Urgent call for community support to secure Mautic’s financial future

I need to share something important about Mautic’s financial situation and what we’re doing about it. First we’ll give an executive summary and then go into more detail below.

Executive summary: Let’s prevent a significant slowdown of Mautic!

The Mautic Council is reaching out to our community of users, agencies, and partners to share a critical update regarding our 2026 financial outlook. Transparency is a cornerstone of our project and it is important that those who rely on Mautic understand the challenges we are currently navigating together.

Mautic is facing a $50,000 revenue shortfall for 2026 due to re-budgeting and tier adjustments from a small number of key members. We’ve already cut costs, including a 40% reduction in Project Lead hours and cancelling all non-essential expenditure, but these measures alone aren’t enough.

The impact is already being felt. We’ve cancelled a planned developer hire, paused key initiatives, and suspended attendance at events. Our revised essential budget of $140,000 is vital for managing our codebase, maintaining infrastructure, and protecting our trademark.

We need to raise funds to cover this shortfall and re-establish a $10,000 emergency reserve. This keeps the lights on. To truly grow and deliver important initiatives like our AI initiative and security backlog, we need to build a more sustainable financial base.

We are calling on every agency and organization that builds their business on Mautic to contribute to this effort through our fundraiser, or by becoming a Member of Mautic, or making a regular donation.

Where we are

Earlier this year, Mautic experienced some significant revenue changes. A combination of re-budgeting decisions and membership tier adjustments for a small number of key members meant that income we’d been counting on didn’t materialise. The impact was around $50,000, which is material for a project of our size.

When you’re working with the slim margins that most open source projects operate on, that kind of shortfall requires an immediate and responsible response to ensure Mautic continues to move forward at the pace our users expect. We needed to understand exactly where we stood, what our options were, and what the path forward looked like.

What we’ve done

We’ve spent the past few weeks building a comprehensive recovery plan. We’ve implemented operational cost reductions, stress-tested our projections under different scenarios, and refocused our strategy on the initiatives that will generate sustainable revenue.

The plan addresses both the immediate funding gap and our long-term sustainability. We’re not just trying to get through 2026., rather we’re building the foundation for Mautic to be financially healthy into 2027 and beyond.

We’ve already started executing. The Council is fully engaged, our team is focused on high-impact work, and we’re seeing early progress on the initiatives that will compound over time.

The fundraiser

We’re launching a community fundraiser as one component of our recovery strategy. The funds we raise will give us the runway to implement the revenue-generating initiatives that will make us sustainable going forward.

Our minimum target is $40,000. That addresses the immediate revenue gap and ensures we can continue operating while we implement our trials conversion optimization, launch our certification programme, and strengthen our member growth and retention efforts.

Our ideal goal is $60,000. That gives us the stability to execute our growth strategy properly without operating in survival mode, and allows us to accelerate some of the strategic work that will pay dividends over the long term.

We’re aiming to raise these funds by the end of March, which aligns with our Q1 execution timeline.

We already have just over $2,700 in matched funding committed, which means early donations will be doubled. This helps us build momentum and shows potential donors that people close to Mautic believe in what we’re doing.

What different funding levels enable

Reaching $40,000 addresses our immediate revenue gap and ensures we can maintain operations while implementing our recovery initiatives. We can keep our team working, infrastructure running, and basic development continuing.

Reaching $60,000 gives us the stability to execute our growth strategy properly. We can implement trials optimisation, launch certification, strengthen retention, and build the sustainable revenue streams that make us healthy long-term.

Exceeding $60,000 means we can fund strategic projects that strengthen Mautic’s competitive position, including:

Kick-starting our AI initiative

Artificial intelligence is becoming central to marketing automation. Exceeding our goal means we can properly resource our AI initiatives and ensure Mautic remains competitive with well-funded proprietary platforms.

Funding a dedicated developer

We have a backlog of security work, fixes that need back-porting to older releases, and a queue of older pull requests including new features, bug fixes and improvements to Mautic which are waiting to be reviewed and merged. A dedicated developer working on this would accelerate our development velocity significantly, get fixes and features to users quicker, and also allow us to promptly respond to security reports.

Accelerate privacy-focused feature development

The features that differentiate Mautic from surveillance-based platforms need active development. Additional funding means we can move faster on the capabilities that matter most to privacy-conscious organisations.

Reinstate contributor programmes

We’ve had to pause Outreachy (which would see a funded contributor working with Mautic for a scoped project) and our bounties programme (which allows us to add financial compensation to important tasks. Exceeding our goal means we can bring these back and invest in bringing new contributors into the project.

The minimum keeps us stable. The goal makes us sustainable. Stretch funding makes us stronger.

Why this matters, even if you’ve never used Mautic

Most marketing automation platforms are built on surveillance. They track everything, own your data, lock you into their ecosystem, and charge you more as you grow. They’re designed around the assumption that effective marketing requires compromising user privacy.

