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Marketing · head to head

Mautic vs Sigstore

Mautic logo

Mautic

Marketing

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sigstore logo

Sigstore

Cybersecurity

Free public signing and transparency infrastructure for open source artifacts

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • 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.; Sigstore the security model depends on somebody watching the log. The documentation states that compromise of an identity provider or of Fulcio itself is detectable only if third parties monitor the transparency log, the monitoring tool is a community-tier rather than core project, and almost no consumer runs one.
  • They diverge on capability: Mautic covers Visual campaign builder, Sigstore covers Fulcio.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Mautic and Sigstore actually diverge.

Attributes where Mautic and Sigstore differ
AttributeMauticSigstore
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feeOpen source, public instance free to use
PlatformsWeb, Linux, Self-hosted, DockerWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted
CategoryMarketingCybersecurity

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Sigstore

  • Fulcio
  • Rekor
  • Keyless signing
  • Multi-language clients
  • Timestamp authority
  • Neutral governance

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

Sigstore

  • Open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authoritynot Mautic
  • Organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing productnot Mautic
  • Publishing provenance that a consumer can verify independently of younot Mautic
  • Self-hosting the same components where a public log is unacceptablenot 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.

Sigstore

  • The security model depends on somebody watching the log. The documentation states that compromise of an identity provider or of Fulcio itself is detectable only if third parties monitor the transparency log, the monitoring tool is a community-tier rather than core project, and almost no consumer runs one.
  • It is a 99.5 percent objective with no service level agreement, which permits several hours of downtime a month and offers no remedy. A pipeline that signs on every build has taken a hard dependency on a free service with no contract behind it.
  • Log scale is a live engineering problem rather than a theoretical one. The active shard holds billions of entries, the log has already been sharded twice, and sharding version 1 requires stopping traffic, which is why a replacement was built.
  • Ten-minute certificates make trust depend on log availability. Verifying an older signature relies on the log entry proving it was made inside that window, so a lost or unreachable entry can render a valid artifact unverifiable.
  • Migration debt is substantial and ongoing. Version 2 of the log is generally available but not the public default, the signing client has an announced breaking release ahead, some official clients lag the new log format, and a post-quantum migration is named as the next break after that.

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

Sigstore

Free
  • Public good instanceFree
    • Free to everyone with no contract
    • 99.5 percent availability objective, not an agreement
    • 100KB cap per attestation upload
  • Self-hostedFree
    • Apache-2.0
    • Run your own Fulcio and Rekor
    • Rekor v2 available for self-hosters

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 Sigstore if

  • You need fulcio.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
  • You also want rekor.
Sigstore review

Questions people ask

Is Mautic or Sigstore better?
Neither clearly leads. Mautic starts at Free and Sigstore at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Mautic or Sigstore?
Mautic starts at Free and Sigstore at Free.
Does Mautic or Sigstore run on more platforms?
Mautic runs on Web, Linux, Self-hosted, Docker. Sigstore runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
Can I use Mautic for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
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 Sigstore is typically brought in for.
What can Mautic do that Sigstore cannot?
Mautic covers Visual campaign builder, Contact management and segmentation, Landing pages and forms, Lead scoring. Sigstore covers Fulcio, Rekor, Keyless signing, Multi-language clients.

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.

Sigstore: Is the public instance really free?

Yes, with no contract and no paid tier. That is also the weakness: a 99.5 percent objective with no agreement, no remedy and support through Slack.

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.

Sigstore: Has the public log moved to Rekor v2?

No. Version 2 reached general availability in October 2025 and self-hosters can use it, but the public instance still defaults to version 1 and the project has said it will for the foreseeable future.

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.

Sigstore: Does Sigstore make my dependencies safe?

No, and this is a category error worth avoiding. It tells you who published something. It has no knowledge of what the artifact contains or whether it is vulnerable.

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.

Sigstore: What are the rate limits?

Not published. Only the 100KB cap per attestation upload is documented, so do not design a high-volume pipeline around assumed throughput.

Sigstore: Should we self-host it?

If a public record of every signature is unacceptable, or if a free service with no agreement cannot sit in your build path, then yes. Otherwise the public instance is what most projects use.

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