We have been discussing adding a ‘messages of the day’ feature in Mautic so that we can bring useful information to our users, which might include a CTA to support fundraisers or become a member (and also important things like if their Mautic version is unsupported/outdated, if they are running on insecure PHP/MySQL versions etc, alongside useful tips, links to resources, etc).
We do have the ability to set up recurring payments:
Become a member of Mautic - annual payment with a base rate of $1,200 and pro-rated based on the location of your HQ. Gets a listing in our members and partners directory, backlink to website, prominence on the site.
Become a regular sponsor - any amount, monthly or at any interval you like - we prefer via Open Collective but you can also do this on GitHub Sponsors as well
We’re also in the process of building a marketplace for Mautic, with a stretch goal which includes making plugins, themes and campaigns free or chargeable, and in the latter case a percentage of the revenue will come to Mautic. I feel this will be a great way of giving tangible benefits to users of Mautic, while also ensuring that the project receives some funding. Most likely we’ll set a minimum revenue share amount, and the developer can choose to increase that all the way to 100 (e.g. all funds go to Mautic) or to whatever split they feel comfortable with.
You could also use our Managed Hosting which gives 40% of the revenue back to Mautic in the first year, the commission decays over the subsequent years.
Pretty soon we’ll also be launching our certification - initially the developer track but later the marketer and integrator tracks will follow. This will result in a revenue stream for the project, too.
I hope that helps, obviously the challenge we have is we can’t promise things we’re not able to deliver, so we do have to be mindful of anything that becomes an ‘exchange of services’ rather than a donation to the open source projects.
This thread feels written for software developers and “community members”, but that framing misses the biggest recurring revenue opportunity: users and businesses.
Most users do not want to be community members. They want Mautic to work, stay secure, and keep improving. Once Mautic is set up, users stop thinking about it. That is exactly why relying on “community participation” as the primary motivator will underperform. The ask has to be positioned around implied value to users: stability, security, release cadence, and confidence the platform is not stagnating.
From a donor perspective, the current model also doesn’t fit how businesses pay:
A lump-sum $1,200 “donation” feels arbitrary. I do not want to pay a once-off fee without ongoing value. Users and companies are far more likely to commit to predictable monthly funding tied to clear outcomes.
“Advertising” has near-zero value to many agencies. Open source is a tool, not lead generation. Leads that come from open source are rarely high value and can be a distraction. The value I care about is code quality, stability, and momentum in the core product.
The trust gap is operational. I care about quality, but I’ve tapped out for the last 2–3 years because it felt like nothing meaningful was happening. When progress isn’t visible, motivation to contribute financially dies.
My contributions are also happening in a way that doesn’t help Mautic’s finances:
I’ve been building plugins outside core because of frustration with gaps. That does not solve Mautic’s funding problem. It creates a commercial dilemma for builders: I may have thrown $5k–$10k at plugin development to fill gaps, and now I’m questioning whether it is commercially wise to give that away. This is a structural issue: the ecosystem grows, but core still starves.
Also, “just host it” is not an automatic answer. Many people chose Mautic precisely because it is open source and self-hosted, with full control. Hosting will be desirable for a portion of users, but not enough to assume it is the primary funding lever.
Where the real funding lever is, in my view, is enterprise value and risk reduction.
Example: If I install Mautic into 20 Salesforce clients as a real Pardot replacement, and those clients save roughly $5k per month (because Mautic plus proper Salesforce integration covers their needs including custom objects and reliable sync), what is that worth to an enterprise that already spends $40k–$60k per year on Salesforce licensing? The ROI is obvious.
But their motivation to pay is completely different to a developer’s motivation.
Enterprises do not “donate”. They fund risk reduction from IT/security/procurement budgets. That means:
The offering must look like something procurement can buy
“Donation” often cannot be processed internally. Enterprises need invoices, clear terms, supplier onboarding, and a productized program that looks like assurance/subscription/service rather than charity.
