Product news – Mautic https://mautic.org World's Largest Open Source Marketing Automation Project Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:54:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://mautic.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/iTunesArtwork2x-150x150.png Product news – Mautic https://mautic.org 32 32 Mautic 6.0: Orion Edition is released https://mautic.org/blog/mautic-6-0-orion-edition-is-released https://mautic.org/blog/mautic-6-0-orion-edition-is-released#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:14:21 +0000 https://mautic.org/blog/ Today we’ve released Mautic 6.0: Orion Edition. This is a bridging release which will have a shorter cycle so that we can catch up with Symfony’s release schedule and, in the long term, provide up to five years of support for each new major version of Mautic. You can read more about that in our blog post.

Check out the release notes for 6.0 General Availability here.

What follows includes some of the important information about this release.

Dark blue background with Mautic's logo and an illustrated rocket with Mautic 6 launch below with the 6 in yellow and the rest of the text in white. 2615 files changed, 1035 commits, 50+ contributors, project started 5 Nov 2024, Alpha release 27 Jan 2025, Beta release 6 Mar 2025, Release Candidate 17 Mar 2025, General Availability 26 March 2025 on a timeline with launch Timeline in text above.

Firstly a big thank you to everybody who has helped by contributing code, testing and reviewing contributions, creating imagery, writing content, managing social media, writing documentation – it takes a village to manage a release and there are many ways that people have helped get this release over the line.

Note about Docker 

We are currently unable to release the Mautic 6 images for Docker due to a lack of active maintainers. We have an open call for maintainers open on the GitHub repository where you can read more about getting involved as a Docker Maintainer for Mautic.

Marketer-facing changes

Improving tooltip help and guidance

More improvements coming from the UX/UI Tiger Team in this release include improving the tooltips and contextual help for the settings page, explaining to users what each field does and what formats are expected. Here’s a before and after:

BeforeAfter
before settingsafter settings

Improving user experience with Dynamic Web Content

One of my personal favourites, this release features a vastly improved user experience for Dynamic Web Content slot generation, allowing you to generate the precise code required for embedding it within your website, including adding default content. You can grab the syntax commonly used for plugins (including being able to switch between square and curly braces) and for the plain HTML code.

dwc slot generator

Improving layout of tables and batch action features

If you’ve updated to 5.2 you’ll have noticed we’ve dramatically improved the layouts of tables, and with 6.0 we’ve got some more enhancements coming for you, this time focused on improving the batch functions. They’re now moved to the toolbar instead of being hidden under the ‘three dot menu’ in a much more intuitive layout.

Report on your focus items

We now have a new report source, called Focus stats. This allows you to create a report which includes the following data from focus items: name, url, interaction, page hits, unique hits, description, focus type, style. This is super useful to keep track of how your focus items are performing.

focus item stats

New campaign email charts: weekday and hour based metrics

Have you ever wanted to see a chart which showed you how your emails within a campaign were performing by day or by hour? Thanks to this new PR we’ve now got an extra tab on the campaign which shows your email statistics.

email statistics

Mark fields as read-only on forms

When showing a Mautic form, sometimes you might want to have certain fields ‘read-only’ – such as the user’s email address – so that they can only fill out the fields you require. Thanks to this new feature, you can now set a field to be read only.

New themes

We now have five new landing page themes and two new form themes to help you building beautiful experiences for your users – check them out and let us know what you think!

Set global company name and brand highlight color

Thanks to this PR you can now set your company name and brand highlight colour globally, which will be used by the themes added since Mautic 5 automatically. A small but convenient change for marketers!

accent colour company name
email theme colour company

Developer-facing changes

Since Mautic 3.0 we’ve been diligently working on increasing the amount of our codebase which is covered by automated tests – these tests pick up on bugs and problems with code quality for developers to address before they get to you, the user. We’re delighted to share that we’re now at 64.75% coverage, up from from 30% with Mautic 3.0, 50.28% with Mautic 4.4 and 58.6% with Mautic 5.0 – a further demonstration of our commitment to delivering a more robust, reliable open source marketing automation platform.

Backward compatibility breaking changes

JavaScript

As the legacy builder was removed these JavaScript libraries were removed as well:

  • Froala has been removed as it was outdated with security vulnerabilities
  • CodeMirror JS has been removed from Core, but is still installed in the GrapesJS plugin
  • jQuery UI’s plugin Safe Blur has been removed as it was no longer used.
  • Modernizr has been removed as it’s not necessary anymore as modern browsers support open standards

PHP

Mautic 6 removes a large volume of legacy, deprecated code. Please refer to the UPGRADE-6.0 file for the full list.

