What’s new in HiveCRM

New

• Clients are emailed when your team replies to their ticket. Every non-internal staff reply (from the dashboard or through an AI assistant) sends the client an email with the reply text and a link that opens the ticket in their portal. Internal notes are never sent.
• Your team is alerted when a client replies from the portal. The assigned staff member (or every admin/manager if unassigned) gets an in-app notification and an email. A new “Client Replied on a Ticket” notification preference lets each person switch the email on or off.
• Both emails are editable templates under Settings → Email & SMTP → System Event Triggers (“Ticket: Reply Sent to Client”, “Ticket: Client Replied”), with placeholders {client_name}, {author_name}, {ticket_num}, {item_title}, {reply_message}, {ticket_url}, {admin_url}, {org_name}.
• Workflows can trigger on ticket replies. New “Replied” trigger event for tickets, plus a “Last reply from (client / staff)” condition field and {last_reply_message} / {last_reply_author} placeholders — for example, “when a client replies, create a follow-up task for the assignee”.

New

• Pay invoices online with Stripe or PayPal. Every unpaid invoice now shows “Pay by card” (Stripe Checkout) and/or “Pay with PayPal” buttons — in the header and in a payment panel next to the totals — for whichever gateways you have enabled under Settings → Payment Gateways. The client is taken to the provider’s hosted, secure checkout and brought straight back to the invoice.
• Automatic settlement. When the client returns, HiveCRM verifies the payment directly with Stripe/PayPal (nothing in the URL is trusted) and marks the invoice paid: amount paid, due = 0, status, gateway, provider reference and a timestamped activity entry. Stripe and PayPal webhooks remain supported as a backup, so an invoice is still marked paid if the client closes the tab. Settlement is idempotent — a webhook and a return for the same payment never double-log.
• Client portal shows a “Pay now” marker on invoices that can be paid online.
• Zero-decimal currencies (JPY, KRW, …) and PayPal’s no-decimal currencies are handled correctly.
• A merchant’s lapsed license never blocks a client from paying an invoice.

Changed

• The WooCommerce “Pay Online” button, which opened an empty WooCommerce checkout, has been removed. The WooCommerce toggle now clearly describes what it does (customer/product/order sync). Routing invoice payments through WooCommerce checkout stays on the roadmap.

Security

• Fixed an issue where CRM records could be read through WordPress core’s REST API (/wp-json/wp/v2/…) without logging in. HiveCRM’s own API was always protected; the core endpoints for HiveCRM record types are now disabled entirely. All HiveCRM data is now only accessible through the authenticated hive-crm/v1 API.

Improvements

• Leads Kanban board now scales to large pipelines. The board loads 50 cards per column with exact per-column totals and a “Load more” button, instead of loading every lead at once. On a 3,000-lead test site this took the board from ~0.8s and a 3.7MB payload to under 0.1s and 127KB.
• Drag and drop on the Leads board. Drag a lead card to another column to change its level. Changes save immediately and revert with a message if the save fails.
• Faster lead lists. Linked contacts and organizations are now loaded in bulk, so list and board views no longer run extra database queries per card.
• The leads API now returns standard X-WP-Total / X-WP-TotalPages pagination headers.

Initial public release. HiveCRM is a complete CRM that runs inside your own WordPress site: leads, deals, contacts, proposals and invoices, projects, tasks, support tickets, a client portal, a visual automation builder and a built-in MCP server for AI assistants. One dashboard, your own database, no monthly subscription.

Sales

• Leads with levels, sources, tags, budgets, assignment to staff, list and Kanban views, server-side search and filtering, one-click conversion to a deal.
• Deals with multiple sales pipelines, custom stages per pipeline with win probabilities and colors, Kanban and list views, weighted pipeline value for forecasting, and per-pipeline stats.
• Contacts (people and organizations) with statuses, tags, custom fields, linked deals, projects and invoices.
• Clients — contacts with billing and portal access, created manually or automatically from a won deal.

Billing

• Estimates & invoices with line items, taxes, discounts, numbering prefixes, due dates and reminders.
• Convert an estimate into an invoice in one click.
• Online payments with Stripe and PayPal, with signed webhook verification.
• Secure, token-based public invoice and estimate pages with PDF download.
• Recurring invoices.
• Products & Packages catalog with pricing, SKU, tax rate, one-time or recurring billing.

Delivery & support

• Projects with statuses, budgets, start and end dates, linked client and deal.
• Tasks with statuses, priorities, types, due dates and assignees, linked to leads, deals, projects or contacts.
• Support tickets with priorities, statuses, threaded replies and internal staff-only notes.

Client Portal

• A self-service portal on your own site for clients: dashboard with amount due and overdue, deals, projects, invoices (view and pay), tickets (open, reply) and account settings.
• Each section can be shown or hidden; new tickets and replies can be allowed or disabled.
• Logo and site name white-labelling; the portal page is created automatically on activation.

Automation

• Visual workflow builder: trigger → conditions → actions on a drag-and-drop canvas.
• Triggers on any record being created or updated (leads, deals, contacts, projects, tasks, tickets, invoices, packages).
• Conditions on fields such as lead source and level, deal stage and budget, invoice status and total, with equals / not equals / contains / greater than / less than / is empty operators.
• Actions: send email (with merge placeholders), create task, add tag, update field, call webhook.
• Run history per workflow showing every match, skip and action result.

AI (MCP server)

• Built-in Model Context Protocol server so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other assistants can work with your CRM.
• 43 tools: search across the CRM; list, get and stats for leads, deals, contacts, clients, projects, tasks, tickets, invoices and packages; create and update leads, deals, contacts, clients, projects, tasks, packages and tags; convert a lead to a deal; create invoices and estimates with line items; update invoice status; reply to tickets. No delete tools by design.
• Connect with an Application Password (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor) or OAuth with a consent screen (ChatGPT, Claude.ai). The assistant acts with the permissions of the WordPress user who authorised it; connections can be revoked at any time.

Integrations

• WooCommerce sync: customers → contacts, products → packages, orders → deals, with order status changes logged on the deal.
• Form integrations: Fluent Forms, WPForms, Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms submissions become leads (and contacts), with the full submission captured.
• Google Meet and Google Drive integrations.
• Outgoing webhooks on record events, for Zapier, Make and custom endpoints.
• Public REST API with per-module access toggles and Application Password authentication.

Platform

• Roles: Admin, Manager, Staff (scoped to their own records) and Client (portal only), with a full capability map.
• Custom fields on every module.
• Tags across all modules.
• Email: PHP mail, custom SMTP or Brevo relay, with editable templates for every system email and a delivery log.
• In-app and email notifications with per-user preferences.
• Trash with restore for every record type.
• Dashboard with total leads, active deals, pipeline revenue and open tickets.
• Global search across all modules.
• Licensing with automatic updates from the HiveCRM dashboard; a lapsed license keeps your data readable.
• Lightweight footprint: loads nothing on your public pages except the client portal and invoice pages; admin assets load only on HiveCRM screens.