The value proposition must be concrete and operational
Users will pay for outcomes they can defend internally:
clear governance (who decides priorities and how conflicts are handled)
Agencies and implementers are the best distribution channel for funding
Agencies sit between Mautic and users. A partner program could bundle a small per-instance “platform assurance” levy that agencies pass through to clients. That creates recurring revenue without forcing hosting and without requiring users to become “community members”.
Ask users where they actually are
Users do not live on forums. The ask needs to exist in-product, at moments of perceived value (after successful upgrades, sending milestones, feature enablement). Quiet, professional, optional. Not “be a community member”, but “help fund security and releases”.
Fix the free rider reality with tiers, not guilt
Most users will never pay. The strategy cannot be “convert everyone”. It must capture the minority willing/able to pay for risk reduction while keeping the project open.
Create an ecosystem that funds core
If plugins are where many gaps are being filled, there needs to be a mechanism that routes money back to core:
official marketplace
paid plugins and/or listing fees
verification/signing and compatibility guarantees
revenue share that funds core QA/security
Right now, the messaging is aimed at developers and contributors, but the sustainable money is with operators and businesses who save real dollars and want reduced risk. The pitch to them is not “community support”. The pitch is continuity, security, predictable releases, and confidence that Mautic remains a credible long-term alternative.
It’s becoming apparent that solving this isn’t primarily a developer problem. It needs a dedicated business analyst or growth specialist to design a user-funded model, align incentives across users/partners/enterprises, and turn Mautic’s real-world value into predictable recurring revenue.
Hi there, and thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed exploration of your thoughts. I’ll attempt to reply in-line to the questions/statements for ease of reading.
Thank you for this feedback. You’re right that we should make the user value proposition clearer. Looking at the fundraiser and blog post, we do outline what donations support:
✓ Project leadership and growth – managing the project, driving strategy and keeping contributions moving forward (Project Lead and Freelance support)
✓ Innovation – running community sprints to bring together our global communities and make progress on challenging tasks
✓ Operational security – ensuring we have the legal and administrative framework to protect the Mautic trademark and community
✓ Supporting feature development – we have been forced to cancel the Developer hire and the Outreachy mentorship program this year, which would have seen at least two key projects being completed in 2026 that are now delayed
In the blog post, it also specifically calls out being able to better resource our security team and developing features that our users have been asking for:
Kick-starting our AI initiative
Artificial intelligence is becoming central to marketing automation. Exceeding our goal means we can properly resource our AI initiatives and ensure Mautic remains competitive with well-funded proprietary platforms.
Funding a dedicated developer
We have a backlog of security work, fixes that need back-porting to older releases, and a queue of older pull requests including new features, bug fixes and improvements to Mautic which are waiting to be reviewed and merged. A dedicated developer working on this would accelerate our development velocity significantly, get fixes and features to users quicker, and also allow us to promptly respond to security reports.
Accelerate privacy-focused feature development
The features that differentiate Mautic from surveillance-based platforms need active development. Additional funding means we can move faster on the capabilities that matter most to privacy-conscious organisations.
These directly address stability, security, and development velocity. That said, if the message isn’t landing clearly for potential supporters, we need to improve how we communicate this. What would make the value proposition more compelling for businesses like yours?
The lump sum you’re referring to is an annual membership (recurring, not one-time) rather than being related to this fundraiser. We also have the option for sponsoring the project at any amount per month, and other revenue streams which deliver specific quantifiable services such as the Extended Long Term Support program, offering up to two years of extended security support for older versions of Mautic no longer under active support.
Agencies who are working with Mautic do find it helpful to have a prominent presence in the community, but of course if you’re not offering Mautic services, that’s not so relevant. We do have some folks who are listed in our members directory without any calls to action for this reason - they’re just here to support the project that they use and don’t need any advertising benefits.
In terms of the numbers, corporate memberships count for up to 50% of our income at this time, and fund all of the things mentioned.
