6 Years, 80K+ Businesses: A Story of Rapid Rebuild, Revamp, and Transformation

Six years! Isn’t this incredible?

Back in 2020, we had one big dream: to build a complete marketing automation solution. 

Slowly, that dream has been coming to life.

Today, more than 80,000+ businesses trust FluentCRM to run their marketing.

If you witnessed our journey, you’d remember last October, we closed our anniversary post with a promise:

“The foundation is set. Now the transformation begins. A big 2026 awaits.”

Well, it’s October again. And honestly? Today “Big” seems like an understatement!

In the past 12 months, we didn’t just add a few headline features to FluentCRM. We took it down to the studs and rebuilt it:

• New framework
• New interface
• New email editor
• Two brand-new marketing channels
• AI that actually understands your CRM
• A completely new website to go with it

If Year 5 was about laying bricks, Year 6 was about finally rebuilding the house. In short, we had a massive critical transformation. 

So before sharing the full story, a huge thanks to the businesses who stayed with us through a year of massive change.

Also, a special shout-out to everyone who installed beta versions early and told us exactly what needs changing. The new FluentCRM has your fingerprints all over it.

Grab a cup of tea, and read the full story of FluentCRM’s past, present, and future! 

Alexa, Rewind to “Where It All Began”

If you’ve read our last two anniversary posts, you know this story by heart. 

So here’s the 30-second version for everyone who joined us this year.

Back in 2019, FluentCRM began with a problem we had ourselves. 

In 2019, the WP Manage Ninja team was already managing plugins like Ninja Tables and Fluent Forms, and we needed an email marketing tool to stay in touch with our users. The tools we liked were getting more expensive with every subscriber we added. 

So we asked ourselves a simple question: “Why not build it ourselves?”

In October 2020, FluentCRM went live. People loved it. Businesses started building their entire workflows around it. And that’s how FluentCRM’s journey began.

Today, FluentCRM has become the centre of everything we build. Every Fluent product we introduced since then connects back to it.

2026 also carried a special milestone for our family.

In April 2026, WP Manage Ninja, our parent company, turned 10! A decade of building WordPress products, and FluentCRM has been at the heart of it for six of those years.

Last October, We Made 5 Promises. Did We Keep Them?

Last year, we admitted something out loud: we’d been making slow progress, and we meant to. We were polishing the foundation before building anything big on top of it.

Then we made five promises for the year ahead.

We know promises are easy to make in a blog post. They’re a lot harder to keep in a codebase.

So let’s do this the honest way, with a scorecard.

What we promised in Year 5	Status
SMS Marketing	Delivered
FluentCRM X AI	Delivered
Major UI Upgrade	Delivered
More Automation Templates	Delivered
A More User-Focused Website	Delivered

That’s 5 out of 5! 

And because we never stop at what we planned, we added a few bonus features you all were asking for; notable mention: WhatsApp Marketing.

Now let us show you what all of that actually looks like.

The Fluent Universe Enters Phase Two

But first, a quick look at our friendly neighborhood.

If you’ve followed us for a while, you know our running joke: Marvel has its Cinematic Universe, and we have the Fluent Universe, with FluentCRM as the sun at the centre. Well, every good universe eventually moves into its next phase.

So, after the launch of FluentCart, WP Manage Ninja is also moving to its next phase with some exciting plugins joining the stack.

This year, two new heroes joined, and two more will join soon:

Product	Purpose	Timeline
FluentCart	eCommerce Plugin	October 2025
FluentPlayer	Interactive Video Plugin	June 2026

Every product we add in the Fluent ecosystem family connects back to FluentCRM like any other plugin in this ecosystem. 

For example: 

• A Fluent Forms submission becomes a contact 
• A FluentCart purchase starts an automation
• An appointment via FluentBooking creates a CRM profile
• A new FluentCommunity member gets a welcome sequence
• An affiliate who joins through FluentAffiliate gets an onboarding email

Likewise, the newly launched or upcoming plugins will follow the same pattern.