Symfony notable changes

Getting a value from request must now be scalar

Meaning arrays cannot be returned with the get() method. Example of how to resolve it:

- $asset = $request->request->get('asset') ?? [];
+ $asset = $request->request->all()['asset'] ?? [];

ASC constants are replaced with enums in Doctrine
- $q->orderBy($this->getTableAlias().'.dateAdded', \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria::DESC);
+ $q->orderBy($this->getTableAlias().'.dateAdded', \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Order::Descending->value);

Creating AJAX requests in functional tests
- $this->client->request(Request::METHOD_POST, '/s/ajax', $payload, [], $this->createAjaxHeaders());
+ $this->setCsrfHeader(); // this is necessary only for the /s/ajax endpoints. Other ajax requests do not need it.
+ $this->client->xmlHttpRequest(Request::METHOD_POST, '/s/ajax', $payload);

Logging in different user in functional tests
- $user = $this->loginUser('admin');
+ $user = $this->em->getRepository(User::class)->findOneBy(['username' => 'admin']);
+ $this->loginUser($user);

Asserting successful response in functional tests
$this->client->request('GET', '/s/campaigns/new/');
- $response = $this->client->getResponse();
- Assert::assertTrue($response->isOk(), $response->getContent());
+ $this->assertResponseIsSuccessful();

Session service doesn’t exist anymore

Use Request to get the session instead.

- use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Session\SessionInterface;
+ use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
class NeedsSession
{
-   public function __construct(private SessionInterface $session) {}
+   public function __construct(private RequestStack $requestStack) {}

    public function doStuff()
    {
-       $selected = $this->session->get('mautic.category.type', 'category');
+       $selected = $this->requestStack->getSession()->get('mautic.category.type', 'category');
        // ...
    }
}

Mautic features

Removal of gated video

Gated video used a very outdated, unsupported library and only worked with the legacy builder which is now removed. Therefore, the gated video feature has been removed from Mautic. If developers would like to build this for GrapesJS, please make a PR for the core team to review!

Removal of the legacy builder

It’s finally time to say goodbye to the legacy builder which has served Mautic since the early days of Mautic 2. 

We hope that you enjoy using Mautic 6 – please let us know of any problems you encounter on this forum category or by posting in #mautic-6 on Slack.

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Announcing Mautic 6 Beta – Now Available for Testing https://mautic.org/blog/announcing-mautic-6-beta-now-available-for-testing https://mautic.org/blog/announcing-mautic-6-beta-now-available-for-testing#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2025 17:05:07 +0000 https://mautic.org/blog/ Hello community!

We are excited to announce that Mautic 6 beta is now available for public testing!

With Mautic 6, which is a shortened release to help us catch up with Symfony releases, we are focused on removing outdated code and functionality to ensure Mautic remains secure and performant aligned with modern coding standards, while also delivering more improvements and features to Mautic.

We’ve worked really hard to get to this point – a huge thanks to all the community members who have contributed to the release!

⚠IMPORTANT NOTE:

This is a pre-release, which means it should never be used in a production environment. It would be helpful that people could test upgrading your development instances from Mautic 5 – there will be an upgrade path to the Release Candidate when it is released. 

Please only use it in testing environments, and report back your findings.

The major release focuses mainly on a major update to Symfony 6, but it also brings several user-facing changes and some changes that are relevant for developers. Read on for more information.

What’s New in Mautic 6 Beta?

In addition to the updates that were released in the alpha and 21 new bugs being squashed, we have the following notable features and enhancements with the Beta release:

  • You can now search for contacts and companies with custom field values, without using a search prefix (see #14393)
  • You can now set the language for a preference centre page using the configured page language if a contact doesn’t have a locale set in Mautic (see #14370)
  • There’s now a command to get the stats for your segments, allowing you to save resources by unpublishing those not in use (see #14575)
  • You can now see if a segment is in the process of being rebuilt, thanks to #14431
  • There are now five shiny new landing page themes for the GrapesJS builder, and two new form-only themes. Check the PRs here.
  • You can now set your brand’s primary colour and company name, which is used by default with the new themes (see #14649)
  • The marketplace details page for plugins has had a glow up – check out #14199.
  • There’s now some useful visual indicators when you create form fields, explaining what that field does (for example whether it’s always required, what fields are mapped, whether it’s hidden if it already exists) – see #14513
  • There’s also some useful visual information for form actions, telling you specifically what each step does (for example, reduce points by 5) thanks to #14514.
  • The text editor modal popup on the GrapesJS builder has been improved so that accidentally clicking outside the modal no longer closes it (hopefully no more 😱 where did my content changes go moments!) and the Close button has been renamed to Cancel thanks to #14533.
  • Some performance improvements have been made to integration synchronizations, so that they don’t overwhelm database servers while jobs are running (see #14556).
  • Users can no longer delete categories if they are associated with existing resources, instead they are presented with a warning. (see #14567)

Developer Notes

If you’re a developer, please note that Mautic 6.0-beta2 includes several changes that may affect your custom code.

