HubSpot Marketing Hub cost vs self-hosted Mautic: where the money goes
If you are facing a Marketing Hub renewal or a contact tier increase, the short answer is that the cost gap depends on how your contact count, staff time and sending volume grow, not on a single license fee. HubSpot Marketing Hub is billed by edition, by seats and by marketing contact tier, and only contacts marked as marketing contacts count toward the tier and affect the subscription. Mautic has no paid edition of the software itself, so its costs sit elsewhere: hosting, email sending, upkeep, support and the one-time effort of moving data and rebuilding campaigns.
Start by separating the two bills. On the HubSpot side, ask your account team to itemize the edition, the number of paid seats, any onboarding or implementation fees and the marketing contact tier at your current and projected counts. Check how many of your records are truly marketing contacts, because a contact cleanup can change the tier. On the Mautic side, the recurring items are a VPS or dedicated server (the project advises against shared hosting), a database, an SMTP or transactional sending provider, and the staff hours needed for cron jobs, the broadcasts command, the messenger consumer and monthly, quarterly and major upgrades. Mautic's releases page lists the support windows you must plan around.
No price figures for either side are supplied here, so treat any comparison as a model to fill in with your own quotes. Ask your hosting or managed Mautic provider, and your email sending provider, for written pricing at your target contact volume, and ask whether a partner or DeployOpen-style scope would cover installation, backups and upgrades. The decision usually turns on who carries staff time, since an in-house team that already runs servers can absorb much of the upkeep, while a team without that capacity will pay for it either through hires or external support.
Which cost components change between the two options
This table lists each cost component on the HubSpot side and the Mautic side, marking whether it is one-time or recurring and who gets paid. Read it to find which lines scale with your marketing contact count and which lines you control directly. The main takeaway is that HubSpot cost mostly recurs and grows with contact tier, while Mautic shifts recurring spend to infrastructure, sending and staff time you must confirm for your own environment.
| Cost component | HubSpot Marketing Hub | Self-hosted Mautic |
|---|---|---|
| Software license or subscription | Recurring subscription by edition, seats and marketing contact tier; only marketing contacts affect the tier | Free license under GPL-3.0; no paid edition of the software itself, so no license fee |
| Seats and user access | Recurring per-seat charges by edition; confirm current seat rules with HubSpot | No per-user license; staff time to administer accounts is an internal or partner cost |
| Onboarding and setup | One-time onboarding fees may apply; ask HubSpot for the fee schedule in writing | One-time implementation by staff or a partner, scoped in writing before work starts |
| Hosting infrastructure | Included in subscription; no servers for you to run | Recurring VPS or dedicated server; Mautic should not run on shared hosting per project requirements |
| Database and storage | Included in subscription | Recurring database hosting and backups in your own environment, sized by contact count |
| Email sending | Included in subscription within plan limits; confirm sending allowances and fees | Recurring fees paid to a separate sending provider you choose; confirm volume pricing |
| Contact growth | Cost rises as marketing contacts move into higher tiers | Infrastructure cost rises with database and queue load; no contact-tier charge |
| Migration effort | One-time export and rebuild work; HubSpot exports are limited to 300 per rolling 24 hours | One-time import and rebuild of workflows, forms and emails; large imports run through a background console command |
| Upgrades and maintenance | Handled by the vendor as part of the subscription | Recurring staff or partner time for upgrades tied to releases, plus cron and queue monitoring |
| Support | Included by edition level; higher support tiers cost more | Community support is free; paid support or retainer hours are a recurring quote item |
What moves the comparison as contacts grow
Marketing Hub costs scale with marketing contacts, seats and editions, while Mautic costs scale with hosting, sending and the people who run the platform. The drivers below decide which side of the comparison gets more expensive as your list grows, so model each one against your own numbers before you request a quote.
Marketing contact count and flags
HubSpot only counts contacts set as marketing contacts toward the tier, so the number of records you flag as marketing contacts, not the total in your CRM, drives subscription cost. Mautic has no per-contact license, but a larger database needs more server capacity and database maintenance. Audit how many records receive marketing email today and how many are flagged, because unflagged records are often where cost creeps in.
Sending volume and cron processing
Mautic runs segment updates, campaign updates, campaign triggers and broadcasts through cron jobs, and queued email needs a messenger consumer. As volume grows, these jobs take longer and must be staggered and monitored. Your costs here are the server time, the sending provider you choose and the engineer hours to keep queues healthy, while HubSpot bundles sending into the subscription.
