Mautic + Amazon SES: The Ultimate Free Email Marketing Setup (2026 Guide)
Let me tell you something that most digital marketing consultants will not tell you for free: you do not need to pay $300 a month for Mailchimp, $200 a month for ActiveCampaign, or $150 a month for Klaviyo to run world-class email marketing. Not even close.
The combination of Mautic and Amazon SES gives you everything — a fully featured marketing automation platform, advanced segmentation, drip campaigns, lead scoring, and the ability to send tens of thousands of emails per month — for a fraction of a cent per email.
In this complete guide, I will walk you through exactly what Mautic and Amazon SES are, why this combination is the smartest email marketing setup available in 2026, and how to connect them step by step. Whether you are a small business owner in India, a startup founder, or a digital agency managing clients, this setup will transform your email marketing.
What Is Mautic? The Open-Source Email Marketing Powerhouse
Mautic is the world’s most popular open-source marketing automation platform. While names like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign dominate the paid SaaS market, Mautic gives you the same enterprise-level features — completely free, self-hosted, and fully under your control.
What does Mautic actually do? Here is a quick overview of what you get out of the box:
- Email campaign automation — create drip sequences, welcome series, and nurture campaigns with a visual drag-and-drop builder
- Advanced contact segmentation — group contacts by behaviour, location, lead score, form submissions, and more
- Lead scoring — automatically score leads based on email opens, link clicks, page visits, and form completions
- Landing pages and forms — build lead capture pages and embed forms directly on your WordPress site
- CRM integration — track every contact interaction and connect with external CRMs via webhooks or native integrations
- A/B testing — split test subject lines, send times, and email content to optimise performance
- Multi-channel campaigns — combine email, SMS, social media, and web push notifications in a single campaign
The only thing Mautic does not include out of the box is a way to actually send the emails. That is where Amazon SES comes in — and it is the perfect match.
Key Fact Mautic powers over 200,000 businesses worldwide and has been downloaded more than 5 million times. It is the open-source alternative to HubSpot Marketing Hub, which costs $890/month for comparable features. |
What Is Amazon SES? The Cheapest Email Infrastructure on the Planet
Amazon Simple Email Service — known as Amazon SES — is a cloud-based email sending service from Amazon Web Services. It was originally built for Amazon’s own massive internal email infrastructure, and they opened it up to businesses as a pay-as-you-go service.
Here is why Amazon SES is the go-to choice for serious email senders:
- Price: $0.10 per 1,000 emails — that is 1 paisa per email. Mailchimp charges $300+ for 50,000 emails a month. Amazon SES charges $5.
- 62,000 free emails per month for the first 12 months when sending from an EC2 instance
- Extremely high deliverability — Amazon is one of the largest email senders on earth and maintains excellent IP reputation
- Sends up to 14 emails per second via API (compared to 1/second with standard SMTP)
- Built-in bounce and complaint handling via Amazon SNS
- DKIM and SPF authentication built in — critical for landing in the inbox, not spam
- Scales from 10 emails a day to 10 million with zero infrastructure changes
The one limitation of Amazon SES is that it does not have its own campaign management interface. You need a front-end tool — like Mautic — to manage your lists, build campaigns, and design emails. Together, they form the perfect system.
Real Cost Comparison Sending 100,000 emails per month: Mailchimp = $350/month. ActiveCampaign = $258/month. Klaviyo = $700/month. Mautic + Amazon SES = $10/month (hosting) + $10 (SES charges) = $20/month total. You save over $300 every single month. |
Mautic vs Mailchimp: Why Open Source Wins in 2026
Feature | Mautic + SES | Mailchimp | Winner |
Monthly cost (50k emails) | ~$20 | $350 | Mautic + SES |
Contact limit | Unlimited | Paid per contact | Mautic + SES |
Marketing automation | Full visual builder | Basic (paid plans) | Mautic + SES |
Lead scoring | Built in, free | Not available | Mautic + SES |
Data ownership | 100% yours | Mailchimp owns data | Mautic + SES |
Deliverability | Excellent (SES) | Good | Tie |
Setup complexity | Moderate (technical) | Very easy | Mailchimp |
GDPR compliance | Full control | Dependent on platform | Mautic + SES |
A/B testing | Full, free | Limited free tier | Mautic + SES |
CRM features | Built in | Basic | Mautic + SES |
The verdict is clear. If you have a little technical know-how — or you are willing to spend an afternoon setting this up — Mautic and Amazon SES win on almost every meaningful dimension for serious email marketers.
