The best self hosted email marketing software is Mautic.
What is Mautic aside from the best self hosted email marketing software?
If you are looking for the best self hosted email marketing software, chances are that you have already heard of Mautic as it has developed a reputation since its beginning.
For those that have never heard of Mautic before, it is a free and open source (“FOSS”) email marketing software that rivals any paid email marketing service on the market.
Why Does Open Source Matter?
For those that are familiar with the concept of open source software, it simply means that the source code for the software is available and downloadable for anyone to review.
There are a couple advantages to open-source software:
1) Because the source code is open, you can be certain that there is nothing malicious or manipulative hiding in the software. For companies that value their data and the privacy of their customers, this is a crucial point.
2) Because the software code is open, it makes it incredibly easy for anyone to start experimenting with new features and tools built on top of the platform and available as extra features. This is less of an option for software the is proprietary; it makes it harder for developers to build custom tools, integrations and features that can be shared by the community.
Mautic is Free!! ... With a Catch
We’re biased when it comes to free products because business costs (especially for email marketing software) can add up very quickly. Price absolutely should be a factor when answering the question of the best self-hosted email marketing software.
For Mautic, there are no catches, hidden fees, or trip wires when it comes to installing and using their software. Free means free when it comes to Mautic.
However, even though Mautic’s email marketing software is free, you still need to host that software somewhere. So you should not budget $0 for email marketing software if you choose Mautic.
Hosting Your Email Marketing Software
To host your installation of Mautic (did we mention it’s the best self hosted email marketing software??), you will need either a dedicated server, or a virtual private server (“VPS”) to maintain your own self-hosted installation of the software. Shared hosting is not an option for Mautic (or any other self-hosted email marketing software for that matter).
What type of server you choose for Mautic will vary depending on your situation, but for most businesses, the best and most economical solution is a VPS. Thankfully the costs of VPS keep falling (thank you Moore’s Law). The leader in VPS is Linode and they have servers starting from as low as $4.99/month.
Again, you should probably budget more than $5/month for hosting because Linode and other VPS providers like them have a variable price model that increases as you get more RAM, storage and chip speed.
Note: even though the storage amounts don’t seem like a lot, keep in mind that your installation of Mautic will not serve as your general email server for your employees. Your email server is separate from your self-hosted email marketing software server. So you don’t have to worry about paying for the storage of all those emails and attachments of your team.
Cost of SMTP Service
In addition to hosting, you should also account for the cost of an SMTP relay service like SMTP.com. Why do you need an SMTP relay service for self-hosted email marketing software? There are many different reasons to use an SMTP relay service (and this is the subject of another article), but some of the main ones are email deliverability, IP reptutation, and most of all, to save time.
An SMTP relay service won’t be necessary or appropriate for all businesses especially small businesses or ones that don’t send a large volume of emails. However, if that is the case, it probably is not necessary or appropriate to self-host your email marketing software. In those instances, it’s likely better to go with a traditional email marketing service like GetResponse that have free plans for basic services until you graduate to larger email volumes.
What Makes Mautic The Best Self Hosted Email Marketing Software?
When thinking about the best self hosted email marketing software, there is one obvious requirement necessary which is that the software needs to give you the option to self-host. Many email marketing and marketing automation services do not offer that and instead hold your data and customer information hostage so you never leave them.
Aside from letting you self host, what are the other advantages of Mautic? We already discussed two of them (it’s both free and open source). Now let’s get into the other features that make Mautic your secret weapon in growing your business.