CiviCRM Extended Security Release (ESR) has slowly grown in popularity as a very stable version of CiviCRM that isn’t too far removed from many of the great features that have shown up in the latest stable version, namely SearchKit, FormBuilder, and the River framework.
For organizations that want to avoid the monthly upgrade process, CiviCRM ESR is a good potential option.
There are lots of success stories about CiviCRM, nearly all of which are provided by CiviCRM partners. That makes sense as they are the experts at implementing, customizing and managing CiviCRM for organizations all over the world.
CiviCRM is growing and improving rapidly, ensuring that organizations around the world have access, more than ever, to an amazing open source CRM and that they have full control over their systems and data.
In fact, on February 1st, 2026, the number of known installations of CiviCRM hit 14,349, the highest in the history of the project!
In lieu of publishing an annual report this year, we're kicking off a monthly snapshot that provides an overview of 1) ecosystem growth and 2) project sustainability, along with a few extra tidbits.
I want to talk about sustainability. Not because it’s an easy or fun thing to talk about. I mean, we’re talking money, which can be pretty off-putting to some. But, it is an important topic.
Consistent with our push over the past year to optimize CiviCRM brand awareness, we recently rebooted the monthly Community News email and began cross promotion of it and its individual items (blog posts, event announcements, etc.) on to other channels such as LinkedIn and Blue Sky.
Yeah, you read that right. We’ve been working CiviCRM version 5 for so long now that it’s almost, but not quite, a household brand. That all changes on 5 March 2025 when the official release of CiviCRM 6 lands.
For 2025, the CiviCRM-D7 integration will continue to receive basic support, but usage is discouraged. Specifically:
Next year, CiviCRM will celebrate 20 years of existence! And while some things have changed dramatically in both the community and software, our mission has remained the same: to ensure that all organizations, regardless of size, budget or focus, can access a world-class CRM.
Our commitment to this mission is as strong as ever and is, in fact, a primary driver behind an impending change in how we present CiviCRM via https//civicrm.org, its primary marketing channel.
What’s this DocBot all about? Well, in short, it’s an AI-based bot that puts the end user, developer and system administrator documentation into a CiviCRM extension that allows fast, efficient Q&A style searches. Basically, it puts the entire CiviCRM documentation at your fingertips, providing answers and how-to style guidance in-app.
