Top 10 open source marketing automation tools in 2023 – n8n Blog

Marketing automation was a $2745.6 million market globally in 2021. That number is expected to reach a whopping $4697.1 million by 2028.

With such a variety of marketing automation software available out there, searching for the tool that fits your growth model best can take long hours of research and deep pockets.

We’re major supporters of open-source tools as they are usually free and highly customizable. Especially, when it comes to marketing, such open-source software can give better protection of your and your user's data, and interconnect different apps, devices and channels.

In this article, we will explore the 10 best open-source marketing automation software made for different purposes such as data analytics, email automation, or headless CMS.

We’ll also show you the way how to connect such open-source marketing automation tools with your current tech stack with the free workflow automation tool n8n.

Connect your marketing tech stack using n8n

Build complex automations 10x faster, without fighting APIs

Best open-source marketing automation tools

Matomo
Mautic
Ghost
Strapi
Agnitas
Mailtrain
Listmonk
Odoo
ERPNext
Baserow

What is open source marketing automation software?

Open source marketing automation solutions are generally free, yet offer superior reliability and customization to your businesses; because the code is freely available, companies can build their add-ons and other features, rather than having to pay for such additions from the vendor.

Open-source marketing tools put control and flexibility over their functions and interface into the hands of the client.

Types of marketing automation tools

It’s important to know and understand how different types of open source marketing automation platforms may help your business grow. Before we list the specific tools, here are seven exemplary use cases where marketing automation may help you out greatly:

Email automation tools allow businesses to automate processes like welcome emails, triggers, or automated reminders.
Drip campaign management automation allows users to receive a slow trickle of targeted messages over time.
Lead management software provides sales teams and businesses with insightful data on potential customers.
Social media automation enables a business to combine all of its media outlets into a singular tool.
Customer relationship management and CRM automation software provide companies with detailed and accurate information on individual customers.
Analytical tools in marketing pull and snapshot a business’ data and provide consistent and key updates on insights and financials.
Content Management Systems (CMS) allow non-coders to more easily edit and update website data as needed.

What are the top 10 open source marketing automation software?

Open source marketing automation tools enable your business to streamline its marketing processes, support campaigns, and increase overall user engagement. A wide array of tools exists to cover any task your business may need to handle.

Matomo

Type: Open-source web analytics platform

Matomo is a web analytics platform with over 1 million clients that proudly boasts itself as a Google Analytics alternative, providing users with 100% data ownership and customer privacy. Matomo allows businesses to engage with customers more while optimizing a user’s lifetime experience. Matomo clients may easily track all their user’s data in one place with total control and security.

Our top 3 features from Matomo

100% data ownership: Giving businesses absolute control with a GDPR-compliant company like Matomo means more trust between your business and your clients.
Self-hosted and white-labeled: Offers you greater customization and security of your data.
20+ analytics options: See who visits your page, where customers are funneling, find valuable SEO data and more with Matomo’s open source automation tools.

Pricing

Matomo Core is absolutely free, but does offer cloud hosting, starting at just €19 a month, with an additional enterprise option.

Mautic

Type: Open-source marketing software platform

Mautic brings a high level of integration and deep audience intelligence to allow you to connect on a truer level with your customers. The open code is available as marketing automation software for small businesses or enterprises.

The team behind this software claim to be “... driven by the belief that every organization should have the power to understand, manage, and grow their business in a meaningful way.” Mautic’s wonderful UI/UX reflects that perfectly.

Our top 3 features for Mautic

Fully-customizable user dashboard: Puts the user in control over what’s most important to them. A well-thought and simple design allows any team member to be efficient and informed.
Drag-n-drop landing page and email builder: Makes marketing and website updates a breeze with clever tools to build attractive email campaigns and web pages with videos, images, text.
Open-source integrations: Being an open source marketing automation platform means that the dozens of already integrated marketing tools in Mautic are always being added.

Pricing

Mautic is and will always be a free download.

Ghost

Type: Open-source professional publishing software

Ghost is an open source, professional publishing platform built on a modern Node. The platform assists journalists, writers and small business owners in building, publishing and growing their publications, as well as providing actionable ideas for independent businesses to create and maintain revenue.

Our top 3 features for Ghost

Themes: Ghost offers hundreds of free and premium themes in order to ensure a creator’s looks are truly their own.
Data: Ghost’s open platform gives its users access and control over 100% of their data.
Publishing tools: Ghost’s editing workflow makes it simple for YouTubers, bloggers, and high-end publishers to create, edit and publish their works.

Pricing

The tool is free on a basic level; premium pricing is competitive and offers individual packages at $9/mo (Starter) and up to $199/mo (Business).

Strapi

Type: Open-source headless CMS software

Strapi’s developer-first and open-source software relies on the user’s ability to create through its back-end. Unlike WordPress, Strapi doesn’t confine businesses to a standardized front-end, but lets companies choose which they’ll build or use.

Our top 3 features for Strapi

Static Website Builder: Strapi claims their pages are faster and more secure as no side-language is ever used and priority loading decreases steps.
Mobile Applications Manager: A single source of truth rapidly delivers the same data to all your websites and mobile applications.
Developer Community: The Strapi community of developers and inputters exceeds 135,000! The open-source coding, feedback and updates are boosted by a thriving and helpful group of motivated devs.

Pricing

Strapi’s pricing page states “Free, forever,” but paid plans are immediately available at $9/mo (Bronze), $29/mo (Silver) and higher.

