Cloudron Forum

A lot of improvements have happened to CiviCRM since it was first requested. These are summarized here. I hope we can package it for Cloudron: CiviCRM Improvements Since March 2018 (Focus on Standalone for Cloudron Packaging) + Roadmap Hey folks, CiviCRM is now at 6.12 (as of March 2026), and the changes have been transformative — especially for self-hosted use cases like Cloudron. Here's a breakdown of the main improvements: 1. No-Code/Low-Code Revolution: SearchKit + FormBuilder (Powered by APIv4) SearchKit (rolled out ~2020–2021, constantly enhanced): Visual query builder that replaced most legacy searches. Create complex joins, aggregations, charts, calendars, maps, saved searches, dashboards, and Smart Groups — all shareable and embeddable. FormBuilder (Afform): Drag-and-drop custom forms and workflows (events, contributions, petitions, data entry, etc.). Supports conditionals, multi-step forms, drafts ("save and finish later"), and deep SearchKit integration. These tools + mature APIv4 are the biggest game-changer for flexibility without PHP hacking. 2. CiviCRM Standalone – The Big Win for Self-Hosting & Cloudron Introduced as an extension (early 2020s), then moved to core and stabilized/promoted with CiviCRM 6.0 (March 2025). Runs completely without Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, or any CMS — just CiviCRM + a web server + database. Cloudron-friendly features: Official tarballs, Composer support, and Docker images published with every release (civicrm/civicrm on Docker Hub). Built-in user management, email login, 2FA, and dedicated extensions (Auto Logout for Standalone, Standalone Switch User, etc.). Simpler stack, fewer dependencies, easier updates, and cleaner resource usage. This is the single biggest reason to be excited: packaging Standalone is far more straightforward and maintainable than the old CMS-integrated versions. 3. Modern Theming & UX: RiverLea Theme Framework New theming system launched ~2024 and made default/popular in 6.x. Uses CSS variables (separates structure from styling), resulting in much lighter/faster themes (~15–30 kb vs. megabytes). Major UX/accessibility gains: Dark mode, better contrast, keyboard navigation, accordions, error messaging, and responsive design. Makes branding and future core UI changes far less painful. 4. Technical Infrastructure, Performance & Stability Smarty5 migration completed in 6.12 (2026): Dropped old Smarty2 for better security, performance, and modern PHP compatibility. Entity Construction Kit (ECK) (stable ~2025): Create custom entities via UI — they automatically get SearchKit/FormBuilder support. Ongoing performance tweaks, better multilingual support, improved logging, imports, and admin screens rebuilt with the new tools. Regular monthly releases + Extended Security Releases (ESR) option for stability-focused users. 5. Core Feature & Extensibility Enhancements Better handling across Contributions, Events, Cases, Mailings, and CiviMobile (native app). Stronger integrations (e.g., Mailchimp Sync) and a thriving extension ecosystem. Accessibility upgrades throughout and general polish that makes the whole system feel more modern and reliable. Promising Features on the Horizon / Roadmap (2025–2026+) RiverLea polish: In-app customizer, better frontend/public theming, and full accessibility compliance (community interest high, though some core funding paused). Deeper SearchKit/FormBuilder integration into more core admin screens (AdminUI/SearchUI work ongoing). Continued ECK evolution for even richer custom data models. Enhanced reporting (Pivot Reports), financial tools, and automation features. Focus on Standalone improvements, headless/API-first use cases, and overall stability (community sprints and CiviConf driving this). Overall verdict: CiviCRM has gone from a capable but somewhat rigid tool to a highly flexible, modern, self-hostable platform. Standalone + RiverLea + SearchKit/FormBuilder make it especially attractive for Cloudron packaging right now. Tips on must-have core extensions would be awesome too! Links for reference: Release announcements → https://civicrm.org/blog/tags/release Standalone install docs → https://docs.civicrm.org/installation/en/latest/standalone/ Docker repo → https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-docker Looking forward to your thoughts!

Great, let me know if anything else is off

What Cloudron fights you on for Plane: the single-container model. It is probably better to just use Plane's Docker Compose and run it on its own little VPS. Plane is not a monolithic app with a database bolted on. It is a distributed system with nine services, a message broker, and an object store. Cramming all of that into one container with supervisord is not how any of those components were designed to run. It works (Outline, Cal.com, Seafile, and Zoneminder have all been packaged this way), but the result is fragile in ways that a Docker Compose deployment is not. If the Celery worker crashes and supervisord restarts it, that is fine. If LavinMQ crashes and takes in-flight messages with it while the API is still accepting requests, you get silent failures that are hard to diagnose. The failure modes multiply with the number of co-located services.

@girish said: @CaeruleusAqua are you asking about custom bcc feature or custom haraka plugin? Custom haraka plugins won't be supported, this is not on the roadmap. Bcc feature might be. For 9.2, it will be primarily a mail feature release. looking forward to 9.2 now

Not familiar with Crystal, but one of the strengths of RabbitMQ is that is built with Erlang, a battle-tested, high-performance, fault-tolerant platform.

Thanks my bad.

Nanobot now available as a Community App CloudronVersions: https://communityapps.appx.uk/cloudron-nanobot/CloudronVersions.json CommunityApps website: https://communityapps.appx.uk [ @community-apps ]

RabbitMQ is of use for supporting Plane on Cloudron. It has quite high resting RAM requirements. So, LavinMQ might be even better as lighter resting requirements. https://plane.so/ Plane requires RabbitMQ (AMQP) for all async job processing. The Worker and Beat Worker services consume from RabbitMQ queues. There is no way to substitute Redis for this purpose: Plane switched from Redis/Celery to RabbitMQ explicitly. Cloudron has addons for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis, but nothing for AMQP/RabbitMQ.

@timconsidine Well done! Another accolade!

@joseph thanks a lot for your prompt answer. I migrated and after 24 hours I saw this problem. So, right now what other I did: I enabled LAMP recovery mode I disabled LAMP recovery mode I rebooted whole VPS (not only LAMP app) Problem is solved after those further steps. Migration script could be improved to update cron job container ID if any cron job configured in a specific app.

@Joseph apologies - fixed [image: 1773494816159-screenshot-2026-03-14-at-13.26.26-resized.png]

@girish Totally understood logic. Thanks a lot for your answer.

The self-host quick start is for VPS deployment using docker compose an Traefik. Not what is needed for Cloudron.