Please review the UPGRADE-6.0.md file for more information on all changes in Mautic 6 that you will need to consider.

We hope you enjoy using Mautic 6.0-beta2 and look forward to your feedback! Please use #mautic-6 on Slack if you wish to discuss the release. Please raise any bugs or issues that you find as GitHub issues and share in Slack so we can make sure they’re addressed in subsequent releases.

How Can You Help?

By testing the Mautic 6 beta, you have a chance to contribute to its success. Here’s how you can help:
 

  1. Test the Beta: Download the beta, test it diligently, and let us know if you encounter any bugs or issues. Your feedback can help us improve the final product. Please search first on github.com/mautic/mautic/issues before reporting any bugs there.
     
  2. Provide Feedback: Share your thoughts about the features and functionality. We want to know what works for you and what doesn’t.
     
  3. Spread the Word: Tell your communities, colleagues, and friends about the new Mautic 6 beta. The more people that test the beta version, the more feedback we’ll receive, leading to a stronger final product,


All being well, the Release Candidate will be published on 10th March – but we have a lot to do between now and then, so please consider volunteering to help with testing, especially on Fridays in #t-product and #mautic-6 on Slack in our Open Source Friday sprints!

Please remember that this is a beta version and should not be used in a production environment. We recommend testing it in a safe staging or development environment. Thank You!

We are excited to see Mautic evolve with the needs of its community and are grateful for your continued support and feedback in this process. You make Mautic what it is, and for that, we thank you. Download the Mautic 6 Beta now, dive in, and let us know what you think.

Happy testing!

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So long Mautic 4, it’s been nice knowing you! https://mautic.org/blog/so-long-mautic-4-its-been-nice-knowing-you Tue, 28 Jan 2025 16:15:51 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/blog/ As we step forward into 2025, we say goodbye to Mautic 4.x. It’s been a fantastic journey, but the time has come to move forward. On December 31, 2024, security support for Mautic 4 officially ended. This means no more bug fixes or security updates. If you’re still using it, we strongly encourage you to upgrade to Mautic 5 to keep your platform secure and running smoothly, or purchase Extended Long Term Support to continue receiving security fixes.

Why Upgrade to Mautic 5?

The Mautic 5.x series has raised the bar for marketing automation, delivering powerful new features and updates:

  • Mautic 5.0: This version introduced Symfony 5 and PHP 8.1 compatibility, making your platform faster, more secure, and future-proof. It also revamped outdated dependencies for better stability.
  • Mautic 5.1: The Andromeda Edition added 10 new features, 168 enhancements, and 130 bug fixes, focusing on usability and reliability.
  • Mautic 5.2: The Pleiades release introduced a fresh user interface alongside 12 new features, 97 enhancements, and 75 bug fixes to make workflows even more intuitive.

A New Release Strategy

To make your experience smoother, we’ve introduced a new release strategy that aligns with the needs of most organizations. Here’s what you can expect:

  • Long-Term Support (LTS): Major releases now come with 18 months of active support, including regular updates, bug fixes and security updates to keep the platform running smoothly and securely. Mautic 5.2 is our first LTS release.
  • Extended Long-Term Support (ELTS): For businesses needing more time to transition, ELTS offers critical updates for up to two additional years after LTS ends. Learn more about ELTS here.

Stay Ahead with Mautic

The future of Mautic is here. Whether you’re upgrading for the latest features or ensuring your platform remains secure, Mautic 5 has everything you need to keep growing. Explore the latest versions, experience the difference, and take your marketing automation to new heights.

Let’s build the future of marketing together. 💙

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Mautic 6 is here: alpha release is ready for you to start testing https://mautic.org/blog/mautic-6-is-here-alpha-release-is-ready-for-you-to-start-testing Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:11:54 +0000 https://mautic.org/blog/ Today we’re delighted to share that Mautic 6.0.0-alpha Orion Edition has been released.

⚠ IMPORTANT NOTE:

This is a pre-release, which means it should never be used in a production environment. It will not have an upgrade path from Mautic 5, and there will not be an upgrade path to future releases. Please only use it in testing environments, and report back your findings.

The major release focuses mainly on a major update to Symfony 6, but it also brings several user-facing changes and changes for developers.

It’s important to remember that Mautic 6 is a shorter bridging release, meaning that 6.0.0-General Availability will be the last release containing features until 7.0 is released at the end of 2025, or earlier if the minimum required changes are contributed and tested sooner. Read more about the upcoming releases in our recent blog post.

Read on for more information about what’s in the 6.0.0-alpha release.

User-facing changes in the Mautic 6 alpha release

It doesn’t hurt to remind you once again that an Alpha release is not ready for production yet and should be used for testing purposes only. The purpose of a pre-release is that you can simulate real usage with a real tool, testing the things which are important for your business so that any bugs can be identified and fixed beforehand.