Step-by-Step: How to Connect Mautic with Amazon SES
This setup assumes you already have Mautic installed on a server (VPS or shared hosting) and an AWS account. If you need Mautic hosting, a VPS from KoiWebHost is the ideal environment — it gives you the root access and server control that Mautic requires.
Step 1: Verify Your Domain and Email in Amazon SES
- Log into your AWS console and navigate to Amazon SES
- Under Verified Identities, click Create Identity
- Choose Domain and enter your domain name (e.g. koiwebhost.com)
- AWS will give you DKIM DNS records — add these to your domain’s DNS settings
- Also verify the sender email address you will use (e.g. marketing@yourdomain.com)
- Wait for verification — typically completes within 24 to 48 hours
Why Domain Verification Matters Sending from a verified domain with DKIM records is the single biggest factor in email deliverability. Verified domains tell inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook that your emails are legitimate, dramatically reducing the chance of landing in spam. |
Step 2: Request Production Access in Amazon SES
New Amazon SES accounts start in Sandbox mode — you can only send to verified email addresses. To send to your real subscribers, you must request production access:
- In AWS SES, go to Account Dashboard
- Click Request Production Access
- Fill in the form: describe your sending use case (e.g. marketing newsletters, transactional emails)
- Provide your website URL, estimated monthly email volume, and how you manage unsubscribes
- AWS typically approves requests within 24 hours for legitimate businesses
Step 3: Generate SMTP Credentials in Amazon SES
- In Amazon SES, go to SMTP Settings
- Note down the SMTP server endpoint (e.g. email-smtp.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com for Mumbai region)
- Click Create SMTP Credentials — this creates an IAM user with the right permissions
- Download and securely save the SMTP username and password — you will not be able to view the password again
- Your SMTP port options: 587 (TLS, recommended), 465 (SSL), or 25 (not recommended)
Amazon SES SMTP Settings Example: SMTP Server: email-smtp.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com Port: 587 (TLS) or 465 (SSL) Username: [Your IAM SMTP Username] Password: [Your IAM SMTP Password] Encryption: STARTTLS (Port 587) or SSL/TLS (Port 465) |
Step 4: Configure Email Settings in Mautic
- Log into your Mautic admin dashboard
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Configuration → Email Settings
- Set the Mailer Transport to Other SMTP Server
- Enter the Amazon SES SMTP server address, port, and encryption type
- Enter the SMTP username and password you generated in Step 3
- Set your From Name and From Email address
- Click Test Connection to verify everything is working
- Click Save and then send yourself a test email to confirm delivery
Mautic Email Settings Configuration: Mailer Transport: Other SMTP Server SMTP Host: email-smtp.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com SMTP Port: 587 Encryption: TLS Auth Mode: Login Username: [SES SMTP Username] Password: [SES SMTP Password] From Name: Your Business Name From Email: marketing@yourdomain.com |
Step 5: Set Up Bounce and Complaint Handling with Amazon SNS
This step is critical and often skipped — but it protects your sender reputation. Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) automatically notifies Mautic when an email bounces or a recipient marks it as spam, so Mautic can automatically unsubscribe those contacts.
