Both self-hosted: power vs. focus

Broadcast vs Mautic

Both run on your own server, but they aim at different teams. Mautic is the most powerful open-source marketing automation suite, with the depth (and the operational weight) to match. Broadcast is focused email marketing that one person can set up, run, and maintain, with support included.

Buy Broadcast for $250 See all self-hosted options

At a Glance

License
Mautic: Free (GPL)
Broadcast: $250 one-time
Scope
Mautic: Automation suite
Broadcast: Focused email
Ops burden
Mautic: High (LAMP + queue)
Broadcast: Low (installer)
Support
Mautic: Community
Broadcast: Email support

Straight answer: if you need deep automation graphs, lead scoring, landing pages, and multi-channel campaigns, and you have a PHP-comfortable ops person, Mautic is more powerful, and it’s free. Choose Broadcast when you want focused email marketing that’s quick to stand up, easy to keep running, and backed by support, without dedicating an engineer to it. This page is an honest look at that trade.

Feature Comparison

Where Broadcast and Mautic each pull ahead

Feature Broadcast Mautic
Software cost $250 one-time Free (GPL)
Subscribers Unlimited Unlimited
Drip / welcome sequences Built-in Built-in
Visual automation graphs Sequences + conditions Advanced
Lead / contact scoring No Yes
Landing pages No Yes
Multi-channel (SMS, social) Email-focused Yes (plugins)
Segmentation Tags, lists, custom fields Advanced
Transactional email API Yes Via API/plugins
ESP choice SES, Postmark, Mailgun, any SMTP SMTP / providers
Data ownership Your server Your server
Hosting requirements App + Postgres PHP, MySQL, cron, queue
Setup & learning curve Installer, <1 hour Steep; days to tune
Support Email and Discord, included Community / paid partners
Release speed 139 since Nov 2025 15 since Nov 2025
Updates Every 2.x release included. One-click upgrade in the dashboard. Composer, from the command line
AI assistant Ask AI, included (bring your own key) Not in core
Two-factor sign-in Authenticator app, can be required for all users Third-party plugin
Scheduled offsite backups Built in: S3, R2, B2 or any S3-compatible storage No, back up MySQL yourself
SPF / DKIM / DMARC monitoring Built in, with alerts No

Mautic genuinely out-features Broadcast on automation depth: scoring, landing pages, and multi-channel are real advantages if you’ll use them. The trade is operational weight: Mautic is a multi-service PHP application that rewards a dedicated ops owner. Broadcast deliberately covers the email automation most senders actually use, and stays simple to run.

How often each product ships

Releases since November 2025

Broadcast
139
Mautic
15

Last release: Broadcast yesterday ยท Mautic 29 days ago.

Shipped in the last 90 days

  • v2.51.0 Sequences now list the subscribers that stopped with an error. You can retry the failed step for one subscriber, or retry or dismiss all of them at once.
  • v2.51.0 Sequence webhooks report retried and dismissed subscribers (sequence.subscriber_resumed with reason “retry”, sequence.subscriber_removed with reason “dismissed”).
  • v2.50.0 Sequences have a Reply-To address in their settings, so replies to sequence emails go to the inbox you choose instead of the sender address.
  • v2.50.0 Each Send Email step in a sequence can set its own Reply-To address, which overrides the sequence’s.
  • v2.50.0 Each Send Email step on the sequence canvas shows how many emails it sent, opened and clicked, with open and click rates and bounces.

See the full release chart → | Read the changelog

What each one actually costs

Mautic’s software is free; Broadcast’s is paid. But the bigger line item with a powerful self-hosted suite is the time to run it. Here’s the honest version.

Mautic

  • Software: $0 (open source)
  • Hosting: larger server, needing PHP-FPM, MySQL, cron, Redis/queue
  • Sending: your SMTP/SES (~$0.10 / 1,000 emails)
  • Your time: initial tuning (often days), queue/deliverability config, and rougher major-version upgrades

Best value when you’ll use the automation depth and have ops capacity to keep it healthy.

