Migrating from Mautic to Mailblast is more involved than coming from Sendy or Mailwizz because Mautic carries deep features - branching campaigns, landing pages, forms, lead scoring, CRM-style contact records - that do not always map one-to-one. The good news: your Amazon SES verified domains, DKIM records, and accumulated sender reputation transfer cleanly because AWS tracks reputation per identity at the account level, applying the same 5% hard bounce and 0.1% complaint thresholds (AWS, 2026) whether Mautic or Mailblast is the management layer above SES.
Mautic positions itself as "the world's largest open source marketing automation product," and that scope is exactly why operating it is heavy: PHP, MySQL, cron jobs, queue workers, plugin updates, and version bumps you own end to end. Mailblast strips that surface area down to a hosted UI on top of the SES account you already pay for. The walkthrough below assumes you run Mautic 5.x or 6.x on your own server and want to keep using the same AWS account.
Pre-flight checklist
Before you export anything, lock down a short checklist so the cutover is reversible. Mautic stores nearly all state in MySQL, and a clean migration depends on a recent backup plus an inventory of what is actually in production. Treat the next 30 minutes as setup work; it pays back later when you discover a segment you forgot about.
- Take a full
mysqldumpof the Mautic database and copyapp/config/local.php. - Export your AWS SES configuration set names and SNS topic ARNs.
- List active campaigns, segments, and email templates in a spreadsheet.
- Note any third-party integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier plugins) that read from Mautic.
- Confirm you have IAM credentials with
ses:SendEmail,ses:SendRawEmail, andsns:Subscribepermissions ready for Mailblast. - Create a Mailblast account and connect your SES region before touching contacts.
What translates from Mautic and what does not
Roughly two-thirds of Mautic's surface area moves cleanly, and the rest needs a rebuild or an alternative tool. Mautic's own positioning highlights its campaign builder, page builder, and lead scoring as core differentiators, so expect those areas to need the most thought. Contacts, segments, and lists are the easy wins; campaigns and landing pages are where the work concentrates.
| Mautic feature | Migration status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts and custom fields | ✓ Clean | CSV export and import. Map custom fields one to one. |
| Static segments and lists | ✓ Clean | Export each segment as its own CSV, import as lists. |
| Dynamic segments (filters) | Partial | Rebuild filter logic in Mailblast list rules. |
| Email templates | Partial | Rebuild in BeeFree drag-and-drop; copy HTML for custom templates. |
| Welcome series and drips | ✓ Clean | Rebuild as Mailblast automations; logic is simpler. |
| Branching campaigns | Partial | Flatten decision trees into list-based triggers. |
| Unsubscribe and bounce data | ✓ Clean | Import as suppression list to preserve compliance state. |
| Lead scoring | ✗ Out of scope | No direct equivalent. Store final scores as a custom field. |
| Landing pages | ✗ Out of scope | Move to your CMS or a dedicated tool (Carrd, Webflow). |
| Hosted forms | ✗ Out of scope | Keep on your site; post submissions to Mailblast via API. |
| CRM-style company records | ✗ Out of scope | Move to a dedicated CRM if you relied on this. |
Export contacts, lists, and segments from Mautic
Start the migration in Mautic's UI rather than the database, because the export tool already respects unsubscribe and bounce flags - the same Do Not Contact taxonomy Mautic documents in its contacts reference (Mautic Docs, 2026). From the Contacts view, set a filter for a segment, then choose Batch actions -> Export. Mautic queues a CSV that includes every standard field plus your custom fields. For accounts above 100,000 contacts the export runs through the background worker, so make sure your cron is healthy first.
Repeat the export for each segment you plan to recreate as a Mailblast list. Name the files predictably (segment-newsletter.csv, segment-trial-users.csv) so the import step is mechanical. Also export the Do Not Contact list separately: this contains unsubscribes, bounces, and manual flags, and you will need it as a suppression import to avoid mailing anyone who opted out.
A pragmatic shape for a mid-sized Mautic instance looks like this:
Import into Mailblast and verify
In Mailblast, create one list per Mautic segment under Lists -> New list, then choose Import -> CSV. Map columns explicitly - email, first name, last name, then your custom fields. Mailblast tolerates missing optional fields; what it will reject is a blank or malformed email column, so spot-check the CSV in a text editor before uploading.
Next, import the Do Not Contact export as a suppression list under Suppressions -> Import. This is the single most important step for compliance: every Mautic unsubscribe carries forward, so the first Mailblast send cannot accidentally re-mail someone who opted out two years ago. After import, run the built-in deduplication so a contact in three Mautic segments shows up as one Mailblast contact across three lists.
Recreate templates and active campaigns
Mautic's email builder produces HTML you can paste into Mailblast as a starting point, but most teams use this as the moment to rebuild templates in BeeFree's drag-and-drop editor. The new templates render more consistently across clients and stay editable by non-developers later. Save one master template per campaign type (newsletter, transactional, drip) before you touch automations.