- In AWS, open Amazon SNS and create two new topics: one for Bounces, one for Complaints
- In each topic, create a Subscription with Protocol = HTTPS and set the endpoint to your Mautic callback URL
- Mautic callback URL format: https://yourdomain.com/mailer/amazon_ses/callback
- In Amazon SES, go to your verified domain, click Notifications, and assign the SNS topics to Bounces and Complaints
- In Mautic, go to Configuration → Email Settings and enable Bounce Management
Pro Tip Amazon SES will suspend your account if your bounce rate exceeds 5% or your complaint rate exceeds 0.1%. Setting up SNS bounce handling is not optional for production email sending — it is what keeps your account healthy and your campaigns landing in the inbox. |
Building Your First Email Campaign in Mautic
Once your Mautic and Amazon SES connection is confirmed and sending test emails successfully, you are ready to build your first real campaign. Here is how to launch a welcome email sequence — the highest-ROI campaign any business can run.
Creating a Contact Segment
- In Mautic, go to Contacts → Segments → New Segment
- Name it something descriptive: New Subscribers — Welcome Series
- Add a filter: Contact created date is within the last 1 day (this auto-adds new contacts)
- Save the segment — Mautic will automatically add qualifying contacts to it in real time
Building a Welcome Drip Campaign
- Go to Campaigns → New Campaign
- Name your campaign and set the type to Contact-based
- Set the Source to your New Subscribers segment
- Add your first action: Send Email — select your welcome email
- Add a decision node: Email was opened? If yes → go to Email 2. If no → send a follow-up after 3 days
- Continue building your sequence: Email 2 (Day 3), Email 3 (Day 7), Email 4 (Day 14)
- Publish the campaign — Mautic will automatically enrol and progress contacts through the sequence
A well-structured welcome series typically achieves 40 to 60 percent open rates on the first email — far above the industry average of 21 percent. This is because the subscriber is at their most engaged immediately after signing up.
Campaign Best Practice Set the first email to send immediately upon subscription. Set the second email for day 3 and make it story-driven — share why you started your business or a case study. The third email on day 7 should be your best piece of content. Only introduce a direct sales offer on email 4 or later, once trust is established. |
Advanced Mautic Features That Most Users Never Discover
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is one of Mautic’s most powerful features. You can assign positive and negative points to every contact action: +5 for opening an email, +10 for clicking a link, +20 for visiting your pricing page, -10 for unsubscribing from a segment. When a contact reaches a score threshold — say, 50 points — Mautic can automatically trigger a notification to your sales team, move the contact to a hot-leads segment, or send a personalised closing offer.
Dynamic Email Content
Mautic allows you to show different email content to different contacts within the same campaign based on their profile, behaviour, or segment. For example, a retail business could send the same newsletter but show different product recommendations to customers in Mumbai versus those in Bangalore, or show a loyalty discount only to contacts who have made a previous purchase.
WordPress Integration
Mautic integrates seamlessly with WordPress via the Mautic for WordPress plugin or by embedding Mautic tracking code directly. Once connected, Mautic can track every page a contact visits on your WordPress site, trigger campaigns based on which pages they read, and automatically populate forms with known contact data. This is the foundation of true behavioural email marketing.
Multi-Channel Campaigns
Beyond email, Mautic supports SMS (via Twilio or other providers), web push notifications, social media tracking, and custom channel integrations via webhooks. This means you can build a single campaign workflow that sends an email on day 1, an SMS on day 3 if the email was not opened, and a retargeting ad on day 7 — all from one campaign builder.
Email Deliverability Best Practices for Mautic + Amazon SES
Getting your emails delivered to the inbox — and not the spam folder — is the most important technical challenge in email marketing. Here is what you need to do to maintain excellent deliverability with Mautic and Amazon SES:
- Set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC DNS records for your sending domain — these are the authentication standards that inbox providers use to verify your identity
- Warm up your sending IP gradually — start with 200 to 500 emails per day and increase by 20 to 30 percent each week. Sudden large sends from a new IP trigger spam filters
- Keep your bounce rate below 2 percent — Amazon SES will suspend accounts that exceed 5 percent. Clean your list regularly
- Keep your spam complaint rate below 0.08 percent — use double opt-in to ensure only genuinely interested subscribers are on your list
- Never send to purchased or scraped email lists — this is the fastest way to destroy your sender reputation
- Include a clear and easy unsubscribe link in every email — making it hard to unsubscribe drives spam complaints
- Send at consistent frequencies — irregular sending patterns can trigger spam filters. Decide on weekly, biweekly, or monthly and stick to it
- Use a custom tracking domain for Mautic’s link tracking — this prevents your emails from sharing reputation with other Mautic senders
The Deliverability Golden Rule Your sender reputation is built slowly and destroyed quickly. One bad campaign to a cold or outdated list can take months to recover from. Always prioritise list quality over list size. 1,000 engaged subscribers who open your emails are worth more than 10,000 cold contacts who mark them as spam. |
Hosting Mautic: What Server Do You Need?