Broadcast

  • Software: $250 one-time (then yours)
  • Hosting: ~$5–20/mo VPS, app + Postgres
  • Sending: your SMTP/SES (~$0.10 / 1,000 emails)
  • Your time: automated installer, sequences ready to use, email support when you’re stuck

Best value when you want a working email program this week, not a project to maintain.

Where They Differ Most

Automation Depth

This is Mautic’s home turf. Its campaign builder rivals ActiveCampaign’s, with lead scoring, dynamic content, and multi-channel branches. Broadcast offers drip sequences with conditions (enough for welcome series, onboarding, and nurtures) but not scoring or landing pages. If your program lives or dies on scoring graphs, Mautic wins.

Setup & Maintenance

Mautic is a multi-service PHP stack (web server, PHP-FPM, MySQL, cron, and a queue) and it expects tuning before it runs well, with major upgrades that need care. Broadcast installs on Ubuntu with an automated installer and runs as one app plus Postgres. For a small team, that difference is weeks of saved effort.

Support

Mautic’s support is its community, forums, and third-party paid partners: capable, but it’s on you to assemble. Every Broadcast license includes direct email support and updates, so deliverability and upgrade questions have an owner who isn’t only you.

Focus vs. Feature Sprawl

Mautic’s breadth is a strength if you need it and a tax if you don’t: more surface area to learn, configure, and keep secure. Broadcast does email marketing and does it well, so a non-specialist can be productive on day one instead of climbing a learning curve.

Who Should Choose What

An honest take on when each tool makes sense

Choose Broadcast if you…

  • Want focused email marketing, not a multi-channel suite
  • Don’t have a dedicated ops person for a PHP/LAMP stack
  • Want it running this week, not after a tuning project
  • Prefer included support over assembling community help
  • Need drips and segmentation, but not lead scoring or landing pages

Mautic might be better if you…

  • Need lead scoring, landing pages, and dynamic content
  • Run multi-channel campaigns (email + SMS + social)
  • Have a PHP-comfortable ops person to run and upgrade it
  • Want the deepest open-source automation and will invest the setup time

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Mautic is open source under the GPL, so the software is free to self-host. The real cost is operational: a larger multi-service server and the time to configure, tune, and upgrade it. Broadcast is a one-time $250 license with an automated installer and support included.
Mautic is powerful but heavyweight. It needs a web server, PHP-FPM, MySQL, cron, and a queue, and it typically takes real configuration before it runs reliably: deliverability in particular depends on how you wire the queue. Major-version upgrades have historically needed care. Broadcast runs as one app plus Postgres and installs in under an hour.
No. Broadcast focuses on email marketing: campaigns, drip sequences with conditions, segmentation, and transactional sending. It doesn’t include lead scoring, landing-page building, or multi-channel (SMS/social) campaigns. If those are core to your program, Mautic is the better fit.
Yes, for your contacts. Export your Mautic contacts and segments to CSV and import them into Broadcast, including tags and custom fields. Complex automation graphs don’t transfer one-to-one: you’d rebuild the sequences you actually use, which is often a chance to simplify. Both run on your own infrastructure, so your data stays yours throughout.
For a small team without dedicated ops, Broadcast is usually the better fit: it’s quick to stand up, simple to run, and supported. Mautic shines when you have the automation needs to justify it and someone to own the stack. Choose by what you’ll actually use, not by feature-count.
Mautic, Broadcast, Listmonk, Sendy, phpList, and Keila each suit different needs. See our honest 2026 comparison of self-hosted email marketing software, or the focused Broadcast vs Listmonk comparison.

Powerful enough, without the upkeep

Keep the ownership of self-hosting, and skip the LAMP stack, the tuning, and the maintenance project.

Every 2.x update is included. Version 2.0 shipped on March 16, 2026. A license bought that day has received all 97 releases of version 2 at no extra cost.

Try the live sandbox Buy Broadcast for $250

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Still deciding?

Comparisons cover the tradeoffs. How To covers whether Broadcast does the specific thing you need, organized by what you are trying to accomplish rather than by feature name. If the answer is no, it says no.

Browse How To Segment subscribers Branch a sequence Bring an existing list