@olafdammann I have found Mautic’s page-hit tracking to be a little buggy. It catches the page visit event some times and misses it some times. So the workflow that you have mentioned in your article does not work always. It would have been easier if Mautic supported Double-Optin feature by-default instead of trying to mimic it with campaigns.
This is a refreshing read. It’s not just me that’s pulling my hair (increasingly grey from Mautic-induced stress) out. I absolutely agree with so much said here. And I hope the devs read this as a way of taking the project forward, and not by reacting defensively; I’ve picked up a sense of the latter in some posts here. The project has so much potential but it’s being steered towards a reef.
So allow me to vent…
I get the sense that Mautic’s team sees Mautic is as a challenging project for coders - let’s see if we can create an open source InfusionSoft - rather than about creating a tool that marketers can use right now. Devs on here talk about ‘moving the project forward’ and fixing bugs, rather than creating a tool for marketers to use today. Bugs are seen as a coding challenge that should be posted to ‘Github’; to users of Mautic, bugs are a critical problem that is crippling their marketing efforts.
IMO, though, bugs are not the biggest problem. To me, the single, most important thing that needs to be improved is the documentation. It’s thin in places where it needs to go into detail, it has gaps and contradictions, and seems to be written for coders rather than marketers. Marketers are already facing a steep learning curve with Mautic (it’s the same with every marketing automation tool), but the gaps in Mautic’s documentation mean that users also face sudden and unexpected leaps across chasms. For example, this is why so many people have problems with cron jobs.
I’ve tried to contribute to the documentation. To do that required another steep learning curve - the instructions for this are lengthy and require multiple steps in something called Gitbook. I eventually succeffully submitted my addition to the documentation. It has not been published. Another waste of time. Why isn’t the documentation a simple wiki format: click “edit”, add your contribution, and click “save”?
The other glaring issue is the chaotic support forum here. It contains common problems, but very few solutions. Finding solutions is a hit and miss affair. Many threads go unanswered, or simply peter out with desperate cries for help.
My most recent problem with Mautic is that segment emails were not sending. That a marketing automation tool is unable to send emails is a pretty serious problem, to put it mildly. Repeated requests for help on the support forum met with little response, none of it helpful. I went to Slack and spent 3 hours there without any solution being found. Through trial and error I found a solution: reduce the batch size. A simple solution to a critical problem. It seems incredible to me that a solution like this could not have been given to me either in the documentation or in support.
The hours I’ve used up trying to get this awesome but f#*%ing thing to work could have been saved if I’d paid for ActiveCampaign or Drip, and I could have used the 100 or so hours I’ve spent on Mautic doing something profitable. But it could have also been avoided with better documentation.
Here are some ways Mautic needs to improve:
- The community needs to be able to quickly and easily improve the documentation. Mautic, please help us to do this. Change the documentation to a wiki format.
- Focus on the core functionality before adding new features
- And perhaps most importantly, view Mautic is a marketing tool, not a coding project - right now, it seems to be the latter and this will ultimately destroy the project.
The way software like this grows is through recommendation - right now, I am telling people to avoid Mautic. If it’s not fixed soon, it will become an empty shell for coders.
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Exactly! Mautic have problem with register user visit - depending on this workflow give us chance to lost users from mailing list. In Marketing Automatic software this case is unacceptable.
As @anrawool wrote - best solutions for me will be implement in Mautic solution to setting double opt-in not depend on tracking user visits by actual way.
In the short time that has passed since this whole thread started, < 3 weeks, I have seen massive improvements on the Mautic front. This has given me renewed enthusiasm and confirmation in Mautic and the talented people that are involved in the project.
Look at the 2.7 release today!
Look at the planned release of 2.7.1!
They are mostly bug fixes, which = they have done their part in listening and making it happen for us!
I did vent in this post, but everything I have vented on has since been resolved.
I am deeply appreciative!
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Great to read that!
Great to hear that too, I’ve been away for a while, using a paid email marketing solution for now, but was just checking in after the release of Mautic 2.7 popped up on my radar.
Happy to see that there’s a greater focus on fixing bugs now. If things keep going like that it’ll probably be just a matter of time before I return to Mautic. Thanks, keep it up guys.
@MxyzptlkFishStix , OK - I’ve seen you refer to PRs a number of times. It isn’t acronym I’m familiar with. Are these pre-releases? like a Release Candidate (RC)? The lack of people testing these seems to be a red flag for you. How do we contribute to testing these?
I think, picking up on @charlescorn’s comments above, there is some real value in collecting a bunch of real world use cases and having expert users/developers providing either:
a. recipes for how to do them
b. if they can’t be done, handing these to the developers and getting them to focus on making them do-able.
I’ve offered up several use cases that I’m struggling with, and have yet to receive much if any meaningful assistance.
@MxyzptlkFishStix, does that sound like a useful approach to you? Or do you think something else would work better as a way to advance Mautic?