Agnitas

Type: Open-source email campaign software

Agnitas is a truly free and web-based service that offers a professional and extremely functional email marketing tool. Create both thoughtful and complex campaigns, manage user data and more without sacrificing security or budget.

Our top 3 features for Agnitas

Unlimited Recipients: Unlike services such as MailChimp, Agnitas won’t charge you for an increase in user profiles and recipients.
Simple Interface: Agnitas’ service is easy-to-use at any level, is done in-browser and offers pre-filled templates for businesses.
Campaign Builder: An in-depth tool for building and automating complex and creative campaigns.

Pricing

Agnitas is free, but premium features are available with a Request Offer button.

Mailtrain

Type: Open-source email campaign software

Mailtrain is our second Mailchimp alternative with a heavy focus on email marketing. The service outline is very standard, which can be interpreted well for any business that needs to create campaigns, segment users and pump out some emails.

Our top 3 Mailtrain features

Tags: Mailtrain’s detailed and user-friendly tagging feature allows anyone to always target the right groups of customers.
Campaign Builder: Mailtrain’s campaign building tool is basic, but wonderfully effective at automating and creating detailed marketing campaigns.
Unlimited Recipients: Just like Agnitas, Mailtrain offers unlimited user profiles and recipients.

Pricing

Mailtrain is absolutely free for any company needing a basic, open source email marketing tool.

Listmonk

Type: Open-source email campaign software and CMS tool

Listmonk's powerful and simple tool is seriously sweet. This single-binary software is both free and open-source, and packs a big punch in terms of performance. Going a step beyond the ordinary with their CMS functionality, they’ve also included an easy-to-implement campaign management tool.

Our top 3 Listmonk features

Customer Data Control: With Listmonk, your clients can easily unsubscribe and choose to export and wipe their data entirely.
Extensive Delivery Options: Listmonk’s service works with WhatsApp, SMS and other forms of campaign and message delivery.
Developer-Centered: Listmonk relies on devs and HTML for much of their service, giving the user total control over the product.

Pricing

Listmonk is free and you can download it directly from their site.

Odoo

Type: Open-source workflow automation tool

Odoo is a high-end, all-in-one workflow automation tool that handles hundreds of apps within one nifty product. Its broad range of integrated applications, and streamlined functioning between them, makes it one of the best open source marketing automation software around.

Our top 3 Odoo features

Blanket Updates: Usability improvements made to Odoo’s services are applied to all of their integrated apps simultaneously.
Odoo Studio: Provides all you need to create custom applications, advanced screens, design outstanding reports and a whole lot more.
Odoo + Community: Odoo’s fleet of apps work seamlessly together, but the open-source tool happily welcomes community apps too.

Pricing

Odoo goes from free to expensive, depending on your needs. The pricing page details selections that average from $6/mo up to $48/mo.

💡 Use n8n to connect Odoo with 250+ applications and automate your lead management, eCommerce, accounting, inventory, point of sale, and project management workflows.

ERPNext

Type: Open-source enterprise resource planning software

ERPNext is another all-in-one tool that integrates multiple functions to help larger businesses better manage departments and functions seamlessly. The service provides 1,000+ objects that offer: CRM, financial accounting, website builder, help desks and more.

Our top 3 ERPNext features

Frappe: ERPNext’s software is web-based and built over the extremely versatile Frappe framework. This allows for unparalleled levels of granular customizations.
Accounting Module: Allows for any business to handle all of its finances under one roof; integrations also allow for services such as Stripe, Paypal and more.
Buying and Selling Module: This feature enables a business to handle every back and frontend side to creating purchase orders, RFQs, supply-chain management, and even invoicing to suppliers.

Pricing

ERPNext users can expect to pay between $300/mo (Basic) to $1,000/mo (Professional), or more (Enterprise).

Baserow

Type: Workflow automation open source software

Baserow’s powerful database and organizational tool has a simple message: “If you know how a spreadsheet works, you know how Baserow works.”

An Airtable alternative, Baserow offers an in-browser, no-code, easy-to-operate experience so businesses may keep a singular truth in their data and workflows.

Our top 3 Baserow features

Flexible Software: With a single interface, every team-member finds the right data rapidly with unlimited rows of information.
Dev-friendly: Baserow’s headless, open source automation tool has an API-first mindset. Devs have the power to customize as needed.
No-code: The service is designed to be simple, accessible and uniform. Little training is required.

Pricing

Baserow plans go from free to $5/mo (Premium per user), and up to $30/mo (Advanced per user).

Connect your open source marketing automation tools with n8n

n8n’s free, source-available workflow automation tool connects the tremendous apps and services you’ve chosen to automate together.

Thanks to n8n’s simple and ready-made service, users no longer have to:

Rely on developers
Process repetitive tasks
Clumsily move data

You may want a notification sent to your favorite messaging tool for each time a user fills out a Typeform survey on your website. With n8n’s simple canvas interface, you drop the nodes for your existing integrations, link them with a dragging tool and fill in the needed data–basic things like in which channel you’d like to receive the notifications.

The process is easy-to-understand and can do everything from creating back-end workflows, triggering syncs and notifications and automating complicated processes.

What’s next?

In this post, you’ve discovered a fantastic assortment of free, open source marketing automation tools; you’ve uncovered some of each service's key features to help you run more efficiently; you’ve also seen how any tool can communicate smoothly via n8n’s workflow automation tool.