FluentCRM Year in Review 2025: Predictability Over Pace, Built for What’s Next!

It’s that time of the year again…

The end of a beautiful year and a good moment to look back at everything we’ve been through. This is when we look back at how FluentCRM evolved as a product, how it’s being used, and also how we’ve grown as a team.

Let’s get started.

The Bets We Made at the Start of 2025

After five years of rapid growth, FluentCRM now lives inside far more complex WordPress setups than before. With so many businesses using so many tools, there was less room for error.

What once worked well for simpler workflows now needs to perform just as reliably across layered automations, integrations, and data flows. So as FluentCRM crossed new adoption levels, familiar patterns kept repeating.

• New users needed faster starting points.
• Advanced users needed more room to grow.
• Internally, we could feel where the product would eventually hit limits if we didn’t act early.

This is why at the start of 2025, we made a few bets, not to ship faster, but to hold up better over time.

• Better starting points: Our existing onboarding worked, but it didn’t reduce hesitation. We chose to give users a head start by incorporating features like email automation.
• Scalability over speed: As more complex use cases emerged, we invested time in making FluentCRM structurally ready for what’s next, even if that meant slowing visible progress.
• Consistency across the ecosystem: A fragmented UI creates friction. Aligning FluentCRM with our broader ecosystem product’s design mattered more than shipping isolated improvements.
• Creative freedom over duct-taping: Instead of extending an editor that limits you, we chose to remove constraints altogether and decided to give you a more advanced Gutenberg editing experience.
• Looking beyond email: Email remains the core, but modern communication doesn’t stop there. We decided to expand into SMS as a natural next step.
  

Each of these bets costs time and restraint. While it does mean we slowed down a bit, it also means we have doubled down on scalability and long-term reliability. Now FluentCRM is more predictable, easier to adopt, and better prepared for real-world complexity, and once it’s all shipped, we’ll be better equipped for an incredible 2026!

What’s New in 2025?

2025 was a year of deliberate polish. With more businesses adopting FluentCRM, our focus was to make the existing workflows more scalable and frictionless. Every improvement shipped this year was aimed at giving users a smoother experience, whether they were starting their first campaign or managing complex automations.

Pre-built Email Templates

One of the most-requested improvements last year was a faster way to create email campaigns. With 12+ ready-made templates, users no longer start from scratch. This simplified onboarding and saved time for new users managing multiple campaigns. And of course, we’re adding more as we speak!

Subscription Automations

As more businesses adopted FluentCRM, we realized subscription businesses, especially those using WooCommerce, MemberPress, and Fluent Forms, needed more flexibility.

This is why we added new automation features like triggers for subscription payments and cancellations. Users running memberships or subscription services now spend less time duct-taping automations and more time engaging customers in an automated, efficient manner!

Transactional Emails

Sending transactional or system emails to non-subscribed users used to be one of the biggest concerns, as FluentCRM was only designed to send emails to subscriber contacts. This was awkward as emails like abandoned cart notifications needed to be sent despite the limitation.

FluentCRM now allows GDPR-compliant transactional emails for that, and also for when you need to send custom emails. This will eventually become more efficient as we integrate more transactional emailing workflows into our system over time.

List-based Double Opt-in

Businesses with segmented lists need context-specific messaging. So generic double opt-in emails couldn’t really cut it when you were driving a targeted audience. Now, double opt-in emails can be customized per list. You can ensure that every subscriber gets messaging tailored to the list they joined!

Other Improvements

Beyond headline features, we polished contact management, email sequences, and automation workflows. Users with complex setups, high-volume campaigns, or layered automations now experience much more predictable performance and a better overall software experience.

The Fluent Ecosystem Finally Comes Together!

One of the most meaningful shifts in 2025 wasn’t a single feature; it was a workflow finally coming together. This year, we released two of the most important pieces of our ecosystem, FluentCart and FluentAffiliate.

With FluentCart, businesses could finally run ecommerce and automation as a single, cohesive system. And FluentAffiliate made growth part of that same loop.

Purchases, subscriptions, renewals, and customer behavior no longer live in silos; they flow directly into FluentCRM. Likewise, referrals, commissions, and partner performance could now feed directly into CRM-driven email funnels!

What Became Possible?