Improving tooltip help and guidance

More improvements coming from the UX/UI Tiger Team in this release include improving the tooltips and contextual help for the settings page, explaining to users what each field does and what formats are expected. Here’s a before and after:

BeforeAfter
Screenshot of Mautic's user interface on the settings pageScreenshot of the new settings page, which has a lot more descriptive text explaining each field to the user.

Improving user experience with Dynamic Web Content

One of my personal favourites, this release features a vastly improved user experience for Dynamic Web Content slot generation, allowing you to generate the precise code required for embedding it within your website, including adding default content. You can grab the syntax commonly used for plugins (including being able to switch between square and curly braces) and for the plain HTML code.

Image

Screenshot of the new DWC generator showing the code for embedding with a plugin and click to copy button.

Improving layout of tables and batch action features

If you’ve updated to 5.2 you’ll have noticed we’ve dramatically improved the layouts of tables, and with 6.0.0-alpha we’ve got some more enhancements coming for you, this time focused on improving the batch functions. They’re now moved to the toolbar instead of being hidden under the ‘three dot menu’ in a much more intuitive layout.

Report on your focus items

We now have a new report source, called Focus stats. This allows you to create a report which includes the following data from focus items: name, url, interaction, page hits, unique hits, description, focus type, style. This is super useful to keep track of how your focus items are performing.

Image

A screenshot of a report showing the focus item stats

New campaign email charts: weekday and hour based metrics

Have you ever wanted to see a chart which showed you how your emails within a campaign were performing by day or by hour? Thanks to this new PR we’ve now got an extra tab on the campaign which shows your email statistics.

Image

chart showing email statistics in a campaign by hour and by weekday

Mark fields as read-only on forms

When showing a Mautic form, sometimes you might want to have certain fields ‘read-only’ – such as the user’s email address – so that they can only fill out the fields you require. Thanks to this new feature, you can now set a field to be read only.

Removal of gated video

Gated video used a very outdated, unsupported library and only worked with the legacy builder which is going to be removed by the time we get to 6.0-General Availability. Therefore, the gated video feature has been removed from Mautic. If developers would like to build this for GrapesJS, please make a PR for the core team to review!

Developer-facing changes

With any major Mautic release we always try to remove old code, and bump up support to the next Symfony version. This means that developers are going to need to make changes to their code in order to support Mautic 6.x.

Please check the 6.0-upgrade file for all the information you’ll need – please start updating your plugins in readiness for the General Availability release in March.

Some key things to note from this release:

Download Mautic 6 alpha and help speed up the releases

All these exciting new features and code improvements now need to be extensively tested so they can get into the hands of our users as soon as possible.

As an open source project, the Mautic Community is the foundation of our progress, so join us today and help speed up the release of Mautic 6 into the General Availability version.

The General Availability release of Mautic 6.0 is scheduled to be released on 24th March 2025, with a Beta release on 24th February and Release Candidate version on 10th March. With your contribution, we’ll make those deadlines.

Here is what you can do to help:

  • Each Friday we will be having our usual Open Source Friday community sprints, a great way to have mentored onboarding to get started with contributing to Mautic. Join us on Slack and head over to #new-contributors if you’d like to get started, or jump right into any of the teams, whose channels start with #t-<team name>
     
  • Check the features, enhancements, refactoring and bug fixes which are slated for release in the Beta and Release Candidate, and help us by testing them. Check our docs on testing – which can almost always be done locally or using Gitpod in the browser by any user of Mautic. Don’t forget to leave a formal review, that counts as a contribution to Mautic!
     
  • Help us with completing the updates needed for the end-user and developer documentation by joining #t-education on Slack. We have regular onboarding calls to help you get started.  There’s everything from updating screenshots to reviewing our code examples, something for everyone!

Useful resources

https://github.com/mautic/mautic/blob/6.x/UPGRADE-6.0.md – developer-facing changes

https://github.com/mautic/mautic/releases/tag/6.0.0-alpha – 6.0.0-alpha release

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The next Mautic releases: what’s coming up https://mautic.org/blog/the-next-mautic-releases-whats-coming-up Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:11:09 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/blog/ It’s going to be an exciting year for Mautic – here’s what you can expect in the near future:

Mautic 6.0-alpha and 5.2.2 release – January 2025

January is shaping up to be a fruitful month, as we plan to release Mautic 6.0-alpha.

While you might still be basking in the glory of Mautic 5.2, it’s important to know that work on Mautic 6 started months ago. Mautic is getting closer to running on Symfony 6, and the team is aiming for the 6.0-alpha release by January 27th (Monday).

There are 9 open pull requests and 45 merged pull requests right now – so it’s all hands on deck!

Right after that, we’ll drop Mautic 5.2.2 on January 28th.

