Hi Everyone,
I’ve been getting a number of calls from other agencies asking how we are managing and branding multiple Mautic installations. In short, we just clone a default Mautic installation and update a few of the configuration settings. It takes about five minutes of actual time and 5-10 minutes of waiting while the files and database are copied. As for the branding, that’s as expected… modifying core files, overwriting images, changing translation strings. We are working on an interface (config form) to make these changes faster and easier as well as an automated solution to re-implement changes after an update.
Here’s some video demonstrations.
Control Panel - Managing Multiple Installations
Cloning Mautic
https://youtu.be/ZyBA9mZnYX4
Configuring a New Cloned Installation
https://youtu.be/1BG___rZRdE
So, how have others solved this problem? Anyone come up with a better solution?
Here’s a bird’s eye view of what our solution provides:
Private Label
Login Logo (square)
Sidebar Logo (horizontal)
Page Title
Favicon & Phone Icon
Login Footer Message
Remove Mautic Copyright (I would need to double check the license to see if this is possible)
Default Mautic Admin & Staff Accounts & Roles
New Installation Checklist
Make sure you fill in all the blanks and set up a new Mautic installation properly.
Mautic Upgrade Script
Batch upgrades all Mautic installations.
Hosted on your own fully managed, private, and scalable cloud server.
Typical pricing is $5-$30 month.
Applications Control Panel.
Quickly see all Mautic installations in one place, click to login.
Clone Mautic installations for new clients.
Takes 5-10 minutes to setup, most of that time is waiting for the files and database to be copied automatically.
Tools: FTP, SSH, Database Manager, Nightly Backups, Backup on Demand
Business Admin Theme (neutral colors)
Wildcard Subdomains
Sitewide SSL
[quote=12436:@ninjoan]Cool @buckhornmktg
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How do you manage the monetary part how to charge the client to have access to use the system.
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What happened with the Mautic Updates? When they release a new version you will lose the (client logo and that custom white label stuff)[/quote]
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We are using http://freelancer.studio (a BUCKHORN Marketing product/service) to manage our recurring billing. We charge a lot of clients annually, so far it hasn’t been a nuisance, but it will become one as we start to scale up. We have plans to build the billing into Mautic, but alas, this is an ambitious project. I’m hoping to sell the current solution we have to agencies so that we can continue to develop the features agencies need like SSO.
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We have been using this configuration since last April and in that time there has been only one update that unhinged some of the branding on the login page. Most of the views that contain branding aren’t going to change often. We are building an automated script to re-apply the changes for the short term. Long term we plan to fork Mautic and release our own updates so this wouldn’t be a problem.
Hi Arjon, we are not planning to make this open source. We have plans to take this idea further and we need capital to continue development and maintenance. This will be a paid offering, as I see no other way to get some of the features developed that agencies need, like subscription billing and SSO.
Cool @buckhornmktg
Two questions for you
- How do you manage the monetary part how to charge the client to have access to use the system.
- What happened with the Mautic Updates? When they release a new version you will lose the (client logo and that custom white label stuff)
Hi Everyone,
I’ve been getting a number of calls from other agencies asking how we are managing and branding multiple Mautic installations. In short, we just clone a default Mautic installation and update a few of the configuration settings. It takes about five minutes of actual time and 5-10 minutes of waiting while the files and database are copied. As for the branding, that’s as expected… modifying core files, overwriting images, changing translation strings. We are working on an interface (config form) to make these changes faster and easier as well as an automated solution to re-implement changes after an update.
Here’s some video demonstrations.
Control Panel - Managing Multiple Installations
Cloning Mautic
https://youtu.be/ZyBA9mZnYX4
Configuring a New Cloned Installation
https://youtu.be/1BG___rZRdE
So, how have others solved this problem? Anyone come up with a better solution?
Here’s a bird’s eye view of what our solution provides:
Private Label
Login Logo (square)
Sidebar Logo (horizontal)
Page Title
Favicon & Phone Icon
Login Footer Message
Remove Mautic Copyright (I would need to double check the license to see if this is possible)
Default Mautic Admin & Staff Accounts & Roles
New Installation Checklist
Make sure you fill in all the blanks and set up a new Mautic installation properly.
