Listmonk vs Mautic

The one question that decides this

Are you replacing Mailchimp’s newsletter-and-list workflow, or looking for a broader open-source marketing automation platform? Listmonk describes itself as a self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager; Mautic describes itself as marketing automation software and lists both Mailchimp and HubSpot as alternatives it can replace. That is the meaningful distinction in the supplied project descriptions. It is not a claim that either tool has a particular feature the other lacks: the available information establishes their intended scope, not a detailed feature-by-feature comparison.

What each one is actually trying to be

Listmonk: a self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager.

Listmonk’s pitch is deliberately narrow: “High performance, self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager.” Its GitHub description adds a modern dashboard and calls it a single-binary app. The center of gravity here is mailing lists and newsletters, not an everything-platform story. If that is the job you need done, the narrower description is a useful signal rather than a limitation to apologize for.

The “high performance” claim comes from the project’s own tagline; the supplied data doesn’t include a benchmark, so there’s no reason to turn it into a promise about your workload. Likewise, a single-binary description suggests an emphasis on a compact application, but it doesn’t tell you how every deployment will go or what infrastructure your setup requires. The practical appeal is simpler: Listmonk presents itself as a focused tool for running newsletters and mailing lists yourself, rather than as a general marketing automation platform.

Mautic: open-source marketing automation.

Mautic’s GitHub description is “Mautic: Open Source Marketing Automation Software.” Its tagline calls it “The world's largest open source marketing automation platform.” It also lists both Mailchimp and HubSpot as products it replaces, which points to a broader intended role than a newsletter-and-list manager alone. That is the case for considering it: you want to evaluate a platform framed around marketing automation, not just a mailing-list tool.

The tagline’s “world’s largest” is a project claim, not an independently verified measurement in the data here. And “marketing automation” is a broad category label, not a reason to assume that a particular capability is present, easy to configure, or right for your team. What we can say without filling in those blanks is that Mautic aims at a wider marketing-platform brief than Listmonk’s stated newsletter focus. That extra scope may be the point—or unnecessary machinery, depending on what you actually need.

Head-to-head: the metrics

Listmonk has 23,659 GitHub stars, 2,642 forks, an AGPL-3.0 license, 117 open issues, and a last push dated 2026-10-02. Mautic has 10,676 stars, 3,491 forks, a license listed as NOASSERTION, 227 open issues, and the same last-push date, 2026-10-02. Those are the supplied GitHub figures; stars and forks are signals of attention and reuse, not a quality guarantee or a measure of how well either project fits your setup.

The shared last-push date means both repositories show recent activity on the same date in the supplied snapshot. It does not, on its own, establish a release cadence or tell you how quickly maintainers handle issues. The open-issue counts are counts, not diagnoses: they don’t say how severe, old, or actionable those issues are. And the license entries deserve attention before deployment, especially Mautic’s NOASSERTION value: the data does not provide a confirmed license for it, so don’t treat that label as a license grant. Check the project’s current licensing information and assess your obligations before building around either tool.

Self-hosting

Listmonk’s hosting option is self-host, and its deploy-difficulty rating is 2 out of 5. That’s the more approachable rating of the two in this data, though a score is not a promise that setup will be effortless for every operator. You are still choosing to run a service yourself; the project description’s “single binary app” is useful context, but it does not eliminate the work of operating your deployment.

Mautic is also listed as self-host-only, with a deploy-difficulty rating of 4 out of 5. That points to a more demanding deployment than Listmonk’s rating, but the supplied data does not explain the causes or specify what a particular installation will require. Treat the score as a planning signal, not a complete operations manual. If your team has limited capacity to deploy and maintain software, that difference should weigh heavily in the decision.

Community signals

The supplied Hacker News data gives Listmonk a 2019 Show HN story titled “Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager,” with 343 points and 50 comments; it also reports 0 HN mentions in the last 90 days. Mautic’s listed HN story is from 2019, titled “Mautic (open source marketing automation) acquired by Acquia,” with 13 points and 0 comments; its 90-day mention count is also 0. These are old stories, not a current popularity contest, and the 90-day figures don’t establish what users think of either product.

The supplied Reddit entries are not useful evidence about either project: Listmonk’s top post is an Outlook carousel-content question in r/microsoft365, while Mautic’s is an unrelated concert post in r/TamonsBSide. They don’t support a conclusion about project quality or community sentiment. Better to say that plainly than dress unrelated posts up as user feedback.

What we'd do

For a Mailchimp replacement focused on self-hosted newsletters and mailing lists, we’d start with Listmonk: its stated scope is direct, and its deploy-difficulty rating is lower. Consider Mautic if you specifically want to investigate the broader marketing-automation brief and are prepared for the higher self-hosting difficulty; verify its licensing before committing, because the supplied GitHub license field is NOASSERTION. The winner depends less on which project sounds bigger and more on whether you need a focused mailing-list manager or a wider platform.