Because with different products, one primary goal never changes: everything still orbits FluentCRM.

Overview: FluentCRM in Past Years (2021 – 2025)

Every anniversary, we take a quick trip down memory lane. This year the lane got one row longer.

Here’s how our journey looks:

FluentCRM’s 6th Year in Review: What’s New We Added?

As more businesses grew with FluentCRM, their needs grew too. 

Bigger lists needed faster, more reliable sending. Customers wanted to reach people beyond the inbox. And many things needed to change. 

So this year, every addition had one goal: to let you run more of your marketing from one place, inside your own WordPress site, without slowing you down. 

Here’s what we introduced:

The Architectural Rebuild: Vue 2 → Vue 3 Migration

With 80,000+ businesses using FluentCRM, the number of workflows, automations, and edge cases kept growing. 

Our old-school Vue 2 framework was working fine, but adding more features on top of it would have slowed down the experience you love.

So, instead of patching things, we rebuilt the entire framework on Vue 3 and Element Plus.

Since the day we launched the new framework, everyone has noticed the difference the moment you open the dashboard. 

Pages load faster, the interface is cleaner, and FluentCRM now looks and feels like the rest of the Fluent family. 

Here’s what came with the rebuild:

• A Redesigned Dashboard: Modern charts, better widgets, and cleaner data cards
• Revamped Reports: Track campaigns, automations, contact growth, and engagement, including list- and tag-based growth tracking
• Global Search: Search across contacts, campaigns, companies, automations, and notes
• Frontend Portal: Manage FluentCRM outside the WordPress admin
• Floating Bulk-Action Bar: Makes managing large contact lists much easier
• Better Accessibility: Improved dark mode, RTL support, keyboard navigation, and mobile responsiveness
• Reorganised Settings: A cleaner layout, including a Cron Job Monitor for your scheduled tasks

A Cleaner, Friendlier Interface: The New FluentCRM UI

FluentCRM was working well; however, after five years of new features, the interface and UX started to feel pieced together rather than designed.

Our users never complained, but we felt the earnest urge to give our users something modern, so FluentCRM doesn’t feel complex to use.

This is where our framework migration gave us the advantage; it allowed us to modernize the UI and UX without looking for any workarounds. It was pretty straightforward.

And the team revamped the entire UI around 3 simple concepts: Clarity. Consistency. Usability.

Here’s where you’ll notice the difference most:

• Dashboard
• Contacts
• Campaigns
• Automations
• Email Builder
• Settings
• Reports

Notable Mention: Our beta users shaped a lot of this. Their feedback led to changes across several screens before the final release.

A Smart Assistant Who Knows FluentCRM: AI and MCP

We wanted to bring AI inside FluentCRM that works beyond a regular writing assistant. 

So, we brought AI into action with the purpose of spending less time writing and digging through data.

Here’s how FluentCRM X AI functions together:

• FluentCRM MCP: With 25+ MCP tools, connect AI assistants like Claude to your CRM, ask questions in plain words, and get a quick reply without manual digging through data.
• AI Email Writing: No more staring at a blank page. Generate a full draft for a welcome email, promotion, product announcement, or newsletter right inside the editor, choose the tone you want, then make it yours.
• AI Contact Summaries: Instead of scrolling through months of activity, get a contact’s engagement, purchases, and key interactions in one readable snapshot, along with a suggested next step. It even works in your own language.
• WordPress 7.0 AI Support: FluentCRM works with WordPress’s own AI features and supports popular models, so your AI workflows stay inside your own site instead of spreading across other tools.

Two New Marketing Channels: SMS and WhatsApp

For five years, email has been the heart of FluentCRM, and it still is. 

But sometimes a message needs to reach your customer right away, like a shipping update, a flash-sale reminder, or a webinar that’s about to start.

Until now, that meant using a separate tool and managing your contacts in two places. So this year, we added two new channels directly inside FluentCRM.

SMS Marketing

Some messages can’t wait for someone to check their inbox. 

