Open-source alternatives to Mailchimp: 2 email newsletter and marketing tools compared
Both of these put your subscriber list on a database you control, and both stop short of the thing a hosted marketing service actually sells, which is the sending path: bounce handling, blocklists and sender reputation are yours either way. knadh/listmonk is the one most readers should start with, because it is a single Go binary against PostgreSQL.
What Mailchimp does, and why people look elsewhere
Mailchimp is a hosted email marketing service: subscriber lists, campaign editor, automations and reporting, with sending included.
- priced by contact count, including unsubscribed contacts on some plans
- subscriber data is held by the vendor
- sending is tied to the vendor's infrastructure
The candidates at a glance
| Project | Licence | Maintenance | Language | GitHub stars | Install |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| knadh/listmonk | AGPL-3.0Network copyleft: hosting a modified version means sharing source | Commits in the last dayLast push October 23, 2026 | Go | 23,940 | See analysis |
| mautic/mautic | Custom licenceCustom licence: read the LICENSE file | Commits in the last dayLast push October 23, 2026 | PHP | 10,830 | See analysis |
Each alternative in detail
knadh/listmonkHigh performance, self-hosted, newsletter and mailing list manager with a modern dashboard. Single binary app.
- Best for
- You want a newsletter and mailing list manager where the list, the segments and the campaign history live in your own PostgreSQL, and you already have a transactional email provider to send through. The README describes it as a standalone, self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager packed into a single binary, with a modern dashboard for subscribers, campaigns and transactional email.
- What you give up
- It is the application and not the delivery layer. Our analysis of listmonk is explicit that it does not provide hosted infrastructure, a managed SMTP relay or enterprise SLAs, so a reliable transactional email provider is something you have to bring. AGPL-3.0 is the other condition: modifications you deploy over a network have to be released as open source, which is a real constraint for a company that intends to modify the campaign templates.
mautic/mauticMautic: Open Source Marketing Automation Software.
- Best for
- You are building lead capture, segmentation and multi-channel campaigns rather than a single newsletter, and you want both the front end and the back end to be customisable. The README describes unlimited segmentation and automation, the ability to create any integration you need, your own database, and no dependency on a third-party SaaS.
- What you give up
- It is a PHP application with Composer in the middle of the install, and the README warns that if the source or database schema gets out of sync with releases, the release updater may stop working and require manual updates, so production means a tagged release or the pre-packaged download rather than a branch checkout. Our analysis of Mautic also says it is the wrong tool if what you actually need is a CRM with sales pipeline management, and the repository is one GitHub reports as NOASSERTION rather than a named licence.
A newsletter tool, a marketing automation suite, and why Brevo and ConvertKit are not here
Mailchimp is a hosted email marketing service: subscriber lists, a campaign editor, automations and reporting, with sending included. People look elsewhere for three reasons. Pricing is by contact count, and on some plans that includes contacts who have unsubscribed. Subscriber data is held by the vendor. And sending is tied to the vendor's infrastructure.
Brevo and ConvertKit come up in the same searches and neither is here, because both are hosted. That is the same property that makes Mailchimp the product being replaced, and there is no argument against them on quality. ConvertKit in particular has a strong reputation with writers who send one good email a week, and Brevo covers email, SMS and a wider marketing automation surface. If nobody needs to export the list, and nobody needs to control the sending path, a hosted service is a defensible answer and everything on this page adds server work for nothing.
What changes when the reason is the one in the brief is that the subscriber list stops being exportable data and becomes the asset you are protecting. At that point the two projects here split along a line that has nothing to do with features: one is a newsletter tool, the other is a marketing automation suite.
knadh/listmonk is the newsletter tool. The README describes it as a standalone, self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager, fast and packed into a single binary, using PostgreSQL as its data store, with the backend in Go and the front end in Vue with Buefy. There is a live demo, a Docker route that fetches a compose file and starts the services, and a binary route that generates a config file, installs or upgrades the database, and then runs the binary and serves a dashboard.
mautic/mautic is the suite. The README describes it as open source marketing automation, and its own list of benefits is worth reading as a specification of what it thinks a marketing tool is: no dependency on a third-party SaaS, your own database and your own data, the ability to create any integration you need, both front end and back end fully customisable, multi-channel marketing without extra cost, and unlimited segmentation and automation. It also carries a Digital Public Goods verification badge.
Left out, and worth saying why: the transactional email sending services, which are the other half of what a hosted marketing product bundles, and the customer data platforms, which sit upstream of the list rather than beside it. Both exist; neither replaces a campaign editor, and neither sends your newsletter.
Choosing by scenario: a solo newsletter, a small team, a company with compliance needs, a developer sending email
The question that separates these two is whether you are sending a newsletter or running a funnel.