Mautic exists to prove that assumption wrong. We’re one of the few truly open source marketing automation platforms. Privacy-respecting, self-hostable, extensible. You control your data, not us. Your users’ privacy is protected, not exploited.

But here’s what matters beyond Mautic specifically.

The existence of alternatives shapes the entire market. When privacy-respecting, digitally sovereign solutions exist and thrive, they put pressure on proprietary platforms. They prove that giving up control of your data isn’t necessary. They give organisations real choices instead of forcing them to pick between different flavours of the same privacy-invasive approach.

Even if you’ve never used Mautic, even if you’re not planning to, supporting this project means ensuring that digitally sovereign marketing automation software continues to exist. It means organisations facing strict data protection requirements have options. It means countries and regions with data residency regulations can implement marketing automation without shipping data to foreign cloud providers. It means the next generation of marketers grows up knowing that privacy-respecting tools are viable, not just theoretical.

When open source privacy-focused alternatives are under-funded, we all lose. 

Every project that can’t sustain itself narrows the landscape of real choices. Every time an open source alternative disappears, we move closer to a world where surveillance capitalism is the only option, where “free” means you’re the product, where digital sovereignty is impossible because there are no tools that support it.

Mautic is critical infrastructure for digital sovereignty in marketing technology. For regulated industries that can’t use cloud-based platforms. For organisations in countries with strict data localisation laws. For anyone serving the needs of humans whose lives are at risk if their data falls into the wrong hands. For anyone who believes marketers shouldn’t have to choose between effective tools and ethical practices.

Supporting Mautic isn’t charity. It’s investing in the infrastructure that makes privacy-respecting marketing possible. It’s ensuring that when organisations look for alternatives to surveillance-based platforms, they find a viable, actively developed option.

What your donation supports

When you contribute to this fundraiser, you’re supporting the infrastructure, people, and programmes that make Mautic possible.

Your donation supports:

• Keeping our small team working on Mautic so we can continue building features, fixing bugs, and maintaining the platform that thousands of organisations depend on

• Running the critical infrastructure that keeps Mautic available globally, from our hosting and domains to the tools that enable collaboration across our worldwide community

• Developing privacy-focused features that give marketers real control over their data and respect for their users’ privacy, proving that effective marketing automation doesn’t require surveillance

• Supporting the contributors who write documentation, translate Mautic into multiple languages, answer questions in the forum, and help newcomers get started

• Organising community events like the Mautic World Conference where people can learn, share knowledge, and connect with others who are building the future of independent marketing technology

• Maintaining our certification programme so professionals can demonstrate their Mautic expertise and organisations can find qualified implementers

• Building the sustainable revenue streams that will ensure Mautic remains free and open source for everyone who needs it, regardless of their budget or location

• Proving that community-driven, privacy-respecting marketing automation is viable and that we don’t have to choose between powerful tools and ethical practices

The broader strategy

The fundraiser is part of a comprehensive approach to recovery and growth. We’re implementing trials conversion optimization that could increase our revenue from that channel substantially. We’re launching a certification programme that creates a new revenue stream and helps professionals demonstrate their Mautic expertise. We’re strengthening our member growth and retention with proactive outreach and relationship building. We’re diversifying our revenue streams so we’re not dependent on any single source.

The focus extends well beyond just getting through this year. We’re building the foundation for sustainable growth into 2027 and beyond.

How to contribute

Visit our fundraiser page to make a donation at whatever level works for you. Every contribution matters, whether it’s $10 or $5,000.

If you’re able to share the fundraiser through your networks, that helps us reach people beyond our usual circles and increases our chances of not just hitting our minimum, but exceeding it and funding the strategic projects that strengthen Mautic’s future.

If you work for a company that uses Mautic or benefits from open source marketing automation, consider whether your organisation could contribute at one of the higher tiers. We’re happy to discuss corporate sponsorship and recognition. You can also explore becoming a Member of Mautic for ongoing annual support (which is a vital source of ongoing stability for the project), – tiers are priced according to the region of your headquarters.

Become a matched fund pledger

Help us accelerate the progress of this fundraising effort by pledging to match funds raised up to an amount specified by you. This creates momentum and encourages others to donate knowing their contribution will be doubled. Reach out to us at [email protected] to get involved.

Transparency and accountability

Transparency is at the heart of Mautic. You can review our monthly financial reports in our Open Startup Reports, and our transaction history is available for public review on Open Collective.

We’re confident about Mautic’s future. We have a clear plan, we’re executing on it, and we’re being transparent with the community about where we are and what we’re doing.

Every dollar helps us build the Mautic that competes with well-funded proprietary platforms while maintaining our commitment to privacy and open source. More importantly, it ensures that privacy-respecting, digitally sovereign marketing automation continues to exist as a real option, not just a theoretical possibility.

Thank you for being part of this.