A time-sensitive sale or a shipment update works better as a text. 

With SMS marketing built into FluentCRM, you can reach people right on their phones using the same contacts, lists, and segments you already have.

You can now:

• Send targeted SMS campaigns to any segment
• Add text messages to your automations
• Reply to customers in two-way conversations
• Keep every SMS conversation on the contact’s profile
• Choose Twilio or AWS as your SMS provider

WhatsApp Marketing

For many of your customers, WhatsApp is where conversations actually happen. After SMS launched, it was the request we heard most. 

Now you can reach people on WhatsApp right from FluentCRM, using the same contacts and segments you already have, with WhatsApp consent kept separate from email.

With WhatsApp, you can:

• Run WhatsApp campaigns with approved templates, personalised for each contact
• Send WhatsApp messages from your automations
• Chat one-to-one with customers, including images and files
• Message one-time recipients without adding them as contacts
• Manage SMS and WhatsApp together in one inbox
• Connect through Twilio or Meta Cloud API

A WordPress-Native Email Builder: The Gutenberg Email Editor

If you know how easy it is to build a page in WordPress, you will feel the same while building emails inside FluentCRM. 

We rebuilt the email editor on Gutenberg, so you can design emails with the same blocks and layouts you already know, without layouts breaking along the way. Auto-save and full-screen editing come built in.

Over the years, we kept adding to it:

• Reusable Email Patterns: Build a header, CTA, or full layout once and reuse it in every campaign. 
• Product Blocks: Turn any email into a mini storefront with WooCommerce and FluentCart products.
• Footer Controls: Personalise and style your footer in seconds, no code needed.
• Global Link Colour: Keep every link on-brand with a single setting.
• Your Theme’s Colours: Use your website’s colours in your emails, so everything looks like one brand.
• Media & Text Block: Place an image beside your message for richer, easier-to-read layouts.
• Auto-save: Your work saves as you go, so an unfinished email is never lost.

The New Friendly Neighbours: FluentCart + FluentPlayer

Two new Fluent products launched this year, and just like everything else we build, both work well with FluentCRM without any complications.

FluentCart

FluentCart is a fast, lightweight eCommerce plugin for WordPress. 

Whether you sell physical products, digital downloads or subscriptions, you can run your whole store from one place, without the bloat that slows so many stores down.

And yes, it’s deeply connected to FluentCRM. 

Buyers can join your list right at checkout, abandoned carts can bring customers back with timely reminders, and every purchase can start a personalised follow-up. 

You can even see a customer’s FluentCRM activity without leaving your store.

FluentPlayer

FluentPlayer is our new interactive video player for WordPress. It turns your videos from something people just watch into something they can act on, with forms and call-to-action buttons right inside the video.

The real magic happens when it’s tied to FluentCRM. 

A viewer who signs up inside a video becomes a contact, a click on a call-to-action can tag them based on their interest, and your automations take it from there.

Want to see it in action? Here’s our guide on using video lead scoring for a product launch waitlist.

Faster, More Reliable Email Sending

When you send to a large list, you want it to go out fast and reach every subscriber exactly once. 

So, we rebuilt how FluentCRM sends email behind the scenes.

Now, even your biggest campaigns finish much sooner. No one gets the same email twice or gets skipped, and if a send is interrupted, FluentCRM picks up right where it left off.

The Little Improvements That Make Your Experience Better

Not every improvement deserves its own section. But together, these are the ones you’ll feel every single day:

• Sticky notes: Leave notes in your automations so your team always knows why each step is there.
• Empty / Not Empty: Quickly find contacts with no tags, lists, or companies, so nothing slips through the cracks.
• Completed Lessons: Follow up with learners based on the lessons they’ve finished.
• Automatic Company Creation: New leads from Fluent Forms arrive already linked to their company.
• CSV “update only” Import: Fill in missing contact details without overwriting the data you already have.
• Revenue Badges: See how much each campaign earned at a glance.
• Campaign Archive Layouts: Show off your newsletter archive in the style that suits your site.
• Monthly Wait Times: Set automation delays in months for long-term follow-ups.
• System Log CSV Exports: Download your logs to review them in a spreadsheet or share them with support.
• Quick Company Creation: Add a new company while creating a contact, without leaving the screen.
• Bulk Updates: Act on every contact in a segment at once, and add, subtract or replace custom field values in bulk.