Mautic Upgrade Script
Batch upgrades all Mautic installations.
Hosted on your own fully managed, private, and scalable cloud server.
Typical pricing is $5-$30 month.
Applications Control Panel.
Quickly see all Mautic installations in one place, click to login.
Clone Mautic installations for new clients.
Takes 5-10 minutes to setup, most of that time is waiting for the files and database to be copied automatically.
Tools: FTP, SSH, Database Manager, Nightly Backups, Backup on Demand
Business Admin Theme (neutral colors)
Wildcard Subdomains
Sitewide SSL
Will you open source the scripts you are using?
When are you planning to offer this? Do you have a beta version?
This would be a great addition to my current business, and I am definitely interested.
Hi @buckhornmktg I would like to know more about how to have access to the multiple instance so I can set it up on my own servers. Thank’s
Hi @guagsh, we are offering it now in private beta. Do you need a private labeled version for your business or an agency platform where you would have access to create and manage multiple private labeled Mautic instances?
Send a message to hello@buckhorn.marketing and I’ll reach out to you with more information and a website for you to visit.
@hugolh, our multiple instance/agency option is only available on our servers. If you don’t mind using our servers, please email hello@buckhorn.marketing and we can schedule a phone call.
If you need to host on your servers, here’s how you can recreate what we are doing.
First, for scalability and security reasons you need to be able to spin up a new private cloud server for every Mautic instance. There’s no magic in that. You can do this manually or with a shell script. Create a new server, copy the Mautic files over and import the database (this step isn’t required for clean/default installs).
Here’s the magic and this is why the multiple instances can’t be moved off our cloud platform. You need an API on your server so that you can your public/staff/client facing front end web interface can pass through commands to the server.
We had to build a system that allowed people from outside of our organization (like clients) to run server related tasks without any involvement on your part. Our API allows us to add/remove servers, upgrade/downgrade resources, add/remove users and more, all from the click of a button on a web page.
We automated all the tasks that would normally require some linux commands and a sysadmin. Behind the curtain we are just managing multiple single instances with a shared login and a nice control panel that makes managing and navigating multiple installations easy.
If your small, just hire someone to install Mautic for you as often as you need. For many businesses this is cheaper and achieves the same results. You really only need automation if you plan to offer Mautic to the public (SAAS) or if you are an agency with a lot of clients.
Those youtube videos dont show up for me
how is your service different from the 1 click install solution with bitnami?
@buckhornmktg
Currently I work in a digital marketing agency in Spain. We are now offering mautic services to our customers (We also work with HubSpot but some clients do not have enough money to pay for the license)
I have some advances already made as well as developed addons for mautic. We have made a private fork of mautic in gitlab where we have several branches as well as different origins (origin = github, remote = gitlab).
If there is a new update we follow the following steps:
- We make a pull from the mautic repository in github to the dev branch of our repo in gitlab
- Run database migrations for upgrade the database
- We test and make sure everything is working
2a. In case there is a problem, we fix it and make pull request to the repository of mautic in github and push our branch of dev - We merge the branch of dev and master
- We update the master branch in our production instances and execute the database migrations
I think we are both working for the same purpose and it would be nice to be able to work together and streamline processes because we both work for an agency that sells mautic solutions and we work towards the same goals. I am interested in knowing how you have developed the main instance where you have control of all instances of clients and how you perform the deployment on the server once a new client is registered. Do you use amazon cloud? Could you share the instantiation script or the project? We can talk privately if you are interested
Best!
As pointed out by some other community members, you don’t need any proprietary software or script to do this, what you do is build a wrapper or platform that makes it simple and semi-automated to clone Mautic. I have a blog post explaining the differences of Multi-tenancy and replication here:
And I gave a bird’s eye presentation about how it works on the Lagos Mautic Meetup:
All can be done using free and open-source software, it works incredibly well and it has been proven in dozens of installations worldwide.
Just as an update to this interesting topic, here’s my last presentation about it, thank you for inspiring me guys!