Seat count and editions
HubSpot prices seats and edition tiers, so adding marketers, sales users or admins increases the bill even when contact volume stays flat. Mautic licenses no seats, so the cost of extra users is limited to access administration and training. Ask HubSpot which features your current edition gates, because upgrades often arrive when a team hits a feature limit rather than a contact limit.
Data import and export effort
HubSpot record exports are capped at 300 per rolling 24 hours, which matters when you migrate a large list or run regular warehouse extracts. Mautic imports CSV files through the interface for small loads and recommends the mautic:import console command for large files, which processes 100 rows per batch by default. Estimate the one-time migration effort by file size and field mapping, and plan for the Contacts API where export files fall short.
Availability requirements
A self-hosted Mautic instance needs monitoring, backups, patching and a plan for downtime that affects campaign sends and tracking. HubSpot carries that availability burden for you. Define the uptime your campaigns actually need, whether a missed trigger is acceptable, and how often you must patch, since Mautic's own requirements page advises against shared hosting and recommends a VPS or dedicated server.
In-house skills and support capacity
Running Mautic well requires people who can administer PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, web servers, cron and mail queues, and who can follow the release cycle. If that skill set exists in-house, the recurring cost is mostly staff time. If not, the cost shifts to an implementation partner or a support retainer, which you should price from a written scope. Count the people who would own the platform before you compare totals.
What running Mautic actually requires
Running Mautic starts with a server stack you build, patch and keep inside the project's support matrix. Mautic 7.0 requires PHP 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5, MySQL 5.7 or higher with InnoDB or MariaDB 10.2 or higher, and a web server such as Apache, Nginx or IIS. From Mautic 5.0 onward, npm is also needed. The project advises against shared hosting and recommends a VPS or dedicated server instead. Before you price the hosting, confirm which PHP and database versions your target release supports, and check the requirements page for any changes to the stack.
Mautic also depends on scheduled jobs that run outside the web interface. Cron drives segment updates, campaign updates and campaign triggers, and the documentation says these should be staggered so they do not compete for the same resources. Segment emails need a broadcasts command, and when email is queued, a messenger consumer must run continuously to send it. If any of these stop, segments go stale, campaigns stall and messages sit in the queue without an error on the page. Ask your implementation partner to document each job, its schedule and the alert that fires when it fails.
These duties recur for as long as you run Mautic. Your team or a support retainer will patch the operating system, PHP and the database, and plan moves between Mautic releases, since each release line has its own support end date. For example, Mautic 6.0 receives security support until 30 September 2026. Monitoring, backups, queue health and email deliverability also need an owner. When you request a quote, ask for the expected monthly upkeep hours, who holds on-call responsibility for failed jobs, and how upgrades are tested before they reach production.
How to build the cost comparison with your own numbers
This sequence turns the cost question into a like-for-like model built from your own contact counts, seats, quotes and staff time, so each side of the comparison can be checked line by line over three years. The output is one table you can defend in a renewal or budget discussion.
Export current contact and seat counts
The marketing operations lead exports the current contact list and the list of paid seats from the HubSpot account settings and billing pages, then records the total contacts, the number of marketing and sales seats, and the edition in use. Save the export with a date so later changes in volume can be traced. The step is done when one sheet shows the contact total and seat count as of a single date, with the source of each number noted.
Confirm which contacts are marketing contacts
Marketing operations filters the contact records by the marketing contact status, since HubSpot's billing counts only contacts set as marketing contacts toward the tier. Compare that count with the total contact count from the previous step, because the gap is often where a cost decision sits. Check the HubSpot knowledge base article on marketing contacts to confirm which statuses qualify before you rely on the figure. The step is done when you have a marketing contact count that matches the number shown in the billing settings.
List the features in use
The team lead for marketing and the CRM owner list every feature the business actually uses, such as forms, landing pages, email sends, workflows, lead scoring, reporting dashboards, ad integrations and sales sequences. Mark which features are tied to the current edition, because some are only available at higher tiers. This list decides which Mautic or listmonk capabilities must be matched and which gaps need extra tools. The step is done when every feature has an owner and a yes or no for whether it must survive the move.
Price the HubSpot renewal from the written quote
Procurement requests a written renewal quote from HubSpot for the exact edition, seat count, marketing contact tier and any add-ons from the previous steps, and asks for onboarding or implementation fees to be shown separately. Ask the vendor to state whether the price is annual or multi-year and what happens if the contact count grows during the term. Confirm current prices directly with HubSpot, since published figures change and a quote is the only binding number. The step is done when the quote is on file with the three-year total extracted into the model.
