Mautic vs swaks

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted mail servers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureMauticswaks
CategoryMail ServersMail Servers
LicenseGPL-3.0GPL-2.0
LanguagePHPPerl
Setup difficultyHardEasy
Min. RAM2,048 MB16 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, sourcebinary, source
GitHub stars★ 10,305★ 1,327
First released20142003
ReplacesHubSpot, Marketo, MailchimpMailtrap

Why pick each one

Choose Mautic if…

  • Full marketing automation suite
  • Large community
Mautic details

Choose swaks if…

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Perl
swaks details

Frequently asked questions

Is Mautic or swaks better?

Neither is universally better. Mautic has the larger community, while swaks is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Mautic and swaks free and open-source?

Yes. Mautic is licensed under GPL-3.0 and swaks under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Mautic and swaks with Docker?

Mautic: yes. swaks: check the project docs for container support.

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