I am using Suite 8.8 currently for a client (its working well), however they are using the campaign module (again its working for how they want it).
I have been testing the Suite8.9 Campaigns module which looks much better but seems to be missing several things.
so my question: Do attachments work in the new campaigns, and if so how? I can’t see an attachments section and inserting a template with an attachment does not send the attachment.
Regards
Mark
Hey @markbond don’t get me wrong, I love SuiteCRM. However, for campaigns (and I’ve used them extensively in SuiteCRM!) Mautic is a superior solution. Way easier to build templates, complex campaigns, tracking, etc. It’s literally designed to do pretty much only email campaigns. Plus, it fully syncs with SuiteCRM. It’s open source, easy to install/sync and makes the use of SuiteCRM as a CRM and Mautic as a messaging platform a superior combined solution. (That’s my 2cents anyway)
I haven’t used Mautic, although have heard good things. However most of my use is really transactional emails (and in this case newsletters) rather than actual campaigns, and from our clients perspective less systems to use/learn.
They have been using Suite 8 and it (was) working well for them we can’t however upgrade from 8.8 → 8.9 until the issue with campaigns are fixed (the editor although I hated Mosaik still allowed more than the current release). With attachments being the worst part missing.
Regards
Mark
on a related note, any pointers for getting the two integrated?
Regards
Mark
Here’s a tutorial and a video.
Hello Mark,
for some projects, I’ve still stayed on 8.8 for the old campaigns.
One project with some weekly / monthly campaigns is already on 8.9.x and it’s working more or less fine as it is.
For further / specific requirements, I’d probably wait with the upgrade until 8.10 or 8.11:
Overall I agree with Paul: If it’s just here and there a one size fits all newsletter, totally fine.
But if there should be any logic / campaigns / forms / etc. a marketing automation is the way to go.
About the Mautic integration: The plugin is working somewhat ok - but way to limited for most of my projects / customers. Marketing often needs more than the core data synchronized. There are plenty of requirements that the Mautic module doesn’t handle.
And then there is the module risk as such: It’s not very active in the Mautic community
I’m currently publishing a series on integrating the two via API:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsFGHEmMr2qcWFFZee6wDi3ydaM0zXLQn
@BastianHammer I’ve also had good luck using the Mautic webhooks and a custom entry point in SuiteCRM to push more complex data the other way (like points score) it’s pretty easy.
You can also push the actual activity back to suitecrm simply by creating a web_activities module. I rarely do that because its unecessary in SuiteCRM but it is possible.
That has changed for me over the past years. Less PHP development, more middleware:
For the custom entry point, I usually get a bit of push back from customers.
If they are all tech and IT and dev focused, yes - they might not mind the custom PHP approach.
With the success of n8n recently, many companies have this already in place.
It’s easy to monitor executions as well, compared to any internal SuiteCRM code / logic hooks etc.
When workflows are built nicely, they are easy to read - even for non devs.
Projects on a higher level of maturity usually require different approaches. Fire & forget won’t work anymore, since integrations have to be queued and monitored. Mautic does offer a queue, but the IT seldom wants to look into Mautic for that. 
I’m curious: How do you do the way back from Suite into Mautic?
I pretty much just use the out of the box sync for SuiteCRM → Mautic. It works great.
Going the other way, yes n8n can work too, but Mautic has pretty robust webhook logging so there is plenty of visibility. If I can do API’s thats my preference, n8n adds another layer of complexity, and another failure point, so only if its not possible with API’s and webhooks do I bring in n8n.