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Marketing · head to head

Mautic vs Sailthru

Mautic logo

Mautic

Marketing

The main open source marketing automation platform, self-hosted and GPL licensed

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Mautic has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Mautic mautic depends on reliably scheduled cron jobs to process segments and send campaigns, and a misconfigured or silently failing schedule stops sends without an obvious error, which is the most common way Mautic deployments fail in production.; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • They diverge on capability: Mautic covers Visual campaign builder, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Mautic and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where Mautic and Sailthru differ
AttributeMauticSailthru
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, Linux, Self-hosted, DockerWeb, REST API
CategoryMarketingEmail Marketing

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Mautic

  • Visual campaign builder
  • Contact management and segmentation
  • Landing pages and forms
  • Lead scoring
  • Dynamic web content
  • Email builder and A/B testing
  • Self-hosted data control
  • No feature gating

Only in Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Mautic

  • A marketing agency running automation for many clients that cannot pass on per-contact SaaS pricing at scalenot Sailthru
  • A European university or public body whose data protection position requires contact data to stay on infrastructure it controlsnot Sailthru
  • A company with a list of several hundred thousand contacts where SaaS per-contact pricing has become the largest line in the marketing budgetnot Sailthru
  • A team that needs to modify the automation logic itself, not just configure it, and wants source access to do sonot Sailthru

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Mautic
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Mautic
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Mautic
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Mautic

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Mautic

  • Mautic depends on reliably scheduled cron jobs to process segments and send campaigns, and a misconfigured or silently failing schedule stops sends without an obvious error, which is the most common way Mautic deployments fail in production.
  • Email sending is not included: you must arrange, pay for and warm up your own sending infrastructure through Amazon SES, SendGrid or similar, and deliverability problems become entirely your problem with no vendor to escalate to.
  • Acquia owns the commercial descendant, Campaign Studio, and is the largest contributor, so the loudest commercial interest in the ecosystem benefits from a hosted product rather than from the self-hosted one being easy.
  • Upgrades between major versions have historically been disruptive, requiring database migrations and plugin compatibility checks, so a neglected instance can become expensive to bring current.
  • The interface and the reporting are noticeably behind commercial platforms, so marketing teams that came from HubSpot or ActiveCampaign will find everyday tasks slower and will need training.

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Pricing, plan by plan

Mautic

Free
  • Self-hosted communityFree
    • GPL licensed, no licence fee and no contact limits
    • All features included, no paid edition
    • You provide hosting, database, cron scheduling and email sending
  • Managed Mautic hosting$undefined/month
    • Third-party managed hosting listed by the project
    • Updates, backups and cron scheduling handled for you
    • Pricing varies by provider and is not set by the project

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

Which should you pick?

Choose Mautic if

  • You need visual campaign builder.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, Self-hosted, Docker.
  • You also want contact management and segmentation.
Mautic review

Choose Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is Mautic or Sailthru better?
Neither clearly leads. Mautic starts at Free and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Mautic or Sailthru?
Mautic has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Mautic and On request for Sailthru.
Does Mautic or Sailthru run on more platforms?
Mautic runs on Web, Linux, Self-hosted, Docker. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
Can I use Mautic for free?
Yes. Mautic has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Sailthru starts at On request.
What is Mautic best used for?
Mautic is most often used for a marketing agency running automation for many clients that cannot pass on per-contact saas pricing at scale, a european university or public body whose data protection position requires contact data to stay on infrastructure it controls, a company with a list of several hundred thousand contacts where saas per-contact pricing has become the largest line in the marketing budget, a team that needs to modify the automation logic itself, not just configure it, and wants source access to do so. Of those, a marketing agency running automation for many clients that cannot pass on per-contact saas pricing at scale and a european university or public body whose data protection position requires contact data to stay on infrastructure it controls are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can Mautic do that Sailthru cannot?
Mautic covers Visual campaign builder, Contact management and segmentation, Landing pages and forms, Lead scoring. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Mautic: Is Mautic free?

Yes, GPL licensed with no licence fee and no contact limits. You pay for hosting, email sending and the staff time to maintain it.

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

Mautic: Does Acquia own Mautic?

Acquia acquired the founding commercial entity in 2019 and sells Campaign Studio built on it, but the Mautic trademark sits with the Open Source Collective and the project is community governed.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Mautic: What breaks most often?

Cron scheduling. If segment rebuilding and campaign triggers are not running on schedule, campaigns quietly stop sending with no alert.

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

Mautic: Can it handle large contact lists?

Yes, but performance at several hundred thousand contacts depends on database tuning and queue configuration, which is work you must do yourself.

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