cash flow throughout the year. Front-loaded event expenses created financial strain particularly in October, when event costs alone reached nearly $14,000. This is a crucial learning as we plan future events – we need to better manage the cash flow impact of event planning even when the events themselves are ultimately profitable.

Mautic Awards 2025

We continued our tradition of recognizing outstanding contributions with the Mautic Awards 2025, held during Mautic World Conference. These awards celebrate excellence across our community and encourage continued participation and innovation. It was wonderful to see so many deserving winners recognized for their contributions to Mautic.

Hacktoberfest 2025

October’s Hacktoberfest once again proved successful in attracting new contributors. We saw over 350 expressions of interest and prepared more than 100 tasks across code and no-code contributions. Many contributors from Hacktoberfest have continued their involvement beyond October, enriching our community with fresh perspectives and energy.

Expanding our presence beyond Mautic events

2025 saw us significantly expand Mautic’s visibility beyond our own community events. I attended FOSDEM and GitHub Universe, connecting with the broader open source ecosystem and learning from other projects.

Most significantly, we exhibited at TYPO3Con in Germany – our first large external event with a booth presence. This marks an important step in raising Mautic’s profile beyond our existing community and demonstrating our commitment to the broader open source and marketing technology communities. These connections are vital for Mautic’s long-term growth and sustainability.

GitHub Secure Open Source Fund recognition

A major validation of our work came through acceptance into the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund. Two of our security team members participated in the programme, and we received $6,000 in funding in July, with additional tranches of $2,000 expected in January and June 2026.

Beyond the crucial financial support during a cash-constrained period, this recognition validates our security practices and community health. It demonstrates that Mautic is viewed as a project worth investing in by major players in the open source ecosystem.

New working groups address long-standing gaps

We established several new working groups in 2025 to address gaps in our ecosystem:

The Docker working group was formed after years without active maintainers for our Docker repository. The team has established a roadmap and is working to modernize our Docker support, which is critical for many users’ deployment workflows.

The WordPress plugin working group similarly addresses a long-standing gap, with plans to revive and enhance our WordPress integration—something many agencies and marketers have requested.

The AI working group was formed to thoughtfully explore how artificial intelligence can enhance Mautic while maintaining our commitment to privacy and user control, as outlined in our AI Manifesto. This proactive approach ensures we’re prepared for the rapidly evolving AI landscape while staying true to our values.

Extended Long Term Support

I need to be honest about one area that didn’t perform so well in 2025 – the Extended Long Term Support programme.

We launched ELTS in February with our first security release for Mautic 4.4.14, creating what we believed would be a valuable new revenue stream for organizations requiring extended support on older versions. Despite approximately 25% of instances still running unsupported Mautic 4, we generated only $4,500 in ELTS revenue for the entire year.

This represents a critical missed opportunity. We have a real product addressing a genuine need for thousands of vulnerable instances, but we’ve failed to effectively communicate the value or convert organizations who should be our customers. This requires fundamental changes to our sales and marketing approach in 2026, and it’s something we’re taking very seriously. We already announced our regional pricing model in response to some feedback on the pricing tiers.

Operational improvements and challenges

January brought the launch of our completely redesigned website after six months of development. The new site dramatically improved how we present Mautic as a product, with prominent calls to action for trials, an improved member and partner directory, and better positioning within the marketing automation landscape. A huge thank you to the team who made this happen, and Hostnet for their provision of our hosting infrastructure.

Trial signups started off well at 500-700 monthly following the launch, giving us better data and analytics to understand visitor behaviour. However, our revenue from conversion to paid managed hosting remained quite low at just over $9,500 for the year. Analysis showed that 58% of trial signups report not currently using any marketing automation tool, highlighting the need for better onboarding content for this segment – a key focus for 2026.

In August, we launched dedicated product-focused social media channels separate from our community channels with Barsha Devi – Marketing and Sales Assistant – taking the lead. This strategic communications shift enables tailored content for different audiences: product channels target potential users and decision-makers, while community channels continue sharing contributor stories and development updates.

In December, we introduced regional pricing for ELTS and corporate memberships, recognizing that flat global rates create barriers in lower-income economies. This initiative reflects our commitment to being truly global and accessible while maintaining financial sustainability.

Leadership transitions

2025 saw several significant transitions in our leadership team:

Product Team: Joey Keller stepped down as Product Team Lead after dedicated service, with Rahul Shinde stepping up to lead the team.

Education Team: Favour Chibueze stepped down as Education Team Lead, with Ayu Adiati stepping up to lead the team’s important work in creating learning resources.

Community Team: Ekke Guembel stepped down as Community Team Lead, with the position currently vacant as we seek the right person to guide this crucial team.

Marketing Team: We currently have an open position for Marketing Team Assistant Lead to support Sven Döring in leading the Marketing Team.