A New FluentCRM Website Built Around Visitors’ Needs

Just like our product, our website needed a makeover to serve you better, with clearer navigation and more helpful insight.

For years, our site was a bit like a house with a lovely interior and a front porch nobody had painted since 2020. 

You had to dig through docs and old blog posts to find out what FluentCRM could actually do.

So we gave it a complete makeover, with 40+ brand-new pages:

• Explore dedicated pages for every major feature 
• Browse features by your goal in the Marketing, Automation, and CRM hubs
• See how businesses like yours put FluentCRM to work in our
• Read how WP Fusion grew its contact list, and En Busca del Fuego saved thousands using FluentCRM
• Learn at your own pace with FluentCRM 101, the Video Academy and the Monthly Digest
• Compare FluentCRM with other tools and see how it fits the Fluent ecosystem

The goal was simple. Whether you’re a brand-new user or a five-year veteran or just a visitor, the answer to “can FluentCRM do this?” should be one click away.

Year 7 Plans: What’s Next?

A renovated house is only the beginning. Now we get to decide how to live in it.

Here’s what we plan to do next in FluentCRM:

• Fluent Pipelines: Users have been asking for sales pipelines since the day FluentCRM started its journey. With the new framework in place, we’ve started building it.
  
  But we won’t ship a half-cooked feature, so please give us the time to build it the right way. We’ll let you know the moment it’s ready.
  
• More User-Focused Product Flows: FluentCRM has been reshaped, but some journeys, like creating regular and recurring campaigns, still don’t feel fully uniform. We’ll bring them in line, so every task feels familiar from start to finish.
  
• Calendar View for All Campaigns: See every email and SMS campaign in one calendar view. You’ll know how many campaigns you sent this month and what’s scheduled next, without scrolling through a long list.
  
• Better Email Sequence Reports: We’ll be improving our email sequence reports, so you get a clearer picture of how each sequence is performing.
  
• New UI for Automation Workflows: This year, we refreshed almost every part of FluentCRM’s interface, but the automation workflow diagram still looks the same. We’ll gradually roll out the new UI there too, so building automations feels as fresh as the rest of FluentCRM.
  
• Fluent Universe Centric Expansion: More products are joining the Fluent ecosystem, including FluentMembers for memberships and FluentInvoice for self-hosted invoicing. And as always, they’ll work hand in hand with FluentCRM.
  
• More Resources and Customer Stories: We’ll keep adding helpful resources to the FluentCRM website, and more customer stories are already in the works.

Most importantly, our users shaped every release we ship. So, if you love FluentCRM, tell us what we should add next.

Drop your answer in the comments below, or share it with us in the FluentCRM community. Big feature, small annoyance, wild idea: we want to hear all of it.

From a Slow Start to Full Speed: The Transformation Has Just Begun!

Two years ago, we said the best was yet to come. 

Last year, we admitted we’d been moving slowly, on purpose, and promised that the transformation would begin.

Year 6 was that beginning. A rebuilt framework, a fresh interface, SMS and WhatsApp, AI built in, faster sending, and a brand-new website, all in a single year. 

After years of careful, steady building, FluentCRM is finally moving at full speed.

And this is only the start. Sales Pipelines, better campaigns, automation, and a sequence are already on the way.

With all the development on its way, one thing won’t change: “We build FluentCRM to empower small businesses to grow, right inside WordPress.”

Thank you for sticking with us through the slow years and the fast ones, for testing our betas, reporting bugs, and asking for the features that shaped this year.

Here’s to Year 7. The news you have been waiting for is coming!