MailWizz 2.0 is here

We are very happy to announce the release of MailWizz 2.0.
MailWizz 2.0 is a major MailWizz version with many improvements and new features.

Going back in time a bit

When we released MailWizz 1.0, more than 7 years ago, we promised compatibility with PHP >= 5.2 up to latest PHP version, which at the time of writing this article, is PHP 8.0.
Over the years we released more than 150 MailWizz versions, all of them maintaining our promise.

However, keeping compatibility with older PHP versions has its cost, and it is not small.
This meant we actually shipped code that was loaded specifically only for various PHP versions, as a clear example, we would ship different vendor folders for PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 and >= 7.2, then the code itself would make some features available based on the PHP version and loaded libraries.

As you can imagine, this approach has a few problems because managing the code base would be difficult, debugging would be difficult as well and the archive containing the application, weights no more, no less, than 380 MB.

Rewrite or improve?

Given the above, but also the fact we wanted to make use of all the newer features that PHP has to offer, we decided that it is the time for a change.
In order to keep our promise for 1.x versions, we couldn't just drop support for older PHP versions and call it the day.
Given the size of MailWizz, it's almost impossible to rewrite it so we decided that we will improve it instead, and since we follow semantic versioning, it just made sense to start working on a new major version.
Once the guys from Yii Framework (the backbone of MailWizz) confirmed they will keep the framework up-to-date for the upcoming years, we knew our decision is correct.

The changes

We have a list with the most meaningful changes on our KB, but there are a few things that worth mentioning, as follows:
- Minimum PHP version required for MailWizz 2.0 is PHP 7.2
- Great performance improvements overall
- We now have a very solid test suite, more than 1000 unit tests and more than 300 acceptance tests
- We now have a solid testing framework for the send-campaigns process
- We're using modern PHP features in our codebase
- We now have a better extensions manager and base classes for extensions
- We have a new queue system for heavy tasks
- MailWizz's 2.0 archive now weights just 127 MB
- So much more...

Some of the new features

While this major release is about technical aspects, we also managed to add a few features that we couldn't add without going down this road, as follows:
- Customers can now have sub-accounts, with permissions
- Campaigns for multiple lists/segments can be created
- All translations are handled in the web interface, no need for translation files anymore
- New delivery server providers (InboxRoad)

What about other features not implemented yet?

We are aware MailWizz 2.x needs to step-up and we need to improve/add many things.
This release has all the right changes in place that will allow us to add all the needed features in the near future.
This was a needed change in order for us to be able to implement new features in a sane manner.

Rollout plan for MailWizz 2.0

MailWizz 2.0 will be the default version people will download from now on.
Once 2.0 is installed, or once you upgraded to 2.0 from 1.x, MailWizz will be able to auto-update itself for any new version from the 2.x branch.
Upgrading from 1.x to 2.x will only be possible if it is done manually following the steps from KB.

What is the plan for MailWizz 1.x?

MailWizz 1.x has now entered maintenance mode. This means it will not receive new features anymore, just fixes.
You will be able to use MailWizz 1.x for as long as you need. If you're using latest version, which currently is 1.9.34 and we release new versions with fixes, you will be able to upgrade to these versions, either manually or automatically.

How about MailWizz's extensions?

In the upcoming days, we will update all MailWizz's extensions so that when you download them, you will get the extensions for both versions and you will only upload the right one for your current MailWizz version.

Final thoughts

MailWizz 2.0 is the result of thousand hours of hard work where we fixed issues and improved so many things.
We highly advise to try MailWizz 2.0, be it by doing a fresh install or an upgrade from 1.x.
We think you will be very pleased with the changes.