We are pleased to announce the release of Interspire Email Marketer v8.7.5. It is one of the most substantial updates we have shipped in the 8.7 line. This version touches nearly every part of the platform, from how you protect subscriber data and build your emails, to how you measure what’s actually working and keep your bounce processing running smoothly on modern mail servers. It’s a release built around a simple idea: give you cleaner data, a better building experience, and fewer things to worry about behind the scenes.
Here is a closer look at what’s new.
Protect what matters most
Not every field on a subscriber record is created equal. Names and interests are one thing; account numbers, and other sensitive details are another. With the new encrypted custom fields, you can now store that sensitive information with strong encryption at rest.
The best part is that encryption doesn’t get in your way. Protected fields still support exact-match search, so you can continue to look up and segment subscribers the way you always have. Because protection is configurable field by field, you decide exactly what gets locked down, turn it on only where it matters and leave everything else untouched. Safeguards around exports and merge tags help ensure protected values are not inadvertently exposed in the places data tends to leak.
A better way to build
The drag-and-drop email editor has been upgraded to its newest major version, giving you a more reliable and responsive editing surface. Previews now run in isolation from the rest of the admin interface, which means the styles in your email no longer collide with the styles of the application around it. What you see in the preview is what your subscribers get in their inbox.
To go with the upgraded editor, we have completely refreshed the bundled template library with modern designs, each built to render cleanly across every major email client.
We have also extended preheader text support beyond newsletters to autoresponders and saved templates, so you can craft that all-important inbox preview line no matter which type of email you are sending. It is a small touch that consistently improves open rates.
A clearer view of performance
Understanding your campaigns should be effortless, and your statistics now look the part. Open and click reporting have a refreshed presentation built around clean metric cards and engagement curves, making it far easier to spot trends at a glance and understand how each campaign is really performing.
Enhanced bot detection
Great-looking reports don’t help much if the numbers behind them are inflated. Automated traffic from security scanners, link checkers, and other bots can quietly pad your open and click counts, and make campaigns look more successful than they really are. Version 8.7.5 enhances the platform’s existing bot detection to more accurately separate genuine human engagement from automated activity.
You stay in control of what you see. A one-click toggle lets you switch between filtered and raw numbers whenever you want to compare, and administrators can tune the detection sensitivity to match their audience and sending patterns. Exports now include a column that flags robotic activity, too, so the distinction follows your data wherever it goes.
More reliable bounce handling
Bounce processing has been modernized from the ground up. It’s been migrated to a modern IMAP library for broader mail-server compatibility and better PHP 8.4 support. IMAP-based bounce accounts no longer require a separate PHP extension to work. When you set up a new bounce account, auto-detection now prefers secure SSL/TLS connections, so you get an encrypted setup by default whenever your server supports it.
Security
As always, this release continues our ongoing security improvements.
Get started with 8.7.5
Already an Interspire customer?
You can upgrade to 8.7.5 right now. As with any upgrade, please back up your files and database first, and review the upgrade notes in the release documentation, particularly if you plan to enable encryption on custom fields that already contain data.
New to Interspire?
There’s never been a better time to start. Interspire Email Marketer is self-hosted email marketing software you own outright: one license, no per-email fees, no monthly subscription, and your subscriber data stays on your own server. Everything above ships in the box. Get Interspire Email Marketer today and send your first campaign in minutes.
