If you run Adobe Campaign, a platform decision is coming, whether you plan for it or not. Standard support for Adobe Campaign Classic v7 is scheduled to end on 31 March 2027, and moving to Campaign v8 is not an upgrade. It is a reimplementation in Adobe's cloud.
That makes this the right moment to ask a bigger question: do you want to keep renting your marketing automation, or own it?
At Dropsolid, we have replaced Adobe Campaign with a fully open-source stack: Mautic for marketing automation and Apache Hop for data integration. This article explains how it works, where it matches Adobe, where it doesn't yet, and what a migration really involves.
Why Adobe Campaign users are looking at alternatives now
Adobe is moving its customers from Campaign Classic v7 to Campaign v8 and Adobe Journey Optimizer. Three facts from Adobe's own transition documentation shape that move:
- Campaign v8 runs only as a Managed Cloud Service. On-premise and self-hosted setups are no longer an option.
- There is no automated migration from v7 to v8. Campaigns, workflows and data schemas have to be rebuilt.
- Several v7 features are not available in v8.
In other words, you are facing a migration project either way. If the effort is comparable to switching platforms, it makes sense to compare platforms. Exact support dates depend on your contract, so check your own agreement with Adobe and its lifecycle matrix.
Why Mautic on its own isn't the answer
Mautic is one of the most widely used open-source marketing automation platforms. It covers email, cross-channel campaigns, segmentation, forms, landing pages and reporting.
But Adobe Campaign's real strength is targeting: querying large customer databases and building precise segments from them. Mautic does not do that out of the box, and teams that swap Adobe for a bare Mautic install feel that gap quickly.
So the answer is not just Mautic. It is a Mautic you own, properly integrated with your data.
How Mautic + Apache Hop replaces Adobe Campaign
The stack splits the work Adobe Campaign does in one monolith over two open-source tools, each doing what it is best at.
Your data stays where it is. Customer data keeps living in your own databases: Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL or MariaDB, BigQuery and more.
Apache Hop prepares the audience. Hop queries those sources, filters, sorts and deduplicates records, enriches them with extra data and pushes segment-ready profiles into Mautic through its API. Reusable sub-pipelines keep the flows clear, and every step is visible and testable.
Mautic runs the campaigns. Marketers select contacts, build segments and orchestrate email, SMS and other channels in Mautic.
Apache Hop is a data orchestration project of the Apache Software Foundation. It is not owned or controlled by a single company, and it is a modern replacement for tools like Pentaho Data Integration and Talend. Hop pipelines run on a laptop, on your own servers or in any cloud.
Adobe Campaign vs. Mautic + Apache Hop
| Adobe Campaign v8 | Mautic + Apache Hop | |
| Licence | Commercial licence | None. Open source |
| Hosting | Adobe Managed Cloud Service only | On-premise, your own cloud, or managed by Dropsolid in the EU |
| Where your data lives | Adobe's cloud | In your environment |
| Targeting on external data | Built in | Through Apache Hop pipelines |
| Customisation | Within Adobe's product roadmap | Full source access: customise it yourself or with a partner |
| Integrations | Adobe ecosystem and connectors | REST API, webhooks, CRM plugins (Salesforce, Dynamics, HubSpot and more) |
| User interface | Mature and polished | Functional, less polished |
| Vendor lock-in | High | None: switch partners or bring it in-house |
| Moving from Campaign v7 | Reimplementation, no automated tool | Reimplementation, with a migration partner |
The honest summary: you trade some interface polish for ownership, flexibility and the end of licence fees.
Book a migration assessment to know more.
What Mautic does at enterprise scale
Mautic has matured a lot in recent years. Out of the box, it handles complex marketing automation at scale:
- High-volume sending, with queueing built into the core.
- 80 languages for the interface.
- Cross-channel orchestration in a drag-and-drop campaign builder, across email, SMS and more.
- A/B testing and personalisation of content.
- Advanced forms that trigger campaigns, notify both the submitter and the contact owner, and can work without an email field.
- Reporting and dashboards you build yourself, mailed on a schedule or pushed to your BI tool.
- Double opt-in and bounce handling through webhooks and do-not-contact lists.
- An extensive REST API covering contacts, segments, emails, campaigns, reports and webhooks.
AI built into the workflow
Because Mautic is open source, AI can be built directly into the tool marketers already use:
- AI writing assistant in the email editor to fix spelling, align tone of voice, summarise or elaborate.
- AI console where users ask how to do something in Mautic, or create contacts and segments with a single command.
- Reporting in plain language: ask a question, and the AI writes and runs the query.
You choose which AI models run behind it, including EU-hosted ones. With Dropsolid, the AI does not retain your data and is never trained on it.
Sovereignty: who can access your customer data?
Customer data in a US vendor's cloud falls under US law, even when it is stored in Europe. The US CLOUD Act lets US authorities demand data from US providers wherever it is held. In 2025, Microsoft France told a French Senate inquiry under oath that it could not guarantee customer data would never be handed to US authorities.
For governments, financial institutions, healthcare and telecom, that is a real risk, not a theoretical one. With Mautic and Apache Hop, you decide where the stack runs:
- On-premise, in your own data centre.
- In your own secure cloud.
- As a service, hosted by Dropsolid in the EU
Dropsolid is ISO 27001 certified across the entire company, and every project comes with a clear Data Processing Agreement.
Why Dropsolid
Here's why you should pick Dropsolid as your implementation partner.
- Mautic Partner of the Year 2025, for the second year in a row.
- The most active company in the Mautic project from September 2024 to September 2025, with 2,249 contributions.
- Proven results: for Inagro, a Flemish agricultural research centre, rose from 21% to 40% after moving to Mautic.
- ISO 27001 certified, with an information security management system covering the whole company.
- Apache Hop expertise together with our partner.
Will migrating be easy?
Will it be easy? About as easy as any migration, including the one to Campaign v8.
Will you need customisations? Perhaps.
Will you need a partner? Yes.
Will you be better off? No doubt.
The cost curve is different too. Open source asks for a higher setup investment up front, depending on the customisations you need. After that, there are no licence fees that grow with your contact base, so total cost of ownership drops as you scale.
Ready to cut licence costs and regain control?
Book a migration assessment. We map your current Adobe Campaign setup and show you what it looks like in Mautic and Apache Hop, including effort and cost.