Expect 27 merged bug fixes and 5 still hanging in the air as of this blog post. 

Mautic versions usually come with almost 2 years of support, plus another year of security patches (and even two more years security support with Extended Long Term Support if you need it.) Mautic 6, however, will have a shorter life cycle, acting as a bridge to Mautic 7. After the stable release of Mautic 6, we’ll shift focus to Mautic 7, which will finally synchronize Mautic with the Symfony release schedule. 

Why the focus on another Major release?

You might be wondering why we’re jumping so quickly to another major release of Mautic after we released Mautic 5 not so long ago, and the reason is because we’ve been playing catch-up for the past few years so that Mautic is running on an actively supported version of Symfony – currently that is Symfony 6.4 which is in active support until 2027 – and to a lesser extent, PHP. 

In order for Mautic to ensure that we’re keeping up with Symfony and PHP releases, we need to get up to Symfony 7 as soon as possible, which will enable us to provide the much needed longer periods of support for each Mautic version. It also frees up our core team to focus on improving Mautic’s features and functionality rather than simply keeping up with mandatory updates. 

So, we’re going to release Mautic 6.0 as a ‘bridging release’ with only bug fix releases after it’s shipped, and then straight away our focus will be getting Mautic 7 ready to roll with Symfony 7 support, which means Mautic 7 is coming in Q4 2025

The first version for testing is expected by the end of summer 2025, and we’re super pumped!

Why testing and merging PRs is so important right now

Once Mautic 6 is out, no new features will be added to it. All new features and improvements will go directly into Mautic 7

This is why it’s so important to test, and get those amazing PRs into Mautic 6 before the release freeze. Mautic 6 is nearing its final stages, and after the freeze, no new code will be added. If you’ve got a great PR, now is the time to get it in! We rely on your contributions to make Mautic better, and we’re counting on you to help us finish strong!

Now, just because Mautic 6 is a stepping stone to Mautic 7 doesn’t mean the summer is going to be boring – oh no! We have a ton of features in Mautic 5 that we haven’t fully documented and featured yet, and they’re waiting to be discovered. Our Education Team is about to go into screenshot mode, as Mautic’s look and feel has had a shiny makeover and the documentation therefore needs updating.

But that’s not all – Campaign Library (remember that cool project announced at MautiCon?) has just launched in the research phase of our grant-funded project, with Project Manager David Jarvis (DJ) and developer Levente Bajusz. You’ll be seeing a few blog posts about it in the coming weeks on the Community Portal. It’s going to be epic!

And let’s not forget the amazing Mautic contributors who keep surprising us with new plugins that bring brand-new functionality to our beloved tool. You rock!

Mautic 7: the future is bright!

As soon as Mautic 6 is released, we’ll kick off work on Mautic 7. If all goes according to plan, we could even release Mautic 7.0 General Availability earlier than expected. We’ll have to make sure we stay in sync with Symfony’s releases, though, as they’re only on minor release 7.2 and the 7.4 release will be their Long Term Support (LTS) version, we expect. We’ll keep an eye on any BC-breaking changes and deprecations, but you can rest assured – we’re on it!

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Mautic 5.2 ‘Pleiades’: A New Star in Marketing Automation https://mautic.org/blog/mautic-5-2-pleiades-a-new-star-in-marketing-automation Mon, 02 Dec 2024 13:46:00 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/blog/ Starting with the 5.1 release, each version will carry a thematic name based on star constellations, marking a new tradition for Mautic versioning – hence the ‘Pleiades’ edition. This version incorporates 75 bug fixes, 12 new features, and 97 enhancements, totalling 226 pull requests that significantly improve Mautic’s stability and functionality.

A Complete UI Transformation

This release focused on eradicating all the little shortcomings that made Mautic inconsistent and not intuitive. A significant part of this update centers on user experience, with 50 user experience updates and 62 improvements made to the user interface based on community feedback. These updates were developed in part by the UX/UI Tiger Team, whose first initiative has been addressing user-reported issues within Mautic’s interface.

When you use this version of Mautic for the first time, you will feel that the hundred-plus UI improvements have created a brand new, easier to use and fun Mautic that is delightful to look at.