Council: Sven Doering was elected to the Council, bringing fresh perspective and expertise. Ekke Guembel was re-elected, pending approval of governance model changes at the General Assembly. Prateek Jain will be stepping down from the Council this year at the end of his term.

I’m grateful to those who stepped down for their service and to those who stepped up for their commitment. Leadership transitions are natural in volunteer-driven projects, and we continue working to ensure smooth handovers and support for new leaders.

The year in numbers

You can check the annual report on our community health here. For comparison, 2024 is here, 2023 is here, 2022 is here, 2021 is here and 2020 is here.

Here are some highlight stats from 2025:

• 665 new members (⬇️ 40.8% from 1,124 last year)
• 144 new contributors (⬇️ 17.7% from 175 last year)
• 26,792 conversations (⬇️ 29.6% from 38,044 last year)
• 10,436 connections between members (⬇️ 12.1% from 11,874 last year)
• 3,245 contributions (⬆️ 1.5% from 3,198 last year)
• 66 new companies engaging in the community (⬇️ 21.4% from 84 last year)
• 160 events on the calendar (⬇️ 29.8% from 228 last year)

While most metrics show decreases from 2024’s exceptional year, it’s worth noting that contributions actually increased despite the smaller growth in community size. This suggests we have a more engaged core community who are actively building Mautic, even if overall participation has decreased.

Let’s celebrate the amazing organizations who are contributing to Mautic and helping us continually drive forward as an open source project.

Most active companies

Activity means that these companies are engaging within our community – whether that’s discussions in Slack, answering or asking questions on the Forums, responding to GitHub issues and pull requests, posting Mautic-related questions in places like Stack Overflow and Reddit. This engagement creates a vibrant, welcoming community where people can find help when they need it.

▲/▼ indicates change from the previous year. ✨ means new contributing organization.

• Acquia 1,703 (▼ 42.78%)
• Dropsolid 1,371 (▼ 70.25%)
• Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing 1,340 (▼ 5.96%)
• Casfer 972 ✨
• Webmecanik 671 (▼ 1.47%)
• Aivie 535 (▼ 48.56%)
• UpScale 439 (▲ 170.99%)
• Moorwald | Sven Döring 369 (▼ 11.72%)
• Friendly 336 (▼ 51.65%)
• Crafting.email 242 (▼ 59.12%)

Top contributing companies

Contributions are the lifeblood of an open source project. These companies are taking time to give back to Mautic through code, events, answering questions, testing features and bug fixes – check the many ways you can contribute here.

• Acquia 675 (▼ 0.15%)
• Dropsolid 308 (▼ 44.90%)
• Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing 240 (▲ 19.40%)
• UpScale 196 (▲ 326.09%)
• Aivie 196 (▲ 23.27%)
• Webmecanik 195 (▲ 48.85%)
• Casfer 57 ✨
• Other Media 24 ✨
• Dog Byte Marketing 18 ✨
• meritoo 18 ✨

Mautic members, partners and sponsors

These are the totally awesome folks who are financially contributing towards Mautic’s growth. Without their support, we couldn’t achieve much of what we’re doing with Mautic today.

We launched regional pricing at the end of 2025, making membership much more affordable around the world. If you’re not yet a member, join us today!

Diamond tier members and partners

• Dropsolid

Platinum tier members and partners

• Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing (upgraded from Gold)

Gold tier members and partners

• Webmecanik (upgraded from Silver)
• enable.services (new member)

Bronze tier members and partners

• Acquia
• Drupal Association

Community members and partners

• Friendly
• Aivie
• Sales Snap
• Axelerant
• Droptica
• Eyedro
• Druid
• Dog Byte Marketing (new member)
• Higher Education Marketing (new member)
• Fire Multimedia (new member)
• Data Innovation (new member)
• Permanent (new member)

Sponsors

Our sponsors give a little or a lot each month via Open Collective and are vital in keeping Mautic’s cash flow running smoothly. Whether you can give $5 or $5,000 a month, every contribution helps.

• Hostnet
• e-tailors
• Zyxware Technologies
• Ferienhausmiete.de
• dtnetwork.br
• Audienceware
• Nucamp coding bootcamp
• Norma Oocha
• John Linhart

Individual members

A big thank you also to all of our individual members, each of whom supports Mautic’s growth both through a financial contribution (or through practical contribution / honorary member status) and by engaging in our governance and voting processes. Learn more about becoming an individual member.

Most active members

These are the people you’re most likely to encounter if you’re part of the Mautic community. They’re taking time to give back to Mautic in many ways, actively engaging to help others succeed.

