The short version
If you want a full marketing suite with landing pages, forms, and lead scoring — and a large plugin ecosystem — Mautic is the more complete standalone tool. If you’re a Laravel team that wants event-based messaging embedded in your own app, with a modern dashboard and a lighter footprint, TriggerEngage is the more focused, developer-first fit. Both are open source with no per-contact fee.
What Mautic does well
Mautic has been the default open-source marketing automation platform for years. It’s a complete standalone suite: email campaigns, landing pages, forms, lead scoring, a visual campaign builder, and a big library of community plugins. If you want to run an entire marketing operation on software you host yourself, Mautic covers a lot of ground.
Where TriggerEngage is different
Mautic is a standalone Symfony application aimed at marketers; TriggerEngage is a Laravel package aimed at developers. Instead of running a separate marketing suite, you install TriggerEngage with Composer and trigger journeys from your own app events. It’s narrower on purpose — no landing pages or lead scoring — but event-first, lighter to run, and built around a modern React dashboard. For a Laravel product that wants lifecycle messaging close to its code, that focus is the point.
Feature comparison
| Feature | TriggerEngage | Mautic |
|---|---|---|
| Open source (MIT) | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Own your data & sending infrastructure | Yes | Yes |
| No per-contact / per-profile bill | Yes | Yes |
| Yes | Yes | |
| SMS | Yes | Partial |
| Push notifications | Yes | Partial |
| Visual journey builder | Yes | Yes |
| Event / behavior-based triggers | Yes | Yes |
| Behavioral segmentation | Yes | Yes |
| A/B testing | Yes | Yes |
| Anonymous → identified merge | Yes | Partial |
| Laravel-native (Composer, embed in your app) | Yes | No |
| Managed hosting & deliverability | No | No |
| Large prebuilt-integration marketplace | Growing | Yes |
| Enterprise SLA & dedicated support | No | Via partners |
| Pricing model | Free & open source — self-hosted, no per-contact fee | Free & open source — self-hosted (paid managed hosting via partners) |
Where TriggerEngage wins
- Laravel-native — embeds in your app via Composer
- Event/behavior-first, not campaign-first
- Modern React dashboard, lighter to operate
- SMS and push as first-class channels
- Anonymous → identified profile merge built in
Where Mautic wins
- Full suite: landing pages, forms, lead scoring
- Larger, older plugin & community ecosystem
- Purpose-built for marketing teams, not just developers
- Years of production maturity
When Mautic is the better choice
Choose Mautic when you want a complete, self-hosted marketing suite — landing pages, forms, and lead scoring included — and when a marketing team, not engineers, will own it day to day. Its breadth and mature plugin ecosystem are real advantages if you need an all-in-one open-source platform. TriggerEngage is the better pick when you’re a Laravel team that wants focused, event-based messaging embedded in your product rather than a separate marketing application to run.
Pricing & cost of ownership
Both are free and open source with no per-contact license fee — the cost is the infrastructure you run them on (Mautic also offers paid managed hosting through partners like Acquia). Mautic’s Symfony stack and broader feature set generally mean a heavier deployment; TriggerEngage’s Laravel package is lighter and, if you already run a Laravel app, embeds into it with no separate service. Pick on architecture and focus, not price.
TriggerEngage is our product. This comparison reflects publicly available information as of July 13, 2026; features and pricing change, so verify current details on each vendor’s site. We’ve tried to represent Mautic fairly, including where it’s the stronger choice.