Notable UI Changes

  • Enhanced Email Scheduling: Clearer status indicators for future sends with more descriptive status displays
  • New Administrator Themes: A new set of admin themes for a more vision-friendly experience
  • Terminology Updates: “Template email” replaced by “triggered email” for better clarity
  • Modernized Interface: Updated date picker and refreshed button designs across the platform
  • Dashboard Improvements: All widgets received better descriptions, with two new additions for Forms/Assets and Landing pages
  • Enhanced Notifications: New design with humanized timestamps for better readability

Campaign Builder Evolution

The campaign builder received a comprehensive redesign with functional improvements:

  • Better visual differentiation between decisions, actions, and conditions
  • New icons for each type of decision, action, and condition
  • Dark mode support
  • Direct display of decision and condition percentage results in the campaign preview

Email Marketing Enhancements

Email capabilities have seen significant improvements:

  • 13 new core email themes, carefully tested and ready for your campaigns
  • New Creative and Attract themed templates
  • Email preheader field for improved inbox presentation
  • Ability to test emails with actual contact data for accurate token population
  • Smarter “send email” button that automatically hides for contacts without email addresses

Enhanced User Management & Preference Center

The release brings several improvements to user management:

  • New filtering system for better user overview
  • Streamlined colleague invitation process
  • Password management controls from the admin interface
  • Completely revamped notes system

The Preference Center received multiple upgrades:

  • New resubscribe token for custom unsubscribe pages
  • Global unsubscribe option for segment-based newsletters
  • Modern toggles replacing radio buttons
  • Enhanced tooltips for better user guidance

New Features and Tools

  • Company lookup form field for accurate company name entry
  • Landing page ID support in form redirect URLs
  • Comprehensive in-app help with ProTips and guides
  • New help page for search filters and tokens with an accordion system
  • Data anonymization features for enhanced privacy compliance

Looking Forward

These improvements make Mautic not just modern and a true competitor to commercial systems, but deliver a serious usability advantage compared to previous versions. The UI changes have transformed Mautic into a more polished, professional, and user-friendly marketing automation platform that rivals commercial alternatives.

For a detailed overview of all changes and improvements, please refer to our release notes.

Join our community channels to share your experience with the new release and connect with other Mautic users and contributors. Together, we’re building the future of open source marketing automation.

Credits

Thank you to Eddie Christian Aguilar Kleimann and Sven Döring for working on the content for this blog post, and to Efe Akhigbe for the visual imagery on the blog post and social media posts.

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Introducing Mautic’s new release strategy: Long Term Support for enhanced stability and continuity https://mautic.org/blog/introducing-mautics-new-release-strategy-long-term-support-elts Tue, 29 Oct 2024 10:54:26 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/introducing-mautics-new-release-strategy-long-term-support-elts/ Mautic first introduced a release strategy with the 3.0 series, where we established a regular cadence of quarterly feature releases, monthly bug fix releases and an annual major release. While this brought us some benefits in terms of regularity of release cycles, it has also been quite a challenge for businesses who have needed to regularly update Mautic and their third party plugins, and for our Product Team.

We’ve listened to a lot of feedback from across the community and we have decided to slightly adjust our release strategy to better streamline our processes without stifling innovation.

Our goals with this updated release strategy are:

  • Predictable releases which are on-time 
  • Ensure Mautic is always up to date with releases from our major dependencies
  • Rapid release of bug fixes and new features when fully tested and reviewed
  • Longer support periods for major versions, with minor releases for 12 months followed by a long period of feature stability

 In summary, we will:

  • Move to a 24-month release cycle between major releases, which is aligned with that of Symfony – Mautic’s primary dependency and underlying framework
  • Move to time-based releases (from a mix of time and feature based)
  • Extend support for each Major version so that it’s supported for at least 18 months
  • Continue with monthly patch (bug-fix) releases during the active support period
  • Provide one security release each quarter during the active and security support period, where fixes are ready to release (and any urgent out-of-cycle releases as deemed necessary by the Security Team)

Below you will find a detailed explanation of our new release strategy.

Establishing a Long Term Support (LTS) version

To date Mautic has never had an official Long Term Support (LTS) version – we continually shipped feature releases quarterly until a new release was out, and then we stopped supporting the previous version within a matter of months. 

This is painful for businesses with complex installations or agencies supporting large numbers of versions, because:

  • They want stability more than continuous change, and 
  • They need time to test and update the new Major release for their instances (and sometimes have to wait for third party plugins to be available and mature) however bug fixes are no longer provided for their current versions.

Now, we’re going to ensure that the previous version of Mautic is supported for at least six months after the General Availability release of the next Long Term Support version.

Generally speaking after Mautic 6.0 (which is a special series – more on that later) the Long Term Support version will be the *.3 release of any series, unless there is some unexpected need to issue more minor releases.

For example, Mautic 7.3 will be the LTS release in the 7.x series, and that will receive bug fix updates through until the end of 2026 when it will then receive security fixes for another year.

This means that going forward each release series will eventually be actively supported for at least three years from the General Availability release, when you consider active support and security support.

Establishing an Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) program

Following debate within the community, an Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) program is being developed which aims to launch in Q1 2025. This will see us offering a paid service which provides subscribers with security fixes for an additional period of two years (paid in annual subscriptions) from the end of security support, after which that release series reaches End of Life.

The ELTS will be an annual subscription which is paid at the beginning of the calendar year for the following 12 months, on a per-instance basis. More details on this will be released by the ELTS working group in due course.

