Will Version 6.3 be released soon?

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

I'm planning to start a new installation of the elastic stack the week after the next week.
As I need to have an alerting service, I wonder if version 6.3 which now contains XPack also has the ability to alert and send mails with the free license, or would I need to install a plugin which is capable of doing this?

Does anybody know when version 6.3 will be released, will it be soon or shouldn't I wait and just go for the current release?

Thanks.

2

As I need to have an alerting service, I wonder if version 6.3 which now contains XPack also has the ability to alert and send mails with the free license

No. Alerting is available with a gold license.

Does anybody know when version 6.3 will be released, will it be soon or shouldn't I wait and just go for the current release?

We never announce release dates.

I hope it will happen soon (soon does not mean any delay though). But you can just start with latest 6.2 and switch to 6.3 when released.