Open Startup Report #20 - October 2024

By Ruth Cheesley · PUBLISHED November 01, 2024 · UPDATED November 01, 2024

Key points

  • Mautic has made a substantial deficit this month largely due to a lack of sponsorship income from Mautic Conference Europe which had been expected to cover the outgoing expenses.
  • There's been a substantial increase in contributions this month thanks to our partnership with SheCodeAfrica, DevCareer and TechWriteHub who encouraged their members to contribute to Mautic.
  • Mautic ended the quarter with over 13.5k instances actively calling back to the stats server (this excludes SaaS instances and those who turn off the callback) which is the highest number since Q3 2020. Over 80% of these instances are using Mautic 4.x and around 16% are on Mautic 2 or 3.
  • Mautic Conference Europe is coming up next month with the in-person community sprint - we can't wait to see you there!

Finances

This month we experienced a substantial deficit owing to the lack of expected income from Mautic Conference Europe sponsorships and new membership deals. While we can sustain this for now, within the next two months without significant increased income, we're going to start to run out of funds. The Mautic Council is aware of this situation and is actively exploring revenue generation opportunities, but in the meantime you can help by becoming a member of Mautic, whether as an individual or a company, or sponsoring us via Open Collective whatever you can afford each month.

Income

Description Amount
GSoC Stipend $2,900
Monthly sponsors $900
Individual membership $300
Affiliate payment (mailfloss) $107.47
Total $4,207.47

Expenditure

Description Amount
Employment $9,161.80
Travel $2,259.05
Print (Mautic Conference Europe) $760.63
Host fees $420.75
Infrastructure $364.97
Swag $239.50
Payment processor fees $66.73
Total $13,273.43

Contributions

🔎 You can always take a look at the data for the last 90 days via this link: Mautic 90 day report and you can now view this month’s report here: Mautic | Monthly Report for August 2024!

⬆️ = Increase from last month
⬇️ = Decrease from last month

Organizations

Most active companies

Dropsolid 206 (⬇️ 2.83%)

Acquia 161 (⬇️ 37.11%)

Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing 148 (⬆️ 11.28%)

Crafting.email 138 (⬆️ 84%)

Twentyzen 55 (⬆️ 89.66%)

Friendly 53 (⬇️ 14.52%)

Aivie 38 (⬆️ 5.56%)

Bluespace 36

Open Strategy Partners 34

Axelerant 28

Top contributing companies

Acquia 46

Dropsolid 20 (⬆️ 5.26%)

Aivie 19 (⬆️ 26.67%)

Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing 15 (⬇️ 40%)

Webmecanik 9

Moorwald | Sven Döring 5 (⬆️ 66.67%)

Open Strategy Partners 4

Comarch 4 (⬇️ 73.33%)

Crafting.email 4 (⬇️ 42.86%)

Druid 2

Contributions are as defined here with the addition of Jira issues being closed as completed, GitHub Pull Request reviews and Knowledgebase articles being written or translated, which we track through Savannah’s API.

Want to appear on this list? Get contributing, and drop me a line with your company name, domain and the folk who work for you and we’ll make sure that you are attributed correctly!

Individuals

A big thank you also to all the individuals who are helping us build this awesome community 🫶🏻🙌🏻

Most active contributors

Anderson José Eccel 166

John Linhart 158

Ricardo Freire 138

Ekke Guembel 86

Favour Chibueze 66

Dirk Spannaus 55

Joey Keller 47

Dorcas Opatola 38

Mojisola Otusheso 36

Oluwatobi Owolabi 36

Top contributors

John Linhart 44

Rahul Shinde 19

Anderson José Eccel 15

Mojisola Otusheso 14

Peculiar Umeh 9

Zdeno Kuzmany 8

Laurie Lim 8

Ima-Abasi E. Effiong 7

Raffy Rodriguez 7

Favour Chibueze 6

Welcome to our new contributors this month 💖

necobm

flynet70

Ife

Randy Fay

Mojisola Otusheso

Subhajit Roy

Ima-Abasi E. Effiong

Olawore Hikmah

Dog Byte Marketing

Adedayo-Olaoluwa

Nilesh Lohar

jorge73

Dorcas

fisch

Sahil Sharma

Rita Onwudiwe

ashmita_

Ayu Adiati

Toyibat Adele

Raffy Rodriguez

Kushagra Nigam

Laurie Lim

domiserver

dhavalo2

Bashua Mutiat

Christine Belzie

Jeffrey A. McGuire

miki

Top supporters

Ayu Adiati 2

domiserver 1

fisch 1

Ivan Kosutic 1

Ketu Patel 1

miki 1

Ekke Guembel 1

dhavalo2 1

Dirk Spannaus 1

markusvjh 1

Supporters are folks who have had conversations with people directly before they make a contribution, so most likely helping with that process.

This month we had 30 new contributors :rocket: (⬆️ 275%) and 125 new members joining the community !💖 (⬆️ 86.57%).

Usage of Mautic

We ended the quarter with 13,526 Mautic instances calling back to the stats server, which is the highest by quarter since back in Q3 2020.

Image
Screenshot of all active Mautic instances by quarter
Source: Mautic Stats Server

If we look at the year to date figures, we're on course for returning to the levels we last saw back in 2021 which is a strong sign that Mautic adoption is on the rise again.

Image
Screenshot of stats by year of active Mautic instances
Source: Mautic Stats Server

We continue to see over 85% of instances using the 4.x version, with around 16% still on Mautic 2-3, which adds more importance to the planned Extended Long Term Support programme, extending the period in which Mautic instances can receive security fixes via a paid program.

I'm excited to see the impact that our new website and marketing campaigns will have on adoption of Mautic - more on that in the keynote at Mautic Conference Europe next week!

Community Health

This month we've seen a phenomenal response to our Hacktoberfest program, mainly due to partnering with three awesome organisations - SheCodeAfrica, DevCareer and WriteTechHub who encouraged contributors to get involved with some of the tasks Mautic had to offer.

Our team was somewhat overwhelmed with:

  • 376 passionate contributors signing up
  • 43 non-code contributions completed
  • Numerous PR tests, reviews and content tasks completed

This is represented by the large growth in new contributors this month - it's great to welcome you all into the community!

We've learned a lot about onboarding contributors during this process, and we're going to think about how to put this into practice for our day-to-day onboarding process so that we can streamline the process.

Next month we have our Mautic Conference Europe event which so far has less attendance than we were hoping for - however we're excited to be bringing the community together and holding our first conference in Portugal, followed by our Community Sprint and Council.

Conclusion

The Mautic community has seen significant growth this month, particularly due to the successful Hacktoberfest program. The collaboration with SheCodeAfrica, DevCareer, and WriteTechHub has resulted in a surge of new contributors, providing the Mautic team with valuable insights about onboarding contributors. These insights will be used to streamline the onboarding process, fostering a more active and engaging community.

However, Mautic is continuing to face financial challenges. The income this month was significantly lower than the expenditure, leading to a financial deficit. Despite these challenges, I'm hopeful and excited about the upcoming Mautic Conference Europe. This event is an opportunity to bring the community together, share knowledge, and foster stronger relationships. I'm also looking forward to the impact that the new website and marketing campaigns will have on the adoption of Mautic.