Mautic is self-hosted software, which means you need a server to run it on. The right hosting makes the difference between a Mautic installation that runs smoothly and one that crashes during a large campaign send. Here is what you need to know:
Minimum Server Requirements for Mautic
- PHP 8.0 or higher
- MySQL 5.7 or higher (or MariaDB 10.3+)
- At least 1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended for active campaigns)
- At least 20 GB SSD storage
- Apache or Nginx web server
- SSL certificate (required for HTTPS — free with Let’s Encrypt)
- SSH/root access to configure cron jobs for campaign processing
For small to medium deployments (up to 50,000 contacts), a VPS with 2 GB RAM and an SSD is perfectly sufficient. KoiWebHost VPS plans start from just ₹499/month and include all the above requirements, plus 24/7 support to help you get Mautic installed and configured correctly.
The most important technical step for Mautic performance is setting up cron jobs. Mautic uses cron jobs to process campaigns, send emails, update lead scores, and clean the database. Without properly configured cron jobs, your campaigns will not run on schedule.
Essential Mautic Cron Jobs (add to server crontab): # Process campaigns every 15 minutes */15 * * * * php /var/www/mautic/bin/console mautic:campaigns:trigger # Send scheduled emails every 15 minutes */15 * * * * php /var/www/mautic/bin/console mautic:emails:send # Update lead scores every 30 minutes */30 * * * * php /var/www/mautic/bin/console mautic:campaign:rebuild # Process bounces every hour 0 * * * * php /var/www/mautic/bin/console mautic:email:fetch |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mautic completely free?
Yes — Mautic the software is completely free and open-source. You only pay for server hosting (to run Mautic) and email sending via Amazon SES. The total monthly cost for most small businesses is under $20, compared to $200 to $500 per month for equivalent commercial tools.
How much does Amazon SES cost per email?
Amazon SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails — that is 0.01 cents per email. Your first 62,000 emails per month are free if you send from an Amazon EC2 instance. After that, sending 100,000 emails costs just $10. For context, Mailchimp charges $350 per month for 100,000 emails.
Is Amazon SES reliable for marketing emails?
Yes. Amazon SES is used by some of the largest email senders in the world, including Amazon itself. When configured correctly with DKIM, SPF, and bounce handling, Amazon SES delivers excellent inbox placement rates — typically comparable to or better than commercial email service providers.
Can I use Mautic with shared hosting?
Mautic can technically run on shared hosting, but it is not recommended. Shared hosting environments typically restrict SSH access, limit cron job frequency, and have PHP memory limits that cause problems with large contact databases. A VPS with at least 2 GB RAM is the recommended minimum for production Mautic deployments.
How many emails can I send per day with Amazon SES?
New Amazon SES accounts start with a sending limit of 200 emails per day in sandbox mode. After requesting production access, the default limit increases to 50,000 emails per day and 14 emails per second. You can request further increases from the AWS dashboard as your volume grows.
Does Mautic work with WordPress?
Yes. Mautic integrates with WordPress in several ways: via the official Mautic for WordPress plugin, by embedding the Mautic tracking JavaScript on your WordPress site, or through native form integrations using Mautic’s embeddable forms. Once connected, Mautic can track contact behaviour on your WordPress site and trigger email campaigns based on page visits and form submissions.
Need a VPS to host Mautic? KoiWebHost VPS plans from ₹499/month — perfect for Mautic + Amazon SES → |
