If you’ve been running campaigns in Mautic 5.2.4 with scheduled SMS messages, especially using Twilio, you might have bumped into a nasty bug: one campaign event firing repeatedly, sending the same SMS again and again to the same contact. It’s not just you. The Mautic community has a fresh thread on this exact issue, with a user reporting a contact getting over 20 duplicate SMS messages from a single campaign event despite no loops or duplicate triggers in their campaign design.
Here’s the gist: The SMS sending happens roughly every time the mautic:campaigns:trigger cron runs (three times an hour in the reported case). The campaign event log shows only one execution for that event and lead, yet the SMS stats database table has multiple successful SMS records—all tied to the same event. It’s like Mautic thinks it’s supposed to send the SMS repeatedly even though the event triggered just once.
This user ruled out Twilio duplicating messages or contacts re-entering the campaign. They also noticed enabling “Do Not Contact (SMS)” immediately stops the spam flood. Interestingly, running mautic:campaigns:rebuild on a frequent schedule might be contributing to this problem, though it’s not recommended for production environments. The rebuilding process could be confusing Mautic’s internal state, leading to re-sends.
Unfortunately, no official fix or clear workaround is out there yet. An upgrade might solve it, but that’s not an option for everyone. The community is still digging into logs and database tables to figure out the root cause, and they’re asking for tips on alternate debugging methods beyond the usual campaign event logs.
Why does this matter? If you’re depending on SMS via Mautic campaigns at scale, this bug can mean unexpected costs, angry contacts, and a trust hit. Until Mautic addresses it properly, consider reviewing your cron schedules—especially avoid frequent campaign rebuilds—and keep a close eye on your SMS stats. Applying “Do Not Contact” manually is a harsh but effective stopgap.
We couldn’t find a definitive GitHub issue or patch yet—this one seems fresh and under community investigation. I’d keep an eye on the Mautic forums for updates and try to test campaigns carefully with lower frequency SMS before rolling out widely.
If you want the full technical deep dive and lively community troubleshooting, check out the thread on the Mautic forum here: https://forum.mautic.org/t/mautic-5-2-4-scheduled-campaign-sms-repeatedly-sent-from-the-same-campaign-event/
And if managing these tricky bugs is getting overwhelming, remember that Mailertizer offers a hosted Mautic platform where we handle all the cron timing, updates, and infrastructure headaches so you can focus on crafting campaigns — without the drama of unexpected SMS storms.
