Upcoming Changes to CommCare and Impact on Self-Hosted Instances
Follow-up to our July 25, 2025 post
Starting December 1, 2025, Dimagi will make significant changes to CommCare that may affect self-hosted instances. This announcement explains what’s changing, why, and what actions we recommend.
What Is Changing
Starting December 1, 2025, Dimagi will begin removing many Feature Flags from the CommCare HQ codebase as part of a broader effort to simplify and streamline the platform.
Feature flags are hidden features in CommCare that extend functionality beyond core features supported on CommCare’s Software-as-a-Service cloud offering. They are typically built for specific projects. As a result, feature flags are not supported with the same safety, reliability, or scalability guarantees as CommCare’s core features.
With major shifts in the global development market affecting many projects, it is essential that all CommCare features be fully supported by Dimagi to ensure long-term sustainability. One-off feature flags undermine this goal.
As a result, starting December 1, 2025 and continuing thereafter, Dimagi developers will be working on an initiative to:
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Retire many feature flags that create risk and slow development from CommCare’s codebase.
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Absorb the most valuable flags into the core product with full safety and reliability guarantees. This includes those identified as priorities by self-hosters we consulted earlier this year.
Recommended Actions for Self-Hosters
All self-hosted instances have the ability to enable any feature flags by default. As a result, these changes may introduce breaking issues for instances that depend on feature flags we remove.
To mitigate your risks, we recommend taking the following actions before December 1, 2025.
Step 1: Determine your risk
Because Dimagi staff can’t see into self-hosted setups, you’ll need to check if your project is actively using feature flags and assess the risk. To check your flags, visit /hq/flags in your domain (e.g., https://your-domain.com/hq/flags).
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If you don’t see any feature flags, you will not be impacted.
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If you do see feature flags, your project is likely to be affected.
Step 2: Figure out your next steps
If you are being impacted by this change, we recommend deciding on the best path forward before December 1, 2025. Those options include:
- Preserve Your Current Implementation (Recommended for Stable Projects)
If your current CommCare instance is stable and meets your project's needs, and you are concerned about the risk of future breaking changes, we strongly recommend that you fork the current codebase. This will create a version of the software that you control entirely, ensuring that our upcoming changes will not disrupt your operations.
- Stay Current with Our Releases
If you wish to continue receiving updates and new features, you will need to be prepared to adapt to these changes (which includes losing features). This will require closely monitoring our releases in Github and dedicating resources to update your instance as feature flags and other functionalities are modified or removed.
- Move to CommCare’s fully managed cloud offering
Transition to Dimagi’s managed cloud service for full support, reliability, and ongoing improvements without the burden of self-maintenance. You can do this by reaching out to sales@dimagi.com.
Please feel free to reach out to support@dimagi.com if you have any questions.