FluentCRM
by WPManageNinja
Self-hosted CRM and marketing automation: contacts, tags, sequences and reporting stored in your own database.
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What FluentCRM does
Self-hosted CRM and marketing automation: contacts, tags, sequences and reporting stored in your own database.
It sits in the email part of a WordPress stack and is sold by WPManageNinja on a freemium basis. We recommend it in our email guides because it does that one job well without asking you to rebuild the rest of the site around it.
Every plugin adds work to a page request, so treat this as a decision with a cost. Record a speed test before you install it and run the same test afterwards, on the same page, so you know exactly what it charged you.
Real user ratings
Score
4.8/5
Reviews
249
Active installs
80,000+
Downloads
1.9M
Latest version
3.2.0
Last updated
2026-09-03
These figures come straight from the public WordPress.org plugin directory API for version 3.2.0, not from us. Check them yourself on the WordPress.org listing. Our own editorial score is 4.7/5.
Where FluentCRM ranks elsewhere
| Publisher | List | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Elegant Themes | Best WordPress Plugins | #20 of 40 |
Positions are read from the published articles themselves, so they reflect that publisher's order rather than ours. Lists get re-ordered over time, so follow the link if you want the current version.
What changed in the latest version
- New: Unified Messaging for SMS and WhatsApp, with one Inbox for contacts and new people.
- New: Start a one-to-one SMS or WhatsApp conversation with any phone number, even before the person becomes a CRM contact.
- New: Send Messaging campaigns to one-time recipients from a CSV file or pasted phone numbers.
- New: Always-on receiving - any message sent to your business number lands in the CRM Inbox, whether or not the sender is a contact.
- New: WhatsApp templates without leaving FluentCRM - create, manage and sync them in one place.
- New: Reusable SMS message templates for faster, consistent replies and campaigns.
- New: Receive WhatsApp images and documents in Inbox.
- New: FluentCart Create Coupon automation action with coupon smartcode support.
- Improvement: Campaigns start sending immediately instead of waiting for the next cron tick.
- Improvement: Multi-threaded email sending enabled by default.
- Fixed: List and automation report counts on custom database table prefixes.
- New: Sticky notes in the automation editor, kept through export, import and duplication.
- New: FluentCRM contact widget on the FluentCart customer page.
- New: Empty / Not Empty operators for tags, lists and companies in advanced filters.
- New: New MCP abilities for tags, lists and contact filters, plus batch contact lookups and automation enrollment data.
- Improvement: Search, status filter and sortable columns in Sequence Subscribers.
- Improvement: More paragraph font presets in the email editor.
- Improvement: Email sending pipeline reworked for safe parallel workers - the queue is now partitioned by modulo (-modulo / -remainder replaces -offset in cli_send), with owner-token campaign locks and bulk recipient materialization.
- Improvement: Weekly cleanup now clears stored email bodies for sent, cancelled and failed emails to free up database space.
Release notes are the developer's own words, published on WordPress.org. Read the full changelog
Pros and cons
- No per-contact pricing
- A free tier you can trial before paying
- Actively maintained and used on production sites we test
- You supply the sending infrastructure
- The features most sites need sit in the paid tier
How to use it
- 1Install on a staging copy first if the site takes money.
- 2Work through the setup wizard and connect any external accounts it needs.
- 3Configure the one feature you installed it for, and leave the rest off.
- 4Test the result as a logged-out visitor on both mobile and desktop.
- 5Re-run our speed test to confirm the plugin has not cost you load time.
How it compares
Other email plugins we recommend, with their rating and pricing model.
| Plugin | Our rating | WordPress.org | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FluentCRM | 4.7 | 4.8 (249) | Freemium | No per-contact pricing |
| MailPoet | 4.5 | 4.4 (1,431) | Freemium | Newsletters without leaving WordPress |
| Newsletter Glue | 4.4 | n/a | Premium | Write once, publish and send |
Guides that cover FluentCRM
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