• Unified ecommerce automation: Purchases, subscriptions, renewals, and customer actions from FluentCart now go to FluentCRM, triggering relevant automations without manual setup or third-party workarounds.
• Contextual, real-time communication: Emails are no longer sent based on static lists. Automations react to real customer behavior across products, making communication timely and relevant.
• Fewer breakpoints as businesses scale: Instead of stitching tools together, businesses run on products that share data and intent, reducing friction as complexity increases.
• Growth loops that actually close: FluentAffiliate connects referrals and commissions straight into CRM-driven email funnels, making it possible to nurture affiliates and customers from the same system.

What changed wasn’t just capability, but reliability. This isn’t about expanding the product line. It’s about removing friction between tools, so automation, growth, and operations could scale together instead of drifting apart.

Our Most Challenging Task in 2025: Email Templates

Building email templates inside a WordPress plugin isn’t as simple as it sounds.

Generally, most email marketing software includes email templates as part of its software. Doing the same on a WordPress plugin will increase plugin size, affect performance, and add long-term maintenance overhead.

Plus, every time we add a template, the plugin has to be updated.

This is why we decided to do it differently.

Instead of adding FluentCRM email templates to the software, we decided to manage them on an external server. This allowed us to incorporate the email templates without coding them directly into the software.

The effort was well worth it, a smoother experience without sacrificing performance!

Users now begin with proven structures instead of blank screens, onboarding friction is reduced, and FluentCRM remains fast and predictable, even as it grows more capable!

What Didn’t Go as Planned

Not everything we worked on in 2025 made it to production, and that was intentional.

As FluentCRM became part of more complex business setups, shipping half-ready features would’ve created more friction than value. As a result, we had to pause, rework, or delay in some cases.

• Major architectural work: We spent significant time improving the internal structure of FluentCRM to support long-term scalability. Much of this work isn’t visible yet, but shipping it prematurely would’ve limited what we could safely build next.
• UI alignment across the ecosystem: Rather than rolling out isolated UI changes, we held back until FluentCRM could align cleanly with the design system used across our other products. Partial consistency would’ve created more confusion than clarity.
• Expanded editor capabilities: As I mentioned earlier, instead of extending the existing email editor, we chose to delay and rebuild the entire email editor. We don’t want users to be boxed in by short-term decisions; our focus is on long-term creative freedom!
• New communication channels: We explored expanding beyond email earlier, but held back until we could ensure reliability, compliance, and proper safeguards. Shipping fast in this area would’ve created more risk than benefit.

These weren’t easy decisions. But for a product powering tens of thousands of businesses, restraint matters as much as speed. What we didn’t ship in 2025 is precisely what allowed FluentCRM to become more predictable, stable, and ready for what will be coming in 2026 and beyond!

What to Expect in 2026?

I can’t stress how crucial 2025 was for FluentCRM. This year completely reshaped how we think about FluentCRM and how we want to progress in 2026 and beyond.

As a business, we’ve always been selective about feature expansion that adds surface-level flexibility but increases long-term complexity. With the foundation we built in 2025, we’ll continue prioritizing reliability, clarity, and workflows that hold up as businesses scale.

Here’s what to expect early  in 2026:

• SMS Marketing: We’re moving beyond email, and SMS would be the first as a natural extension to how businesses communicate today.
• UI Upgrade: We’re building a cohesive, user-first UI that looks and feels like a WPManageNinja Plugin.
• Architecture improvement: We are scaling FluentCRM for next-level upgradability by moving many parts to Vue 3.
• Gutenberg Compatibility: We are moving our “okayish” block editor to a fully Gutenberg-compatible editor so you can have more creative freedom.

More to Come!

2025 has been a wonderful year, and the direction is clear for 2026.

FluentCRM 3.0 is coming soon, and it sets the stage for the kind of FluentCRM we’re working toward: A software that stays dependable as businesses, workflows, and ecosystems grow more complex.

If FluentCRM is part of your business today, or if you’re building something that needs room to grow tomorrow, we’re excited to keep shaping this journey with you. Whether you’ve been building with us, testing the edges, or pushing FluentCRM into real-world scenarios, thank you. 

Your use cases, questions, and feedback continue to shape the product more than any roadmap ever could. Thank you for being part of the FluentCRM community!

Wishing you a calm, focused, and successful New Year ahead!