When you mention ‘tied to clear outcomes’ associated with membership, what might that look like for you?
As a project, we do already have planned dates for releases, security releases happen quarterly on the second month of the quarter, and we actively maintain a roadmap for new feature development.
Internally within our small staff team, we also have OKRs that we are working to deliver against.
I’m always interested to know what folks would like to see in terms of accountability and transparency when it comes to what funding the project actually enables, so please share some ideas and we’ll see what we can do! Obviously, anything we promise as deliverables needs to be achievable at the end of the day, with the resources we have available - so it’s worth keeping that in mind.
You’re right that this creates a structural tension. The businesses we see succeeding long-term are those who contribute strategically to core - it builds reputation, ensures their code is maintained by the community, and demonstrates quality to potential clients. That said, there’s absolutely a place for proprietary extensions for specialised use cases. The key is finding the right balance between what benefits all users (ideally in core) and what makes commercial sense to monetise.
Absolutely agree. We have managed hosting as an option for the folks who don’t want to self-host, and the Hosting Directory where they can find partners to work with who can either set up and host Mautic for them, or provide them with wrap-around support, or both.
Absolutely. In the last couple of years, we’ve introduced initiatives like the ELTS program which can be purchased ‘off the shelf’, and we’ve also been considering other ideas like an ‘open source support’ plugin which could be purchased ‘off the shelf’ by companies/procurement departments alongside a Mautic build rather than a donation. Just recently we’ve started to put together the policies to enable companies to sponsor minor and major releases of Mautic similar to how Symfony operates.
Agreed. All of the financial support options contribute towards this. Having things like sponsoring a release also allows us to link things to tangible outcomes (e.g. funding the release leader / assistant leader, developers etc so we can ship the specific features in those releases that we want to see developed).
We already have significant transparency infrastructure in place:
That said, if these aren’t visible enough or easy to find, that’s something we should address. What would accountability look like from a business procurement perspective?
This is an interesting idea worth exploring. Most agencies in our community are already Corporate Members, essentially doing this voluntarily. A more formalised ‘platform assurance’ model could work if there’s value agencies could point to that justifies the pass-through cost. What would that need to look like from your perspective to be commercially viable?
We have a partner program already. Read more here:
We’re actively working on in-app messaging (likely a ‘message of the day’ approach as mentioned in the earlier reply) that balances useful information with calls to support. Given our privacy focus and that our users are marketers who understand when they’re being marketed to, we’re designing this carefully. I’m currently exploring this with @matbcvo and @andersoneccel - we don’t have a formal proposal up yet, but would be interested in your thoughts on what would feel appropriate versus intrusive.
We’ve tried to do that with our tiered approach. $100 (pro-rated by country) for individual membership, $1,200 for corporate membership (down to $500 for tier 3). Indeed we won’t convert everyone, some folks will always be takers rather than makers. Always up for exploring how we make more opportunities for folks to support.
This is precisely what the Phase 2 of the Campaign Library is building right now. Read the brief here.
Indeed, we’re working to try to ensure we address both through the different ways we have available for people to support the project. Whether that’s through a fundraiser, corporate membership, ELTS, paid plugins/themes/campaigns, certification, or other funding sources, we’re trying to establish a diverse range of revenue streams which appeal to every kind of user, with every kind of budget. The more help we can have with this the better. For sure, it’d be great to have someone focused on business analysis/growth.
You clearly have valuable perspective on the business model side of this. I’d genuinely welcome your involvement in #wg-fundraising on Slack - we need people who understand the enterprise procurement angle and can help us design offerings that businesses can actually buy. Would you be interested in exploring some of these ideas further with the team?
To summarise, you’ve raised several important points:
The value proposition needs to be clearer for businesses (not just developers)
We need more concrete, outcome-based offerings enterprises can procure
The ecosystem funding model needs refinement
We need better visibility and communication
These are all areas we’re actively working on, and your input would be valuable. Happy to discuss any of this further.