not worth the effort

I have long hesitated to even write a review, especially as it is quite unrealistic to expect this company to take any HINTS from bad reviews, looking at their excuse-generator named “Andrew”. Btw.: Andrew, in real life, is one of the better support persons of this company, but he is strictly a 9-5 person, week-ends off, as all others are. If you have holiday season of any kind no answers for a week are the norm.
This is quite normal for a regular company, but NOT for anything happening under the auspices of WordPress, where helpdesks are usually populated 24/7 and often around the world. Even single person enterprises often support their non-paying customers on weekends as it is seen as a task and prospect rather than a job you “clock in” for.

So what do you have to expect when going the ID way:

1) Unless your site has a one-time-only crowfunding endevour the 500.- bucks enterprise version is mandatory. With the 150.- commerce license you cant do chained or parallel payments and in general submitting projects is a drag. The basic version really is good for nothing, as is the “free” version. So dont even try unless you do not value your own time.
2) Expect BUGS. yes, plural. And do NOT expect them to be fixed for you right away or anytime soon – probably in the next update, which may be far away.
3) Do not take ANY function for granted. Just because it looks like its supposed to work in a specific way doesnt mean it actually does. Not even fuctionality you would assume to be essential (like receipts for payments)
4) Expect to be left alone when the area of expertise leaves the immediate vincinity of ID, e.g. questions regarding the payment gateways are often ignored with the advice to ask THEM. So THEM might then refer you back to ID, can you spell “between a rock & a hard place”?
5) Expect MANY others competing for support time. All you get then is the lame excuse that they are understaffed but work to change that situation. Maybe so, but maybe also too late for ME.
6) The dreaded weekend: you put in a ticket on thursday and PRAY that it gets worked on on Friday, because if it doesnt, you next chance is MONDAY. Often answers are rather follow up questions – even if you answer them immediatly they wont be addressed before – you guessed it – the next day (if you are lucky)…. so one issue easily can take weeks until resolved.
7) You start putting in questions too early, because you fear late responses – but the forum software does not allow editing. leading to a chain of your msgs before someone from ID looks at them – very messy and easy to remedy, but NOT remedied – why?
8) Their documentations is spars, you can not search it (!) and its in wide areas outdated, also features are mixed from various versions which is very confusing. IMO nobody can set up a working CF site ONLY using the docs, no matter how experienced or smart he is. But that should be possible.

In Conclusion:
This company seems to have released a half-baked product WAY too early, likely trying to improve it “on the road”, but at the expense of early customers. In a year or two it may be worth looking at again. quite possible a fully functional bug-free CF platform is then available for relatively little money. But we arnt there yet.

At e.g. peopleperhourdotcom fully developed CF platforms, made to your specs, can be had for $ 500,- – and even if that requires another 500.- for getting it finally into the shape you want, that is done in 10 days, not 10 weeks, and ten weeks is FAST in the world of ID!

So if you want a new hobby, have time and money to burn (mostly time) and are an expert in php and CSS and WP, go for it.

If not, go somewhere else!