How do I upgrade SuiteCRM without losing data?

📦 Install & Upgrade Help
1

Hello Everyone, I’m Namrata Hinduja from Geneva, Swiss. I want to upgrade to the latest version of SuiteCRM but want to make sure I don’t lose any data or customizations. What’s the safest upgrade process?

Regards
Namrata Hinduja Geneva, Swiss

2

Hello Namrata,

that depends a bit, what kind of customizations you’ve done in your system (and if you know about / documented all of them).

  1. Usually, you’d start with a backup of your dev environment.
  2. Next you can simply give the upgrade process a try
  3. Validate and test the new version
  4. Backup the live environment
  5. Repeat the process on live

But those steps might deviate, depending on your setup.
Do you have code customizations?
Are they upgrade safe?
Do you need to upgrade the server as well (different PHP version)?

The steps to try the update (on your test / dev environment after a back) are quite simple:
https://docs.suitecrm.com/8.x/admin/upgrading/upgrading-82x-versions/
Just give it a try and see what happens to tackle concrete issues.

In the best case, it will be as smooth as this: