Fed up

General Discussion
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I started to post this in a response on a thread I started. I have had issues trying to get updated which has led to a complete collapse of my installation. I resorted to blowing the entire install DIR and extracted the 4.4.4 zip. The result being, I can’t edit any emails now. Old or new, 500 errors on trying to edit. I can create new emails, just can’t edit them. Any way,

I’m really confused and dismayed in that for all intents, this was a clean install of v4.4.4. The only file that was retained was the ‘local.php’ file.

There appear to STILL be significant bugs in all recent releases of Mautic. I can’t recall there ever being so many problems with installations or upgrades in the earlier versions.

I don’t know what needs to be done or what can be done but it’s gotten now to the point where it is non-functional in a production environment. I can’t see how any company would risk their CRM data to something as unstable and unreliable as this has become.

I know I’ve been vocal about my displeasure with the move to Composer and I think @rcheesley and others have put me on mute because of it. Yes, it’s open source. I get it. No, I can’t help with development, I’m not a developer. But as developers, if you don’t want feedback from a non-technical user then don’t offer it as free open source. Offer it as a paid application targeted towards advanced technically mined infrastructure people.

First and foremost, what is the goal for Mautic? What are you trying to offer and to what market are you targeting?

Are you targeting big companies? They have budgets and will most likely go with Eloqua, Marketo or some other provider that has support. Are you targeting small business owners? They don’t have the budget for the big players. They also don’t have the skill set to manage an application like this. Sure you’re going to get some outliers, some hackers that can wangle this together. But then what’s the point?

With the technical hurdles I have had to try and overcome, it is no wonder why Mautic isn’t way more popular than it should be. This application could be a major disruptor in the Marketing Automation industry. If it only just worked and wasn’t so delicate and buggy out of the box.

Before I go, a big thanks to @techbill for trying to help out and to others that have tried to help in the past with other issues.

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Hi @aglyons, I am sorry to hear about your troubles and thank you for you feedback. If you want I can offer my help with your install, I have managed to bring back pretty broken instances in the past.

I cannot guarantee to be successful, but I will do my best to assist you. Send me PM or continue this thread if interested. From what you have wrote above I would guess that the issue is in the dependencies (vendor folder)

About the issues outlined in your post: I agree there is room for improvement in terms of user experience, but I also think that such process takes time and a couple of iterations.

My suggestions to everyone that attempts to update mautic:

  • before you attempt to update in production env., do it in sandbox/local instance
  • before you update prod. env. always backup everything - the entire source code and full database.

Take care.

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I’ll just reply here as a SMB owner - someone who somehow has put it together.

My conclusion :: Mautic works.

My 4.4.0 installation (DigitalOcean) is running my weekly newsletters for 65,000 total readers, registration forms, asset downloads, tracking visitors on a dozen websites, sending out reminder emails, whatsapp and sms messages, adding/removing tags, adding points, etc.

Our entire online events are done using Mautic webforms. I’ve taught my people; it’s easy for them; for the guests; for the clients footing the bill.

I’m sure I could be doing so much more with Mautic. I’m sure my Mautic heroes would tell me that I’m either over or under-extended with my different crons and server configurations, but all-in-all, I get a much clearer sense of who is doing what and automate a message customized to their needs.

Re: my level of expertise? I know enough to be very dangerous. I’ve blown up machines and cried rivers of regret. It happens. It sucks. I tell myself: “I’m too old for this shit.”

Re: email design, I stick to straight html code.

Good luck to you. I feel your pain.

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I resorted to reinstalling a brand-new installation from scratch. I had exported my contacts list prior but everything else I had to build all over again. Campaigns, emails, forms. I had to get SMTP set up, Recaptcha and Zapier syncs. The whole smash. There are always so many little things that need to be done that what you think will be an hour turns out the be 5!

You mentioned you were running 4.4.0. Have you been updating your current install or have you been running that since day 1? It’s the updates that will get you in trouble. My advice is export everything you can then make a backup of your current install before even considering running an update.

@mzagmajster was a great help. We spoke for like 3 hours one night talking about the gotchas, Mautic and other open-source tools.

PS, I posted a bug report in the Git that exported contacts don’t include their ‘Do Not Contact’ flags so be very careful.

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I’ve been updating slowly over time but even then, at one point, it may have been the jump from 3 to 4, I gave up.

I had to export/import contacts to a fresh install. Took me all weekend.

However since I’ve been on Mautic 4, it’s been very stable.

Cron configuration for optimum output is still problematic for me.

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That, I can help with if you like. I managed to get mine smooth sailing.

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This is the “problem” with all open source free software…you gotta deal with most issues yourself… and read forums and stuff to learn more about it

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True to a certain point. But, there are a ton of open-source applications that don’t implode the entire stack when doing a version update. Mautic has more than its share of current bugs and bugs that are introduced during an update.

The “dealing with yourself” and “reading forums” is the solution and the problem at the same time. Unless the community bands together to help each other, it means the death of the project.

I had previously posted my difficulties completing an update. The responses tried to help but didn’t stick through to completion. Another user jumped on my thread and all support that WAS helping me moved to help the other guy. When I posted a question asking to come back to my situation, the results were crickets. I think you can understand how being left in a lurch with no recourse could make you feel ignored.

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Reading forums and dealing with it yourself is not the only way you can self host Mautic.
If you can’t afford to spend your own time, then pay someone to do it for you 10 times faster.

I also offered my help for free, we started to talk but you never followed up on the private message I sent you.
This is important for you, not for me. Reach out, talk, and we will arrange something.

My honest opinion: Mautic 4.0.1. - 4.4.4 is perfectly safe to host and upgrade without using composer.
If you are not a composer ninja, why would you use it?

There are tons of perfect tutorials to host mautic without composer.

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Sorry joeyk, I did write you back and told you that mzagmajster offered to do a Zoom call. You responded that you were off till Monday and could not join in. Which is fine. mzagmajster and I had a great call for 2.5 hours.

My comments about crickets were regarding my previous attempts at reaching out. See the last post on the thread.

The challenges of using composer in my previous posts were due to the announcements that made it clear (at least to me it was clear) that this was going to be the only way to update. It was written that in-app and zip file updates were no longer supported. There were countless threads on the board all having the same problems updating using composer. All the threads I came across were talking about diving into the code and changing SQL statements because of errors in the logs. This was my experience. This was my introduction to Composer and to my knowledge, the only way to update Mautic, period. So, if you can put yourself in my shoes for a second. I hope you can understand my frustration.

I see a lot of posts on here from you and I am grateful for your efforts in helping people.

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Maybe yo unoticed, I’m never commenting composer related issues.
I have the same feelings for composer as with snakes: if you don’t know exactly what it does, don’t touch it.
I used to have a composer install when I had Mautic 2, then I moved away from it, and stayed without composer using Mautic 4. It works great.
There are ways to move back and forth, and I will do so when the knowhow is already out there tested and praised by everyone. Until then I keep myself away from it.

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Following up here - any success?

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Yes, success. But it’s with a brand new install. Luckily my instance is small. Being a one man show there wasn’t too much that I couldn’t recreate from scratch.

One trick I did do, which helped speed things up was I pulled the html for emails from the old DB. Then all I had to do was replace the missing images in the new install. I had to rebuild all my segments and campaigns but again, there wasn’t a lot of them.

With that completed I haven’t considered attempting a 4.4.5 update yet.

Thanks for keeping an eye :slight_smile:

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