Composer Setup for Mautic 5 Now Needs NPM

[MikeKMiller]

@escopecz

@MikeKMiller thanks for joining the discussion! Can you please give me some links to read through about why is NPM/Node and Docker in production a problem? Many of the top tech companies are using these technologies in production for years (source). Maybe you know something I’m missing. I’d like to learn.

If you download Mautic from Download - Mautic Community then you have the CSS, JS assets prebuilt and no NPM nor Docker is required. Is that a solution?

If you insist on installing Mautic with Composer then NPM as well as Composer is required only when you need to install or upgrade Mautic. You can always uninstall those once you finish and install them for the next upgrade if you just cannot stand having it in production.

Ideally, if you are managing 250 Mautic instances, I’d suggest to build some automation for installing, upgrading so that you build the production package yourself and deploy it to all without NPM. I’d use Docker for that but you can just move files around. Whatever way you prefer.

And as a last idea, this is an open source project. If you don’t like one aspect of it then you can change it for the good of the whole community. Perhaps those 250 clients would appreciate it rather than migrating to something else. But you know that better than I do.

Jumping back in late - saw this thread from 11 months ago and wanted to circle back with a bit of context.

First off, I appreciate the thoughtful response. You’re absolutely right that many top tech companies run NPM and Docker in production. No disagreement there. But they operate in a completely different environment - full-time DevOps teams, locked-down CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure built to manage that level of complexity and risk.

Most Mautic users aren’t in that world. They’re marketers, agencies, and small teams running live campaigns tied directly to revenue. When something breaks because of a build or dependency issue, they’re the ones left scrambling - often without the resources to debug it properly.

For context, I’ve been a supporter of Mautic since version 1. I’ve recommended it, deployed it, and helped hundreds of businesses get started with it over the years. But over time, the technical overhead kept creeping up. When Composer and NPM became part of the production upgrade path, that was the tipping point for me - especially when managing dozens or hundreds of client instances.

The prebuilt package you linked to is much closer to what I believe Mautic should be offering by default. That said, I’ve run into cases where using plugins or enabling certain features pulls people right back into Composer and Node - and with it, the complexity and risk I’m trying to avoid in production.

You’re right - automation is a good path at scale. I’ve built those pipelines. But most users won’t, and honestly, they shouldn’t have to. Production software should ship in a deploy-ready state. No build tools. No dev stack required. Just something stable you can trust not to fall apart mid-campaign.

To be clear, I’m not knocking the platform. I’m raising this because I want Mautic to win. If there’s a path forward that keeps it powerful and production-safe, I’d be more than happy to contribute - whether that’s feedback, packaging improvements, or anything else the community could use.

Thanks again for the thoughtful exchange. These conversations are what make open source better.