Originally published at: https://mautic.org/blog/open-startup-report-39-may-2026
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.
What carried the project this month was not large donations, but a quieter kind of support that passes back and forth between us and the wider ecosystem we belong to, the ordinary, reciprocal relationships that keep an open source project standing.
Key points
May was a quieter month financially, and a healthier-looking one for it. The largest single piece of income was a revenue share from the Mautic trials that Dropsolid run on our behalf, returned to the project. We also welcomed three new corporate members, and paid our first contributor bounty this year on an issue which several people had contributed small amounts to get fixed.
One honest caveat carries over from April. There was again no employment cost recorded this month as the invoices weren’t approved for payment, so both April and May now carry a payroll expense that is still to land. The surplus you will see is real on the page but flattered by that timing, so we need to bear this in mind.
Finances
May was a steadier, smaller month, and a welcome one after April’s lopsided figures. Income was $8,790.95 and expenditure was $2,943.60, leaving a surplus of $5,847.35. As in April, that surplus is misleading as we have deferred costs, because there was again no employment expense approved for payment this month. April and May both now carry a payroll cost still to come, so please read the surplus with that in mind rather than as spare capacity.
The shape of the income is what I find heartening. The largest line, $3,613.95, is a share of revenue from the Mautic trials that Dropsolid operate for us, passed back to the project. It is a mutual arrangement, a partner earning alongside us and returning a portion, and it is becoming a meaningful and welcome stream. Alongside it, three organisations took out Community corporate memberships – two renewals from Data Innovation SL and GE Mission along with a new signup from Clarovant Digital totalling $3,600 – and our community sprint in Berlin kept drawing registrations.
Income for May
| Source | Amount |
|---|---|
| Trials revenue (Dropsolid) | $3,613.95 |
| Corporate membership, Community | $3,600.00 |
| Monthly sponsors | $755.00 |
| Fundraiser | $500.00 |
| Individual members | $162.00 |
| Community sprint (Berlin) | $160.00 |
| Total | $8,790.95 |
Monthly sponsors combines our recurring Open Collective sponsors with GitHub Sponsors. The community sprint line is registrations to join us in Berlin plus a contribution to sponsor the sprint.
On the spending side, with employment deferred, the month was light. One line I am glad to see is our first contributor bounty, $80 paid to a community member for fixing some issues with the GrapesJS landing page builder. Rewarding people for the work they do for the project, in whatever form it takes, is something I would like us to do more of. We have a balance of just over $700 currently available for supporting bounties, so be sure to chat with team leads if you’ve got a task you’d like to see compensated.
Expenditure for May
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Open Collective host fee (10%) | $859.19 |
| Freelancers | $700.00 |
| Admin support | $525.75 |
| Payment processor fees | $440.42 |
| Infrastructure and tools | $324.99 |
| Bounties | $80.00 |
| Other | $13.25 |
| Total | $2,943.60 |
The payment processor fees roll up Stripe at $199.10, GiveWP at $10.00, and Open Collective’s own processor fees at $231.32. There is no employment line this month, deferred as noted above.
The full cost of collecting our income came to $1,299.61, most of it the Open Collective host fee.
Set against expenditure, May closed comfortably in the black, with the deferred payroll the honest asterisk on that.
Contributions
This was an encouraging month for our contributor community, particularly among new joiners. We welcomed 41 new community members, up 2.50%, and 15 new contributors, a strong rebound of 66.67% after April’s dip, with active members also up 9.33%. It is worth saying, as always, that contributions to Mautic take many forms beyond code, from documentation, translation and design to triage, review, support and helping run our events, and all of it counts here.
Most active organisations
| Organisation | Activity | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Acquia | 208 | ↑ 82.46% |
| Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing | 123 | ↑ 33.70% |
| Dropsolid | 32 | ↓ 11.11% |
| UpScale | 15 | ↓ 68.75% |
| Aivie | 12 | ↓ 60% |
| enable.services | 12 | new entry |
| Stefan Franz | 10 | new entry |
| Druid | 10 | new entry |
| NrohoOrg | 7 | new entry |
| Moorwald, Sven Döring | 5 | ↓ 83.87% |
Top contributing organisations
| Organisation | Contributions | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Acquia | 150 | ↑ 54.64% |
| Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing | 74 | ↑ 80.49% |
| Dropsolid | 40 | ↑ 29.03% |
| UpScale | 20 | ↓ 25.93% |
| Aivie | 15 | ↓ 11.76% |
| NrohoOrg | 5 | new entry |
| enable.services | 3 | new entry |
| Webmecanik | 2 | ↓ 66.67% |
| Crafting.email | 1 | new entry |
| Casfer | 1 | ↓ 66.67% |
Acquia and Leuchtfeuer both stepped up their contributions markedly, and it is good to see newer names such as enable.services and NrohoOrg appearing in the rankings. A widening circle of organisations taking part is one of the surest signs of a healthy project.
Most active individual contributors
| Contributor | Activity |
|---|---|
| John Linhart | 181 |
| Ayu Adiati | 159 |
| Patryk Gruszka | 82 |
| Anderson José Eccel | 32 |
| Ekke Guembel | 21 |
| Rohit Pavaskar | 19 |
| Margareth Egbuchulam | 17 |
| Achilles Poloynis | 17 |
| Martin Vooremäe | 15 |
| Predrag Vukovic | 14 |
Top individual contributors
| Contributor | Contributions |
|---|---|
| Ayu Adiati | 156 |
| John Linhart | 103 |
| Anderson José Eccel | 40 |
| Patryk Gruszka | 37 |
| Predrag Vukovic | 26 |
| Rohit Pavaskar | 23 |
| Lukáš Drahý | 23 |
| Martin Vooremäe | 20 |
| Miroslav Fedeleš | 20 |
| Rahul Shinde | 14 |
We welcomed 15 new contributors this month, and I am grateful to each of them. As always, I have kept these rankings focused on our volunteer community, setting aside automated accounts and staff activity.
Usage of Mautic
Interest in trying Mautic eased a little, with 348 trial signups in May against 392 in April, still a healthy level. India led again, followed by the United States and Brazil, with Morocco, Pakistan, France, Canada and Germany all featuring. The steady global spread of people reaching for an open source path is one of the things I find most encouraging month to month.
Composer installations of Mautic through Packagist were 90 in May, easing back from April’s 134, which tends to move around month to month with release activity.
Community health
The clearest signal this month is the rebound in new contributors, up more than 66% after a quiet April, alongside a widening set of organisations taking part. Contribution activity from our leading organisations rose sharply, and a healthy spread of newer names appeared in the rankings. New joiners and returning contributors together suggest the routes into our community are open and working.
It’s also great to see funds coming in from the Dropsolid partnership running our trials and managed hosting, and that we’re able to support contributors via our bounty program.
Conclusion
May reminded me that a project like ours is held up less by grand gestures than by steady, reciprocal relationships, a partner sharing revenue, organisations renewing their support, contributors giving their time, and people paying a little to gather in Berlin. None of it is dramatic, and all of it matters.
If you would like to be part of the web of support that carries Mautic through its quiet months as well as its loud ones, becoming a project member is the most direct way, and I would love to hear what this report brings up for you – use the connected forum thread to reply.
References
Open Source Collective (2026) Mautic collective transactions ledger, May 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, May 2026. Available at: https://savannahcrm.com/public/report/493b4bfc-1aa4-462e-852b-3158fc730a3f/
Stripe (2026) Mautic payment records and balance report, May 2026. Internal account data.
Mautic (2026) Trial signup submissions, May 2026. Internal form data.