Cheers
Jo
Just to add my opinion into this discussion, I have found the idea of mautic very appealing, but the reality of using it is much more difficult, to the extent that I have lost faith in it.
In some ways, my opinion is re-affirmed every time I perform an update, and the system stops working. I then have to go to the server, rename the install folder, install clean from the latest version, and then copy over my configuration file. At that point, I need to see what was broken in the software… it seems like something always stops working.
Anyways, I think that one possible scenario is that we (the community) builds up a ‘super user’ group, where we can share experiences, and help each other bootstrap up on how to use the software, and build up a list of ‘things that could be improved’. If there are developers out there that can fix (some of) these issues, we need a dialog with the maintainer so that we can get pull requests merged into the main branch.
I did put together a meetup in Chicago about Mautic, but never got ahold of anyone back in the ‘mother ship’ to provide any guidance or support. It went well, but my experiences with the software in general have caused me to put more meetups on hold until I gain more confidence in the software.
Dan
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@danwaterloo, what you are saying about a super user group in many ways would support my proposal around agreeing a set of core use cases and getting those to a usable state. These use cases would then be expanded on over time, and the recipes for using them should be documented to enable others to get in the game faster.
I think there is value in both groups (and they may be separate groups based on the following rationale):
- I am no super use of Mautic and so should not have a seat at the table you are proposing.
- However, I am a seasoned technologist and experienced in Marketing Automation and hence would like to contribute more use cases to ensure that Mautic can easily be used to achieve real world goals.
The super user group could be engaged in coming up with recipes to deliver the use cases, and/or working with developers to get the use cases working if they don’t currently.
Alternatively, we consider it one group, but those who are Mautic super users would need to manage their expectations with those who are Marketing Automation super users.
What are your thoughts on this? Also, to some of the others I consider super users (@ninjoan, @MxyzptlkFishStix and others) what do you think of this approach.
Regards
Jo
Hi Jo, @ninjoan, @MxyzptlkFishStix
I like the idea of organizing the users… and getting the typical use cases documented. I’m not really a coder, but have experience supporting users of phpList, and I’m on their ‘core user/developer’ calls once a month. I’d like to see Mautic reach the state where it is useful for helping people build their business, and automate some of the marketing work/followup.
I’m trying to get mautic useful for my business, it’s questionable that I made much useful progress…
I’d be willing to give this ‘super user group’ a go…
Dan
Agree 100% with your post. I decided to try Mautic but this thing is far away of being production ready to be honest.
The most basic functionalities are buggy and damn slow. About 2 weeks ago, I posted this https://www.mautic.org/community/index.php/7806-mautic-terrible-performance/p1#p23895
Despite the efforts of some colleagues from this forum trying to help, I’m still stuck. And guess what? No one from Mautic commented on it, as usual. Either the developers don’t even care to monitor this forum or they just refrain from commenting in face of so many problems.
- Performance is bad to the point its useless (see my post above)
- Campaigns don’t process actions properly and never track page hits correctly
- Mail sending speed thru API is hell slow (around 5-6k per hour)
Its just not good, really. I mean, amazing idea. This kind of initiative for an open source project is fantastic, the interface is clean and modern, the idea behind the features is good.
The core of any marketing automation tool is the campaign builder. Is how you can set the logic for your campaigns. If that doesn’t work, nothing else matters…
@LeniNeto, [quote=23905:@LeniNeto]Agree 100% with your post. I decided to try Mautic but this thing is far away of being production ready to be honest.
The most basic functionalities are buggy and damn slow. About 2 weeks ago, I posted this https://www.mautic.org/community/index.php/7806-mautic-terrible-performance/p1#p23895
Despite the efforts of some colleagues from this forum trying to help, I’m still stuck. And guess what? No one from Mautic commented on it, as usual. Either the developers don’t even care to monitor this forum or they just refrain from commenting in face of so many problems.
- Performance is bad to the point its useless (see my post above)
- Campaigns don’t process actions properly and never track page hits correctly
- Mail sending speed thru API is hell slow (around 5-6k per hour)
Its just not good, really. I mean, amazing idea. This kind of initiative for an open source project is fantastic, the interface is clean and modern, the idea behind the features is good.
The core of any marketing automation tool is the campaign builder. Is how you can set the logic for your campaigns. If that doesn’t work, nothing else matters…[/quote]
You should try the exact same process on Mautic.com under their free account. You can load up max 5,000 records and send 1,000 emails.
That should be plenty to verify if the speed issue persists.
Great idea! I will give it a try later today and post the results here.
Hey buddy, just hopped in to let you know I tried your suggestion but despite the fact it would be a great idea, its actually impossible. The FREE account doesn’t allow for any email imports to avoid spam, so its a no go.
I just noticed the inaccurate page hit tracking using v.4.4.4. Is anyone still experiencing this?