A solo writer sending a regular newsletter should look at knadh/listmonk. One binary, one PostgreSQL database, one dashboard, and an install that is a compose file or three command-line steps. The README's binary route is unusually clear about it: generate a config file, run the install to set up the database or the upgrade to upgrade an existing one, and the README states that upgrades are idempotent and running them more than once has no side effects. That last property is what makes a single-binary tool pleasant to live with.
A small marketing team that needs lead capture, segments that react to behaviour, and campaigns across more than one channel should look at mautic/mautic. Automation and segmentation are the product there, and the README describes both as unlimited, which is the part that does not map onto a per-contact pricing model.
A company with consent and data residency requirements can use either, and the decision becomes operational rather than legal. Both keep the list in a database you run. listmonk is one Go process in front of PostgreSQL. Mautic is a PHP application with Composer, a database and a mail path you control, which our analysis of Mautic names as the three things you have to be able to run.
A developer who is sending email from an application rather than running campaigns should notice that neither of these is the right tool. What an application needs is a transactional email API with bounce and complaint handling, not a subscriber list with a campaign editor. Our analysis of listmonk makes this boundary explicit, and it is the boundary most often crossed by mistake when someone looks for a Mailchimp replacement and actually has an application problem.
What each one asks you to run, and the part neither of them does
The install paths on this page say most of what you need to know about operations.
knadh/listmonk shows a curl of the compose file followed by docker compose up -d, serving on port 9000. The README also documents the binary route in full: download the release, run listmonk with a flag that generates config.toml, edit it, run the install flag to set up the Postgres database, then run the binary. The analysis of listmonk describes the single-binary distribution and the Docker Compose setup as making deployment straightforward on any Linux server, and it is hard to disagree once you have read those instructions.
mautic/mautic has no install command in our analysis, and the reason is stated in its own README. You must already have Composer available, and the GitHub version is recommended for development and testing rather than production, with the pre-packaged release the recommended production path. The warning is explicit about the consequence: if the source or the database schema gets out of sync with Mautic releases, the release updater may not work and will require manual updates. It also says source code outside a tagged release should be considered alpha, with bugs, unexpected results, and the possibility of data corruption or loss. There is a DDEV path for local work.
Now the part neither project does, which is the thing a hosted marketing service actually sells. Both stop at dispatch. Our analysis of listmonk says it plainly: it provides the application but not the email delivery layer, and you need a reliable transactional email provider connected to it, because it handles list management and campaign dispatch but not email deliverability. That means bounce processing, complaint handling, blocklist reputation, and the infrastructure providers require before they will accept your mail all become your problem. Moving to either project on this page changes who holds your subscriber data. It does not change who gets your email delivered.
The practical consequence is that the migration is two projects, not one: whatever you run for sending, and whatever you run for the list. A team that treats that as one decision is the team that discovers the second half late.
Licences: AGPL-3.0, and a repository GitHub cannot classify
Two projects, two different conversations, and one of them needs a file opened rather than a sentence written.
knadh/listmonk is AGPL v3, and the README says so in two places. Our analysis of listmonk states the condition that matters: modifications to listmonk that are deployed over a network have to be released as open source. That is the network clause, and for a newsletter tool it bites in a specific way. A company that customises the campaign templates, the signup forms or the unsubscribe flow has modified it, and if that modified version is reachable over a network, the source obligation applies. Internal use without modification is the ordinary case and is unremarkable.
mautic/mautic is the one that needs a file opened. Our analysis of Mautic describes it as an open source marketing automation application written in PHP and distributed under a licence GitHub labels NOASSERTION, which means the repository metadata does not resolve to a licence identifier a scanner recognises. A marketing tool that holds contact records, consent state and campaign history is exactly the kind of software a compliance reviewer will ask about, and "we could not classify it" is not an answer to that question. Read the LICENSE file in the repository and put the result in front of whoever signs off.
One point applies to both. Neither licence tells you how long you keep a subscriber record after they unsubscribe, and that is the question a consent regulation actually asks. Both projects give you the database; the retention policy is yours to write and yours to enforce.
A final practical note. Our analysis of Mautic lists three things to verify before committing: the supported PHP and database versions on the requirements page, that the release you choose is a tagged release rather than a branch checkout, and that the 7.x upgrade documents cover the version you are on. That is a short list, and it is the shortest path to a decision on this page.
Bottom line
Pick knadh/listmonk if you are sending a newsletter and want one Go binary in front of your own PostgreSQL, and mautic/mautic if you need lead capture, unlimited segmentation and multi-channel automation on a PHP stack you can run with Composer. Before committing, arrange the sending path separately, because neither project delivers email, and read Mautic's LICENSE file yourself since GitHub reports the repository as NOASSERTION while also checking that the Mautic version you pin is a tagged release with upgrade notes that cover it.
Sources
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