• John Linhart 1,420
• Renato Castro 972
• Ayu Adiati 629
• Anderson J. Eccel 627
• Ekke Gümbel 562
• Rahul Shinde 454
• Martin Vooremäe 439
• Zdeno kuzmany 426
• Sven Döring 369
• Nick Vanpraet 333

Top contributing members

These folks are building Mautic. They’re contributing in many ways – all of which are extremely helpful and valuable in Mautic’s growth.

• John Linart 420
• Anderson J. Eccel 250
• Martin Vooremäe 196
• Rahul Shinde 190
• Zdeno Kuzmany 160
• Ayu Adiati 106
• Patryk Gruszka 98
• Levente Bajus 69
• Nilesh Lohar 64
• Renato Castro 57

Top contribution sources

Contributions come in many forms – here’s how they break down for this year:

• GitHub – Pull Request: 1,574
• GitHub – Pull Request Review: 947
• Jira – Issue completed: 261
• Mautic Slack – Support/Feedback: 260
• Community Portal Calendar – Events/Meetings: 69
• Mautic Forums – Support: 57
• Mautic Community Blog – Blog Post: 49
• GitHub – Feedback: 8
• Reddit – Support/Feedback: 7
• MautiCast – Podcast: 5
• KB Articles – New or translated: 4

Mautic’s usage

We continue to see strong download numbers across multiple channels. It’s important to note that downloads from mautic.org and GitHub may include some duplication, as we recently started using remote URLs for asset downloads on our website.

Top releases from mautic.org/download in 2025

The download statistics from our website show continued strong interest in Mautic, with particular uptake around major releases:

Key observations:

• Mautic 6.0.6 was the most downloaded release with 1,905 downloads
• The 6.0.x series represents 68% of all downloads from mautic.org in 2025
• As soon as 6.0.0 was released, the 5.x downloads will stop, hence the lower numbers
• The high ratio of total downloads to unique downloads suggests many users downloaded multiple times

GitHub release downloads

GitHub download statistics (combining full downloads and update packages) show:

These statistics show healthy adoption of Mautic 6.0 throughout the year, with users updating regularly as new bug fix releases became available.

Facing financial reality

As detailed in our financial report to be presented in the General Assembly, 2025 presented serious financial challenges despite income growth of 28.2% over 2024.

Total income of $168,456.11 was heavily influenced by exceptional corporate membership payments in January. The remaining eleven months averaged only $9,598.81 per month from all sources – insufficient to cover our average monthly expenditure of around $14,510.

By November, we had depleted reserves to the point where employment payments had to be deferred due to insufficient funds. This was the most difficult moment of the year and forced us to take action, having had conversations about our sustainability throughout the year in the Council.

The ELTS programme and Mautic Trials – two revenue streams we’d counted on for sustainability – significantly underperformed expectations. Meanwhile, our first profitable conference validated that our event model can work when properly executed.

These realities necessitated decisive action. From January 2026, I’m reducing my hours to four days per week, we’ve suspended non-essential travel budgets, eliminated all non-essential expenditure, and shelved plans to expand employed staff. These decisions weren’t easy, but they position us for long-term viability rather than short-term comfort.

Looking ahead to 2026

2025 taught us that income growth doesn’t guarantee sustainability – we must also convert opportunities, manage cash flow carefully, and align expenditure with realistic revenue projections.

We enter 2026 with a leaner budget, sharper focus, and hard-won lessons about what it takes to sustain an independent open source project. I’ll be sharing more on this in the General Assembly later this month, please join us to learn more – if you’re not yet a member, become one here.

Our focus for 2026 will be on:

• Supporting the Mautic 7.0 LTS release and continuing product improvements
• Raising awareness of ELTS and driving more signups
• Improving trial conversion through better onboarding for users new to marketing automation
• Delivering another profitable Mautic World Conference with all sponsors returning and new sponsors signed up
• Rebuilding reserves toward our goal of three months of operating expenses
• Completing Campaign Library Phase 2 with NLNet funding

Thank you

What gives me confidence moving forward is the strength of this community. Contributors continued shipping releases despite financial uncertainty. Sponsors and members stepped up with renewals and early payments when we needed them most. New contributors joined through Hacktoberfest and stayed involved. Working groups formed to address long-standing gaps. And 80 people gathered in London to celebrate what we’re building together.

2025 showed us both our resilience and our limitations. We achieved significant milestones while facing our most serious financial challenges. The decisions we’ve made position Mautic for sustainable growth rather than unsustainable expansion.

I extend my sincere gratitude to every contributor, member, sponsor, partner, and user who has been part of our journey this year. Your dedication, creativity, and support remain the foundation of Mautic’s success.

If your business or organization benefits from Mautic and you’re in a position to do so, please become a Corporate Member or consider sponsoring us each month or one-time via Open Collective. With regional pricing now available, membership is more accessible than ever. Your support truly makes the difference between survival and sustainability.

Together, we’re building something remarkable. Thank you for being part of Mautic’s journey.