A screenshot of the new release schedule showing the dates and release phases in different colours from today through to 2035.

Establishing a clearly defined release cadence

In the past we had aimed to release at the end of the month on the last Monday, but recently this has become more sporadic as we fell into the trap of trying to get specific features or bug fixes merged into a release, resulting in delays. 

Now, we’re going to move to a strictly time-based release process. Whatever is ready, tested, documented and merged on release day will be included in the release. Everything else will have to wait for a later release. The Product Team will continue to have a bounties fund which they can use to incentivize fixing specific bugs which need to be addressed and where there isn’t existing interest.

Major releases have a clearly documented Alpha, Beta and Release Candidate feature freeze – if features are not ready, they will not be considered for that release. Minor releases will have a Release Candidate freeze the month prior to release and no further features will be considered after this date.

We will also ensure that the second release in a quarter is a security release where there are security fixes ready to be released. This gives Mautic users more clarity on when to expect these fixes to come over, and also means the security team are primed with clear dates in mind to get their work deployed to Mautic users.

Catching up with Symfony releases

Since Mautic 3 we’ve been playing catch up with Symfony releases, which has meant that Mautic has only just managed to deploy a new version before security support ends for a series of Symfony releases. This is quite painful for larger businesses who require their software to be running on actively supported versions, and it also puts a great deal of pressure on the Product Team to cram a lot of changes into a release with very tight deadlines.

We are planning to address this in a couple of ways:

  1. We will make Mautic 6.0 – which supports Symfony 6.x – a ‘bridging release’ which will only be supported for 21 months from the General Availability release, plus one year of ELTS support rather than two.
     

    • Mautic 6.0 General Availability will be released in Q1 2025
       
    • This will be the LTS version of Mautic 6.x – there won’t be any other feature releases in this series, only patch releases
       
    •  Mautic 6.x will become End of Life after 12 months of ELTS support, in October 2027, with Symfony 6.x being End of Life in November 2027.
       
  2. After 6.0 is released, all future features will be on the 7.x branch
    • Mautic 7.x will support Symfony 7.x 
    • Mautic 7.3 will be the LTS version
    • Security support ends at the end of 2027

ELTS support will extend until the end of 2029, when both Mautic 7 and Symfony 7 will reach end of life.

Sponsored releases

The biggest blocker for Mautic’s ability to sustain its progress is having the resources to lead and support releases.

Going forward, we will have the option for companies and organizations to sponsor a release, which means their logos and links will be prominently linked on the release notes and the website, along with all communications associated with the release.

In exchange, they can either fund or provide in kind the services of a developer who will work with the release team, moving that release through from planning to deployment.

Conclusion

To wrap up, we’re really looking forward to implementing this new release strategy to better serve our community. By moving towards a 24-month release cycle, focusing on time-based releases and extending support for each major version, we’re taking steps towards a more predictable, stable future for Mautic from which all benefit.

The introduction of an official Long Term Support (LTS) version and providing a paid-for Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) program demonstrates our commitment to providing greater stability for those users who require it, without sacrificing innovation.

By catching up and keeping pace with Symfony releases, we can ensure we’re always providing the latest technology and features while removing technical debt, ensuring Mautic is using the latest versions of the secure and modern framework on which we depend.

We’re confident that these changes will help to streamline our processes, enhance our product and inspire future growth and innovation. This is an exciting new chapter in Mautic’s journey and we’re looking forward to embarking on this journey together with our community. Here’s to a bright future for Mautic!

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Mautic Campaign Library Strategic Initiative receives grant from NLnet Foundation https://mautic.org/blog/mautic-campaign-library-strategic-initiative-receives-grant-nlnet-foundation Sun, 13 Oct 2024 21:23:31 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/mautic-campaign-library-strategic-initiative-receives-grant-nlnet-foundation/ We are really delighted to announce that phase one of our Campaign Library project has been selected to receive a grant from the NLnet Foundation as part of the April 2024 NGI0 Commons Fund call. 

About the Mautic Campaign Library Project

Termed the ‘Mautic Campaigns Portability Project’ for the purposes of this funding grant, this first phase of the wider project implements the groundwork needed to bring to life a much-requested feature – a library of campaigns which allow users to get started quickly with Mautic by selecting from a searchable collection of premade campaign workflows and associated resources. Requested back in 2018, it’s one of the most voted for ideas in the Ideas Forum, and something we’ve been wanting to implement since 2021 when the strategic initiatives were announced.

This phase of the project addresses the need by establishing export and import functionality for campaigns and associated resources. This will not only save time but also promote best practice adoption among marketers.  We aim to enable seamless portability of campaigns between Mautic instances, enhancing the platform’s flexibility and usability. This feature will lay the groundwork for a more connected and efficient marketing environment, empowering users to maximize their strategic outreach efforts.

