Open Startup Report #37 – March 2026

Image of people holding up the letters spelling out community.

Note: The February to June reports are being back-dated, written in July 2026, as I have been out on sabbatical. I’m experimenting with using Claude (thanks to their 6 months free gift to open source maintainers!) to help automate some of the very time consuming parts of creating these reports, but they are still reviewed by human eyes before publishing. If you spot anything unusual, please do let us know.

I have been reflecting on how much of what sustains us comes from beyond our own community. February was a month of exceptional effort, where we asked a great deal and our people answered. March was quieter, steadier, and in some ways more instructive, because it showed what happens when the pressure eases and the ordinary rhythm returns. It also brought a gift from outside our walls that moved me a great deal, and I want to tell you about it.

Key points

March returned us to firmer ground. With February’s backlog of employment costs cleared, spending fell back to a normal shape, and our income comfortably covered it, leaving a healthy surplus. The fundraiser continued, and it was carried this month by a single remarkable act of solidarity, a $10,000 donation from TYPO3, a fellow open source project, given through Daniel Fau. One community choosing to support another is exactly the kind of independence I believe we are building together.

Alongside that, our first Mautic World Conference sponsorships arrived. Our contributor community stayed active, with new joiners easing back slightly from February even as organisations contributed more code than they have in some time.

Finances

March was a month of return to normal, and the numbers show it clearly. Our income was $19,369.21 and our expenditure was $15,400.37, leaving a surplus of $3,968.84. After February, where three months of deferred employment costs landed at once, this month carried a single month of employment at $9,837.23, and that one change is most of the difference. Going forward this will be much less, as my hours have almost halved but it takes time for the Open Collective invoices to land. As with last month, I have itemised the income in full and stated it at the point each contribution was charged, in the spirit of these reports.

The heart of the month was again the fundraiser, which brought in $12,235 across 21 gifts. What makes that figure remarkable is a single $10,000 donation from TYPO3, given on their behalf by Daniel Fau. TYPO3 is an open source project like ours, and their choosing to support Mautic in this way is a genuine act of cross-project solidarity. It is humbling, and it speaks to something I care about deeply, that our independence is strengthened when open source projects hold one another up rather than stand alone.

37 2 income by source

Two other developments are worth drawing out. Our first Mautic World Conference sponsorships were paid this month, a Platinum sponsorship from Dropsolid and a Silver sponsorship from Friendly GmbH, together bringing in $4,766.68, and the conference ticketing system saw its first test transaction ahead of tickets going on sale. Seeing the conference begin to fund itself through sponsorship is a good sign for the year ahead.

Income for March

SourceAmount
Fundraiser$12,235.00
Conference sponsorship$4,766.68
Individual members$875.18
Monthly sponsors$725.00
Corporate membership, Community$485.52
Other income$281.83
Total$19,369.21

Conference sponsorship is the Dropsolid Platinum and Friendly Silver sponsorships. Individual members combines our Stripe memberships with those given directly through Open Collective. Corporate membership this month is a single Community tier membership from Stepin Solutions, priced for its region, after they kindly re-took their membership at the correct regional rate having first paid the full price in February, which we refunded. Other income is a share of trials revenue from Dropsolid and a small test transaction from the conference ticketing system.

On the expenditure side, employment aside, the pattern is our familiar one of running costs, and this month I have again shown every fee in full.

Expenditure for March

CategoryAmount
Employment$9,837.23
Open Collective host fee (10%)$2,213.01
Payment processor fees$1,424.92
Freelancers$700.00
Admin support and expenses$784.90
Infrastructure and tools$258.97
Domain renewals$107.08
Other$74.26
Total$15,400.37

The payment processor fees roll up three sources: Stripe at $1,108.01, GiveWP at $244.70, and Open Collective’s own processor fees at $72.21. Admin support and expenses covers administrative time and our registered mailbox. Other is a small contributor data stipend and the postage for our fundraiser thank-you cards, which felt like the right thing to send.

37 3 expenditure breakdown

The full cost of collecting our income this month came to $3,637.93 in fees. As I noted in February, the GiveWP portion is the avoidable one, a platform fee we could remove with a paid licence, and it remains a conversation worth having as our giving grows.

37 4 cost of collection

Set against expenditure, March closed comfortably in the black, but we still have a way to go to being financially stable.

37 1 income vs expenditure

What has been great to see this month is also the steadiness of the contributions across the range, from smaller to larger contributions. Everything helps Mautic to keep moving forward.