For automations, open each active Mautic campaign and write down its purpose in one sentence: "welcome new trial users for seven days," "re-engage contacts who opened nothing in 60 days." Rebuild in Mailblast as a linear sequence triggered by list membership or a tag. Branching logic - "if opened email 2, send variant A, else send variant B" - flattens into two parallel sequences with different entry triggers. You will probably find that two or three Mautic campaigns collapse into one Mailblast automation.
Reconfigure SES SNS feedback for Mailblast
Amazon SES sends bounce and complaint data through SNS topics, and Mautic likely owns one of those subscriptions today. Mailblast needs its own SNS endpoint so it can update suppression state, surface bounce rates in the dashboard, and pause sends that breach the 5% bounce or 0.1% complaint thresholds AWS enforces. AWS documents these as account-level reputation signals, so missing them is not safe.
In the AWS console, open SES -> Configuration sets, pick the configuration set you want Mailblast to use, then under Event destinations add an SNS topic that Mailblast subscribes to (Mailblast generates the subscription URL during onboarding). Leave the existing Mautic-bound topic in place until you decommission Mautic, so bounces flow to both systems during the parallel-run week. After cutover, remove the Mautic subscription to avoid stale state.
Test campaign and validate metrics
Send your first Mailblast campaign to a 50-contact internal segment before you mail anyone real. AWS warns that any account drifting past 5% hard bounce or 0.1% complaint risks automatic sending restriction (AWS, 2026), so the test send is the moment to catch a malformed list or template before scale exposes it. Watch for three things: the send completes without throttling errors from SES, opens and clicks appear in the dashboard within 10 minutes, and SNS-driven bounce events show up for any addresses you intentionally salted with bad emails. If all three pass, scale to a 5% segment of your real list, then the rest.
Compare the first real send against the equivalent Mautic baseline: open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rate should land in the same range. A meaningful gap usually points to a list issue (a segment was exported incompletely) or a template issue (a Liquid variable did not get mapped), not a deliverability problem - SES sends from the same IPs either way.
Decommission the Mautic install
Wait at least seven days after cutover before tearing down Mautic, then work top-down: pause cron jobs, stop the queue workers, take a final mysqldump, and archive the entire install directory plus the database dump to S3 or another long-term store. Keep both for 90 days minimum. Mautic's contact event history is the only place granular open and click data lived, and you may want to look something up.
Once the archive is safe, shut down the EC2 instance or container, drop the RDS database, and revoke the IAM credentials Mautic was using for SES. Do not delete the SES verified identities or DKIM records - those keep working under Mailblast. If Mautic was running on a $30 to $80/month VPS, that line item disappears entirely.
What is not in scope
Landing pages, hosted forms, and lead-scoring workflows do not have a direct home in Mailblast. The honest path is to either move them out before the migration or accept that they are not coming with you. For most senders, this turns out to be a feature - landing pages belong in your CMS where the rest of your site lives, and lead scoring tends to be more useful inside the CRM than in a marketing tool.
If you want a closer side-by-side of where the two products diverge before committing, see the mautic vs mailblast comparison. Coming from a lighter tool instead? The sendy to mailblast walkthrough covers a much smaller decommission footprint.
FAQ
How long does a Mautic to Mailblast migration take?
Plan for a half-day for a simple Mautic install with a couple of segments and one welcome series, and a full day if you have multiple campaigns, dynamic segments, or custom fields to map. The slowest part is usually rebuilding campaign logic, not the contact export itself, which finishes in minutes.
Will my SES sending reputation transfer?
Yes. Mailblast connects to your existing AWS account, so verified domains, DKIM records, dedicated IPs, and accumulated sender reputation stay with SES. Only the management layer changes. AWS continues to track bounces and complaints against the same identities you used in Mautic.
Can I import Mautic campaigns directly into Mailblast?
No. Mautic's campaign builder is a directed graph with conditional branches, and Mailblast uses linear automation sequences with list-based triggers. You rebuild campaigns by hand. Most users find this faster than expected because Mautic campaigns often grow more complex than they need to be.
What about my Mautic landing pages and forms?
Mailblast does not include landing pages or hosted forms, so those are out of scope. Keep your existing forms on your site, or move them to a dedicated form builder, and post submissions to Mailblast's API or use a CSV sync. Landing pages typically migrate to your CMS or a tool like Carrd.
Should I keep Mautic running during the cutover?
Run both in parallel for a week. Send your first Mailblast campaign to a small segment, confirm open and click tracking work, then pause Mautic's automations. Keep the Mautic database backup for 90 days in case you need to look up historical event data.
Disclosure: this walkthrough is published by Mailblast. We are not affiliated with Mautic. Pricing and feature notes for Mautic come from public documentation as of mid-2026; check the current Mautic releases page for the latest version.