If you’ve recently upgraded to Mautic 7.1.2, or started fresh on this version, you might have noticed something odd when creating Select (Single Choice) or Multi-Select custom fields: your options appear to save just fine, but when you reopen the field, the option values are empty. This isn’t a bug per se, but a quirk in how Mautic handles option values that can trip you up if you don’t know about it.
Here’s what’s going on. When you add options to a Select-type custom field, Mautic asks for two things per option: a Label and a Value. The Label is what shows to contacts and users, the Value is what’s actually saved and processed behind the scenes (think of it like the internal code for that choice). However, Mautic’s interface can mislead you. It’s tempting to just fill in the Label (like “Free”, “Standard”, “Premium”) and leave Value blank, expecting Mautic to generate or default the value automatically.
Unfortunately, Mautic doesn’t do that. It literally saves an empty string (“”) for each Value left blank. When you return to edit the field, the options look broken, and your contact data may not behave as expected because those empty values aren’t meaningful internally. The workaround? Be sure to manually enter the Value for each option. A common pattern is to simply repeat the label as the value: “Free” label with “Free” value, and so on.
This behavior is confirmed by users and aligns with current Mautic functionality as of version 7.1.2—it isn’t a bug, just a UX gap. The community suggests improving this by either clearly marking the Value field as mandatory or auto-filling it with the Label value if left empty. Until then, manual entry is your best friend.
Why does this matter? If you’re setting up contact segmentation, dynamic content, or any automation based on these fields, having empty or missing values will cause headaches and unexpected results. It’s a simple detail, but one that can waste time and cause confusion.
So what’s the takeaway? When adding Select or Multi-Select custom fields in Mautic 7.1.2:
- Always specify both Label and Value for each option.
- Don’t rely on Mautic to auto-populate missing values.
- If you run into weird option behavior, check that none of your values are blank strings.
For the full discussion and community inputs, check out the original Mautic forum thread here.
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