37 5 fundraiser sizes

Contributions

Our contributor community stayed busy this month. Fewer newcomers arrived than in February’s unusually strong month, with 51 new community members, down 8.93%, and 20 new contributors, down 9.09%, but our existing community was more engaged than ever, with active members rising by 14.15%. To everyone who found their way in this month, thank you, and welcome.

Most active organisations

OrganisationActivityChange
Acquia136↑ 38.78%
Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing91↓ 9.90%
Dropsolid77↑ 97.44%
UpScale67↓ 6.94%
Aivie58↑ 205.26%
Moorwald, Sven Döring51↑ 4.08%
Sitelease33new entry
Friendly23new entry
Casfer22↓ 60.71%
Crafting.email19new entry

Top contributing organisations

OrganisationContributionsChange
Acquia67↑ 42.55%
UpScale33↑ 22.22%
Dropsolid33↑ 266.67%
Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing29↑ 45%
Aivie15new entry
Esio.Net4new entry
Webmecanik3↓ 57.14%
Bloomidea2new entry
Friendly2new entry
Intellect IT2new entry

Dropsolid’s leap in contributions, up more than 260%, stands out, and it is good to see Acquia continuing to lead while the range of contributing organisations widens.

37 7 top orgs

Most active individual contributors

ContributorActivity
John Linhart131
Ayu Adiati110
Martin Vooremäe67
Ekke Guembel59
Sven Döring51
Anderson José Eccel44
Rahul Shinde42
Predrag Vukovic36
Jim Blake33
Margareth Egbuchulam30

Top individual contributors

ContributorContributions
John Linhart61
Ayu Adiati55
Predrag Vukovic39
Martin Vooremäe33
Anderson José Eccel32
Patryk Gruszka14
Rahul Shinde13
Kaviyaa Devi PM9
Bas Tolen7
Artem Lopata5

Our top supporters in the forums and support channels this month were Martin Vooremäe, Renato, Barsha Devi and Margareth Egbuchulam. As ever, I have kept these rankings focused on our volunteer community, setting aside automated accounts and staff activity.

Usage of Mautic

Interest in trying Mautic grew a little, with 384 trial signups in March against 356 in February. India led by a clear margin, followed by the United States, Brazil and Germany, with strong showings from France and the United Kingdom. The global spread of people reaching for an open source path continues to be one of the most encouraging things we see each month.

37 6 trials countries

On adoption more broadly, Composer installations of Mautic through Packagist rose to 100 in March from 95 in February. A BuiltWith export taken on 26 March lists 24,508 live Mautic sites, with France and the United States making up the largest share. We’re just waiting for our account access to be renewed to get a full export of the data for March.

I share that BuiltWith figure with the same caveat as last month. It can only see sites that have Mautic’s tracking script switched on, which a great many installations do not use (and some might have the tracking script on multiple domains from one single instance), and its detection is not always accurate, so it is best read as an indicative signal rather than a true count. The real number is certainly higher.

Community health

The clearest signs of health this month are the breadth and depth of contribution. Organisations contributed more code than they have in a while, led by a striking rise from Dropsolid, and our individual contributors kept up a strong pace. New joiners eased back a little from February’s strong numbers, but the depth of contribution held up well, which tells me our established community stayed engaged even as fewer newcomers arrived this month.

Beyond our own numbers, two things give me confidence about the months ahead. The Mautic World Conference is beginning to draw sponsorship, and a fellow open source project chose to support us in a substantial way. A healthy project is not only one that grows its own community, but one that is woven into a wider fabric of mutual support. In March that fabric was very visible.

Conclusion

If February tested our resilience, March reminded me what steadiness feels like. The exceptional costs were behind us, the ordinary rhythm returned, and the work was carried comfortably by a community that keeps showing up, joined this month by friends from beyond it.

Nothing arises in isolation, all things are connected. TYPO3’s gift, our conference sponsors, our members and our contributors are all part of that same web of interdependence, and Mautic is stronger for being held within it. If you would like to be part of that base of steady support, becoming a project member is the most direct way to help us plan with confidence. As always, please do feel free to leave comments on this post via the linked forum thread.

References

BuiltWith (2026) All live Mautic sites, export dated 26 March 2026. Available at: https://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Mautic

Open Source Collective (2026) Mautic collective transactions ledger, March 2026. Available at: https://opencollective.com/mautic

Packagist (2026) mautic/core-lib download statistics. Available at: https://packagist.org/packages/mautic/core-lib

Savannah CRM (2026) Mautic monthly community report, March 2026. Available at: https://savannahcrm.com/public/report/bc6dee8a-ff93-4985-9762-45aee28f70cd/

Stripe (2026) Mautic payment records and balance report, March 2026. Internal account data.

Mautic (2026) Trial signup submissions, March 2026. Internal form data.

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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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