Quarterly release cycles

Zuora follows a quarterly product release cycle to allow you greater opportunity to understand and prepare to adopt new and changed features. The release version is first made available on a sandbox environment for almost a full month so that you can familiarize yourself with the planned release content, and test your own customizations and integrated systems before the release version reaches a production environment.

Within the quarterly release cadence, there are four types of releases that follow different release schedules.

The quarterly release schedule is available on Zuora Community. See Zuora Release Management.

Planned major releases

Major releases are deployed once each quarter and include significant updates, new modules, major enhancements, and other significant changes. Four weeks before a major release, code is released into your sandbox environment to provide an opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with the features before they are released to your users in a production environment. You should use this time to test any special integrations or customizations in your instance. The first two weeks of this sandbox window are particularly important for you to report any issues or concerns you find, so that Zuora can address them before the final two weeks in sandbox, when changes are minimized. Smaller defects found after the initial two weeks may be deferred to a subsequent minor release or patch.

Major release cadence is quarterly in February, May, August, and November. Release to sandbox occurs four weeks prior to production deployment. A second release to sandbox occurs two weeks prior to production deployment to address critical customer-reported issues.

Planned minor releases

Minor releases may be made monthly, except for the month of the major release or near end-of-year, and include performance improvements, bug fixes, and minor enhancements that have minimal user impact. Minor releases do not include early access (EA) or general availability (GA) of new features or enhancements. Enhancements that impact the user interface and require training or documentation are avoided when possible, and are instead scheduled for the next major release, or made available privately to targeted customers through the use of feature flags. One week before a minor release, code is released into your sandbox environment for you to perform any final validation required before the production update.

Minor release cadence is monthly except on the month of a major release, and December and January, up to six per year. Release to sandbox occurs one week prior to production deployment.

Planned patch releases

A patch is a targeted update to address specific bug fixes or security vulnerabilities. Patches are minimally invasive and intended to maintain stability and security. In a patch release, code is released to your sandbox environment six days before production deployment.

Patch release cadence is 1-3 times per month. Release to sandbox occurs 6 days before production deployments, while adhering to quiet periods for production.

Unplanned hotfixes

A hotfix is an urgent and unplanned global code fix to address critical issues, or security vulnerabilities that require immediate resolution. Code is released to your sandbox environment the same day as your production environment.

Hotfixes cadence is as needed for critical incidents.

Quiet periods

A production lockdown or quiet period is a period of time when no changes, deployments, or updates are allowed in the production environment. Quiet periods are scheduled during critical business periods and after major releases to ensure stability and minimize the risk of introducing changes that could impact users or business operations.

The Zuora quiet period for production occurs on the last 5 business days of the month and the first 3 business days of the month for all products except Revenue. Revenue quiet period is the first 10 calendar days of the month.

Release naming convention

The release naming convention is Major.Minor.Patch versioning as YYYY.Qn.N.n as follows:

• Major releases: YYYY.Qn = calendar year and quarter

• Minor releases: N = minor release (0=main release; 1=first minor release; 2=2nd minor release)

• Patch releases: n = patch number

See examples:

• Major 2025.Q1.0.0

• Patch 2025.Q1.0.1

• Minor 2025.Q1.1.0

• Patch 2025.Q1.1.1

Release notifications

Customers can learn about the releases from the following sources:

• Subscribe to release notifications on the Zuora Community. See Release Notifications.

• Review the latest version of the release notes.

If you experience issues after a release update, check both of these resources for known issues. Contact support@zuora.com for questions that cannot be resolved through these sources.