Estimate hosting and email sending
The infrastructure owner prices a server for Mautic from the company's own cloud or hosting providers, based on the Mautic requirements (PHP, a supported MySQL or MariaDB database, and a web server), and notes that Mautic should not run on shared hosting. A separate line covers the email sending provider, priced from its own published rates for the expected monthly volume. Include backups, a staging copy and DNS or certificate costs if they are not already covered. The step is done when each hosting and sending line has a quote or rate sheet from the named provider.
Cost staff hours for upgrades and cron monitoring
The platform owner estimates the internal hours needed for each Mautic release cycle, for patch, minor and major upgrades, along with the hours to watch the cron jobs for segment updates, campaign updates, campaign triggers and the broadcasts command, plus the message queue consumer. Record who is paid for this work, whether it is an internal engineer or an external support retainer, and what hourly rate applies. Base the upgrade frequency on Mautic's published release cadence and the support windows listed for each version. The step is done when the staff effort is recorded as a recurring line with an assigned owner.
Add one-time migration effort
The project lead adds a one-time line for migration, covering contact and list export, data import through Mautic's CSV import or console command, rebuilding forms, emails and workflows, syncing with the CRM, and reconnecting tracking. Ask for fixed-scope quotes from any implementation partner, and budget for internal time to test and sign off. Mark this as a one-time cost so it does not inflate the recurring comparison. The step is done when the migration estimate is written against a defined scope, not a general allowance.
Compare totals across a three-year horizon
Finance builds one sheet with two columns, one for HubSpot with the renewal, onboarding and tier costs, and one for Mautic with hosting, sending, staff time, support and migration. Enter the one-time costs in year one, the recurring costs in each year, and run a second scenario with contact growth so the tier and volume effects are visible. Review the result with the CISO and the marketing lead, and note the assumptions behind each figure. The step is done when the three-year totals and their assumptions are signed off by the budget owner.
How the Mautic release cadence shapes upkeep costs
Mautic's stated release cadence sets the rhythm of your recurring upkeep: monthly patch releases, minor releases every three months and major releases every two years. Every line you run has an end date for security support, and that date, not the release you happen to have installed, determines when you must move. The Mautic releases page lists these dates, and your upgrade budget should be built from them rather than from a guess about how often things break.
The current support picture is specific. Mautic 7.2 (Absolunto) receives active and security support until 30 September 2026, Mautic 6.0 (Tabit) receives security support until the same date, and Mautic 5.2 (Capella) receives security support until 30 June 2026. Mautic 7.3 is planned as the long-term support release, with security support through 31 December 2027. Staying on a supported line means applying patch releases as they arrive, testing them against your custom plugins and templates, and scheduling a minor or major upgrade before each line falls out of support. Each of those cycles costs staff time or a retainer, and that cost recurs for as long as you self-host.
Decide now whether you will track the monthly and quarterly cadence or plan around the long-term support line. Tracking every release suits a team with an in-house platform engineer who can absorb frequent, small changes. Planning around the long-term line reduces the number of major upgrades, but it still requires the security updates it provides, and you should confirm with Mautic what the long-term line includes before you commit. Ask any implementation partner to quote upgrades as a recurring item tied to the line you choose, including testing of your integrations and the database and PHP requirements in each release.
How the comparison differs by organization type
For banks, healthcare providers and other regulated organizations, the main question is where contact records, consent history and campaign logs live, and who can access them. A self-hosted Mautic deployment keeps the database in infrastructure you choose, but that shifts cost toward internal or contracted operations: hosting in your own accounts, patching, backups and monitoring. HubSpot's cost is mostly subscription and marketing contact tier, while Mautic's is mostly people time and infrastructure.
- Hosting location: Compare the cost of a compliant environment in your own cloud account or data center against the cost of HubSpot's data residency options, which you should confirm directly with HubSpot.
- Operations staffing: Count the hours for patching, PHP and database upgrades, and cron job health. Mautic relies on cron jobs for segments, campaigns and broadcasts, so failures are silent unless you monitor them.
- Email sending provider: Your sending provider is a separate contract with its own data processing terms and cost per message.
- Audit evidence: Ask your auditor which logs, access reviews and change records they expect. DeployOpen prepares these artifacts, but independent auditors issue any assessment.
- Upgrade planning: Mautic publishes support windows per release, so budget for moving to a supported version on a schedule.
Before deciding, ask your security and compliance leads which controls will be inherited from the vendor and which you must evidence yourself.
Growing SaaS teams often pay HubSpot by contact tier as the list grows, and the marketing contact count drives subscription cost. HubSpot bills only contacts set as marketing contacts toward the tier, so list hygiene has a direct cost effect. A self-hosted Mautic deployment removes the per-contact subscription, but a small team takes on infrastructure and upkeep that a SaaS vendor otherwise absorbs. The break-even depends on how much engineering time that upkeep consumes.