Next Steps and Participation

As we move forward, we will be working closely with NLnet to finalize the grant amount and our project plan. We encourage our supporters and the Mautic community to stay tuned via the Community Portal for more updates as we progress. We are eager to share our journey and milestones with you.

Moving Forward

We are in the process of refining our project plan, which will involve setting distinct tasks with specific outcomes. Each task will have a donation amount attached from the grant funding, unlocked by publishing the associated results. This structure ensures that our efforts are aligned with delivering measurable and impactful outcomes. 

We will be advertising opportunities related to this in the near future, however as the money is EU funded we are obliged in the first instance to recruit people who have EU citizenship. Watch out on our jobs channels for the announcements.

Once we finalize our consolidated plan and establish our team, we will proceed with the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ to formally kick off the project. 

Thank you to everyone who has supported us thus far. We look forward to sharing more updates and celebrating milestones with you. Stay tuned for more exciting developments!

For further details, feel free to visit our dedicated project page on the NLnet website: Mautic Portability Project and join us in the public channel on Slack, #i-campaign-library. We will be tracking the project progress via the Roadmap project on the Community Portal.

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GSoC 2024 Project Report: Mautic Marketplace https://mautic.org/blog/gsoc-2024-project-report-mautic-marketplace Tue, 01 Oct 2024 13:55:58 +0000 https://www.mautic.org/gsoc-2024-project-report-mautic-marketplace/ This report provides an overview of my contributions at Mautic. My experience has been both rewarding and enlightening with the Mautic. I had the privilege of getting the opportunity to showcase my skills and contribute to the Mautic marketplace. The report describes about my experience with the community and project.

Project Overview :

  • Project Name: Expand the Mautic Marketplace: Ratings, reviews and UX improvements.
  • Project Repository: mautic-marketplace and marketplace-frontend
  • Contributor: Ketu Patel
  • Mentors: John Linhart, Rahul Shinde, Simran Sethi

The Mautic Marketplace provides users with access to plugins sourced from Packagist, and the Packagist API has many limitations. The Marketplace lacks critical features such as ratings, reviews, and advanced search capabilities, limiting user engagement and discoverability. Moreover, the user interface could benefit from optimization to improve usability and navigation.

This project will expand the features of our Marketplace to make it more user-friendly to the marketer. It will enable the marketer to rate and review the plugins they use, and also to interact more smoothly with those plugins available in the Marketplace.

Contribution (Key Milestone) to Mautic Marketplace ?

✅ Migrated the data from Packagist to Supabase.

  • The marketplace uses the Packagist API and it has some limitations, so we successfully migrated our data from Packagist to Supabase to enhance the functionality and performance of our marketplace. This transition was necessary due to the limitations of the Packagist API. The migration was executed using Supabase Edge Functions developed with Deno and typescript, which allowed for efficient data handling and integration.

✅ Replaced the API KEY

  • We used the DB Functions to make the inbuilt REST API more promised. There are Two DB Functions who include the List View and Detail View of the Marketplace. The new API KEY provide Functionalities to search by any parameter, the user can sort the plugins or themes. We also enabled the DB Function that highlight the verified plugins, this option is done in backend side although it will be implemented to front end side by community.

✅ Introducing the rating and review feature

  • Marketers can rate their experiences on a scale, helping us understand their satisfaction levels. Along with ratings, they can leave detailed reviews, offering insights into what they loved or areas for improvement.

✅ Enable Auth0 for authentication

  • To ensure the integrity and reliability of our rating and review system, we have implemented Auth0, a robust authentication platform. This enhancement requires users to authenticate themselves before they can rate or review plugins or themes, effectively preventing spam and ensuring the authenticity of user feedback.

✅ Enable the edit option for rating and review

  • We will also enable the edit option so marketers can easily modify their existing reviews to reflect any new experiences or changes related to the new version of the plugin or the theme. As per changes, marketers can adjust their reviews to provide the most current feedback.

? DELIVERABLES

TASKS STATUS commits
Solving the API limitations DONE MarketPlace
Enabling the rating and review features DONE Rating_Reviews

Weekly Blogs ?

Week 0Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14

Future Goals

Utilize analytics to gather insights on user behavior and preferences, allowing us to make informed decisions for future updates and features. Implementing the testing of edge function so we can ensure it’s workability.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my mentors: John Linhart, Rahul Shinde, Simran Sethi, Ruth Cheesley, whose guidance and support have been invaluable throughout my journey. Their wisdom and insights have inspired me to push my boundaries and strive for excellence. Thank you for being my sounding board, providing constructive feedback, and encouraging me during challenging times. Special thanks to Google for this amazing program and giving me the opportunity. The whole mautic community is very welcoming and supportive. Continuing my contributions to the Mautic organization …

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