Lots of Issues and No Support

This product has lots of issues with no support. These issues don’t include the weeks of work I’ve spent creating CSS and javascript hacks to fix layout errors, responsive issues, and substituting or hiding text that doesn’t meet my MLS requirements.

Here are just a few of the issues you can expect (in the order I’ve found most problematic):

1. The plugin only allows you to create so many saved searches, which it calls hotsheets. It doesn’t disclose the limit, and if you delete hotsheets, it doesn’t credit that toward your limit. I know this because I’ve created and deleted several hotsheets as I’ve learned how they work. Now when I create a hotsheet, I can see it in the hotsheet manager, but if I create another, it gets replaced, and when I refresh the management screen, neither appears in the list. This sucks big time as my whole hyperlocal strategy is to create pages for each lake in my area that show active listings on that lake.

2. Website visitors cannot save polygon searches to receive email alerts even though kvCORE’s support website says their WordPress Plugin does this. Again this sucks for anyone looking to create hyperlocal search result pages for neighborhoods, lakes, beaches, etc.

3. Most of the lakes/rivers in my area are missing in the plugin. So, even if I tried to work around the inability to save polygon searches, there is no way to filter by lake/river even though “water body name” appears as a filter option.

4. Many zip codes and postal cities are missing in the plugin, so whole sections of my service area cannot be used in searches.

5. Website visitors can only save two searches. This is a big problem for people interested in more than two neighborhoods, lakes, or beaches.

6. Once a website visitor saves a search, they cannot delete it. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except visitors are only allowed two saved searches, and it’s bound to confuse and frustrate users.

7. Some of the search filters make no sense. For example, users can only select 0 or 1 in the dropdown waterfront selection box. That may make sense to programmers like me, but my mom or any other average visitor wouldn’t know what to do. Also, in addition to the waterfront dropdown, there is a “water front” checkbox option in the list of filters, and they produce a different number of search results.

8. There is no way to allow users to zoom by scrolling their mouse over the map. I’m told there is supposed to be a setting in the backend to allow that, but it’s not in my backend.

I wish someone would have told me about all these issues before I invested over a hundred hours learning how this plugin works and developing hacks to fix layout issues. Even more, I wish that I knew that tech support on this product was non-existant. At least if I knew my concerns were taken seriously and being worked on, there would be some light a the end of this dark tunnel.