- Contact growth curve: Model cost at your expected contact counts for the next two to three years, not only today, using HubSpot's current tier pricing from the vendor quote.
- Engineering capacity: Estimate how many engineer hours per month go to Mautic hosting, updates and cron troubleshooting, and whether that time displaces product work.
- Integration needs: If sales runs on HubSpot CRM, check how contacts sync and which side owns marketing contact status, because that changes the tier you still pay for.
- Sending volume: Email delivery is a recurring, usage-based cost that rises with send volume regardless of platform.
- Exit path: Confirm how you would export contacts and consent records later if the operating model changes.
Before deciding, ask whether one engineer can own the platform without becoming a single point of failure, and what on-call coverage the team needs.
Public bodies and nonprofits often buy under fixed budgets and formal procurement rules, where recurring subscription lines and one-time project costs are approved separately. Open-source licensing removes license fees from the bid, but procurement will still ask for support arrangements, hosting, and security documentation. Mautic is licensed under GPL-3.0, which means the software itself carries no license fee, while implementation, hosting and support are contracted costs you will need to justify.
- Budget classification: Separate one-time migration and configuration from recurring hosting, sending and support, because they usually sit in different budget lines.
- Procurement evidence: Ask whether your procurement rules accept a fixed-scope implementation agreement with written deliverables and a separate support retainer.
- Sending and data rules: Public and charity mail often has consent and retention rules. Confirm which data categories you can store in the chosen environment.
- Vendor dependence: Mautic is community maintained and offers managed hosting from third parties, so decide whether you want self-operation or a contracted operator.
- Accessibility and records: Confirm which accessibility and records obligations apply to forms, landing pages and retained data.
Before deciding, ask your procurement and legal teams which contract form fits a fixed-scope implementation, and which data protection terms they require from every supplier.
Cost and effort questions buyers ask before hiring help
How much does self-hosted Mautic cost compared with HubSpot Marketing Hub?
Mautic's software is free under GPL-3.0, so the cost is what you pay for infrastructure, email sending, operations and people, while HubSpot bills a subscription that rises with edition, seats and marketing contact tier. The comparison turns on your contact count and how much staff time you can give to running the platform. Mautic has no paid edition of the software itself, so ask any provider to split a quote into hosting, email delivery, upkeep, support and one-time migration. Build your own model from those lines and from your current HubSpot invoice, including add-ons, rather than comparing headline list prices.
What does my own team need to supply for a Mautic project?
Your team needs to own the business decisions and supply access, data and sign-off, even when an outside firm does the build. Typical inputs are a named marketing owner, someone who can approve the data model and consent fields, an engineer who can provide a VPS or dedicated server and database, and a mail sending provider account. Mautic's requirements page says it should not run on shared hosting, so confirm early that your hosting meets its PHP, database and web server requirements. Agree in writing who approves each milestone.
Can we run the migration from HubSpot without outside help?
Yes, a team with a capable administrator and an engineer can migrate, but the work is more than an export and import. Mautic imports contacts from CSV with automatic column mapping, and it recommends background imports with the mautic:import console command for large files, processed in batches of 100 rows by default. HubSpot's record exports are limited to 300 per rolling 24 hours, so bulk moves usually also involve the CRM Contacts API, which caps batch requests at 100 records. Forms, emails, landing pages, workflows and tracking all need rebuilding and testing. Decide honestly whether your team has time to do that alongside daily marketing work.
How long does a migration take, and what makes it longer?
No supplied figure gives a reliable duration, so treat any number you hear as a question to test against your own data. The main drivers are the number of marketing contacts and their history, how many workflows and campaigns must be rebuilt, the number of forms, emails and landing pages, how many integrations touch HubSpot, and whether your HubSpot CRM stays in place. Export limits and API throughput set the floor for data movement, and review cycles usually set the ceiling. Ask for a fixed-scope plan that lists each deliverable and its dependencies before accepting a timeline.
What recurring work follows go-live on a self-hosted Mautic?
After go-live, the recurring work is operations, not licensing. Mautic depends on cron jobs for segment updates, campaign updates and campaign triggers, which its documentation says should be staggered, plus a broadcasts command for segment emails and a messenger consumer when emails are queued. The project publishes monthly patch releases, minor releases every three months and major releases every two years, and each release line has its own support end date, so plan upgrades on that schedule. Budget for backups, monitoring, security patches, deliverability work and email sending volume. Ask any provider whether these are included in upkeep or billed separately.
How do I ask for a fixed-scope quote for Mautic work?
