Announcing the RFP for the Official Mautic Trial & Managed Hosting Provider

Blue background with Mautic logo and 'Request for Proposals: Official Trial & MANAGED HOSTING Provider' in white text.

At Mautic, our mission has always been to democratize marketing automation by providing a powerful, open source platform that respects digital sovereignty and user freedom. For many marketers, business owners, and developers, their very first taste of this experience is through our official trial environment. We first set up our trial service nearly three years ago, and since then nearly 15,000 people have taken Mautic for a test run.

It’s time for us to put this service out to public tender, as the three-year contract ends next year with our current providers, Dropsolid.

With this in mind, today we are officially launching our second public Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Official Mautic Trial and Managed Hosting Provider.

We are seeking a visionary hosting partner (or partners) to manage the rapid provisioning of Mautic trial environments, support those trials, convert them into successful paying customers, and contribute back to the sustainment of the Mautic open source community.

Key details of the opportunity

The selected provider will have the unique opportunity to position themselves at the entry point of the global Mautic funnel. Here is a snapshot of what this partnership entails:

  • The trial program averages 400-800 signups per month (historically around ~530/month) from a highly qualified, direct decision-making audience of SMBs, startup founders, and project coordinators.
  • There are an average of 10-20 enquiries for the enterprise-level hosted plans including some high-profile, high volume leads.
  • Our trialists span the globe, with primary growth regions in Asia (31%), Europe (27%), North America (15%), and South America (13.5%).
  • Recent data indicates that 18.5% of our trialists plan to send more than 10,000 emails per month, representing a prime pipeline for premium hosting tiers. Many are actively transitioning from proprietary platforms like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot.

Scope of work & key requirements

We are looking for a partner who can deliver a reliable, secure, and seamless trial experience while upholding our community’s commitment to data sovereignty and open source ethics. The scope of work includes:

  • Setting up fully functional, standard open source Mautic instances within 20 minutes of a trial request.
  • Keeping trial instances secure and modern by updating security and patch versions within one week, and minor versions within one month of release.
  • Helping trial users find immediate value by managing, supporting, and improving Mautic’s existing interactive onboarding tour plugin.
  • Implementing robust, proactive anti-abuse strategies to protect infrastructure and IP reputation.
  • Ensuring converted, paying customers retain the freedom to fully export their Mautic database and media assets if they ever choose to migrate – actively preventing vendor lock-in.

Commercial structure & regional opportunities

The chosen partner will act as an official representative of our brand, using the titles ‘Official Trial Provider’ and ‘Official Managed Hosting Partner’ as soon as the contract begins.

In exchange, we ask our partner to share a percentage of the revenue from converted clients – hosting and professional services – back with the Mautic Community This is an important revenue stream which supports the project, and which we plan to grow going forward. 

We are accepting proposals for a single global provider, but we are also highly open to regional partnerships (where leads are routed by region) to ensure local compliance (e.g., GDPR in the EU), cost efficiency and low latency.

Note: To be awarded the contract, bidders must be or commit to becoming a corporate member of Mautic for the duration of the contract.

RFP timeline

MilestoneDate
RFP releasedMonday, July 20, 2026
Deadline for questionsFriday, August 7, 2026
Responses to questions providedFriday, August 14, 2026
Deadline for proposal submissionFriday, September 4, 2026
Evaluation & feedbackThrough September 18, 2026
Contract negotiation & awardThrough September 30, 2026
Transition periodOctober 1, 2026 – February 26, 2027
Go-live dateMarch 1, 2027

How to participate

For full details, submission requirements, technical constraints, and data profiles, please read the official RFP document and the Appendices.

Please submit any questions or final proposals in writing to the Mautic RFPs Team at [email protected] – be sure to respect the deadlines above, no extensions are possible.

We look forward to collaborating with you to power the next generation of Mautic trials and grow our incredible community together!

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Sīlavāpi Cheesley

Sīlavāpi (ex Ruth) is an Open Source advocate with over 18 years of experience using and contributing to many different projects. Having served on the Community Leadership Team of the Joomla! project and built a full-service digital agency, she now works as Project Lead for Mautic, supporting the community who build and maintain the world’s first Open Source Marketing Automation platform. Sīlavāpi is an ordained Buddhist in the Triratna Buddhist Order. She's a lover of cats, a keen triathlete and flautist (but not at the same time!) and is based in the East of England.

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