Ask for a written scope that names every deliverable before any price, because a fixed-scope quote follows from agreed scope, deliverables and timelines. DeployOpen does not publish a price list, and a quote follows from the written scope. Ask for line items covering the migration, data mapping, integrations, template and form rebuilds, testing, hardening, backup setup, documentation and handover. Also ask which items are one-time and which are retainers, and what changes if your contact count or number of workflows grows during the project. Compare quotes on the same scope definition, not on total price.
What does the GPL-3.0 license mean for how we use Mautic?
GPL-3.0 lets you install, run and modify Mautic for your own organization without paying a license fee for the software. Mautic's LICENSE.txt file states that it is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or any later version. Obligations arise mainly if you distribute modified versions to others, so have your legal team confirm how any custom plugins or changes you plan will be shared. Mautic is a trademark of the Mautic project of the Open Source Collective, so check trademark terms before using the name in products you sell. This is general information, not legal advice.
What a one-time migration involves
The one-time effort is mostly about moving contacts cleanly and then rebuilding the marketing assets that HubSpot handles for you. Start by deciding which contacts are marketing contacts, because only those count toward HubSpot's tier and only those need to arrive in Mautic with consent history intact. HubSpot's record export delivers contacts as CSV, XLS or XLSX files sent by email link, and the export is capped at 300 per rolling 24 hours, so a large database is exported in planned passes rather than one download. For bulk or property-level fidelity, the CRM Contacts API supports reading and batch writes, with batch endpoints limited to 100 records per request. Confirm the current export limits and API quotas for your account before you size the work, since they can change.
On the Mautic side, small files can be loaded through the web interface, which maps columns to fields automatically. For large files, Mautic recommends the mautic:import console command run by cron, which processes rows in batches of 100 by default. Your team or a partner will need to map HubSpot property names to Mautic contact fields, rebuild segments and lists, and check that suppression and unsubscribe flags carry over so previously opted-out people are not emailed again. Forms, email templates, landing pages, campaigns and workflows do not transfer automatically, so each must be rebuilt and tested, and tracking code on your websites must be replaced. Ask for a written inventory of these assets before estimating effort.
If your sales team keeps HubSpot CRM, the picture changes. Mautic documents a HubSpot plugin, so contacts and companies can keep syncing, and that integration needs its own configuration, credentials and sync rules that someone must own after go-live. Mautic also needs its own operations work, including cron jobs and a messenger consumer for queued email, which should be scoped alongside the data move. Treat the migration as a fixed-scope project with written deliverables: the asset inventory, field mapping, test imports, cutover date and a rollback plan. Ask any implementation partner to quote each component separately, including data mapping, asset rebuilds, integration work and post-cutover support.
How DeployOpen works on this
DeployOpen plans, implements, integrates, hardens, backs up and documents self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks. For a HubSpot Marketing Hub exit, we start by pricing your current contract components against the work Mautic would need inside your environment, then agree the scope in writing before any build begins.
How we scope
- We inventory your current HubSpot editions, seats, marketing contact count and add-ons, so the cost comparison reflects your actual contract.
- The written scope names the Mautic version, hosting target, database, email sending provider and the cron and queue workers you will run.
- We list which forms, workflows, emails, landing pages and HubSpot CRM syncs are in scope, and which are excluded and left for you to decide.
- Engagements are fixed-scope, with deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts, and a quote follows from that scope.
How we build
- We install Mautic on a VPS or dedicated server you control, since the project advises against shared hosting.
- We configure cron jobs for segment updates, campaign triggers and broadcasts, staggered as the documentation recommends, plus the messenger consumer.
- We run contact imports through the background import command in batches, with mapping checked against a sample before the full load.
- We test tracking, email deliverability settings, opt-out handling and any HubSpot or Salesforce integration before cutover.
How we hand over
- You receive architecture documentation, configuration records, runbooks for cron, queues, backups and upgrades, and the data mapping used in the move.
- Compliance evidence, such as access records and backup test results, is prepared for your own auditors, who issue any reports or certifications.
- Admin training covers segments, campaigns, contact ownership and how to read the import and send logs.
- We agree the exit checks in writing, including confirmation that HubSpot exports were verified and that no sending runs from two platforms at once.
How we support
- Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers, so the Mautic release cadence is handled on a schedule you agree.
- We plan upgrades against the published Mautic support windows for each release line, so your team is not caught on an unsupported version.
- Periodic security testing of the Mautic instance and its public forms can be added to a retainer, with findings tracked to closure.
- Ask for the retainer terms, response expectations and included upgrade work in your written quote before you commit.
