Outstanding Software, Support is Poor

  • I have the WP Events Pro installed on 2 sites since last year. The software itself is superb and allows very good customization. Even with great software functionality, I have a few major qualms. Here are the issues that should make you pause:

    1. Support is not so good. First you are forced to go to their forum, which is super slow loading. 15 second page load times? Not sure but it seems that slow. Ask a question via e-mail, and they direct you right back to the forum. Once you get to the forum login page to load, ask your question it might take up to 24 hours. Typical. But often times the answers they give back are not solutions but another angle to check or incomplete answers. Seems like their English is not so great or they don’t understand or read your questions most of the time. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 responses to get the answer you want and a few days later. I am tired of wasting my time in their forum when these issues should already be available to resolve in their documentation. Support may or may not be sufficient, but nowhere near as good as most plugins I purchase for WordPress (and I purchase many as a full time web designer).

    2. Documentation is OK but misses on lots of points. The FAQ’s and common issues lack severely. Honestly, they should just remove the FAQ’s and Common Issues page because they look half baked. If these pages had lots of issues addressed they could save time in the forums.

    3. The login form the software produces is not responsive (mobile friendly) and they claim its the fault of your theme. You have to figure out how to fix it. Easy right? Not so with both of my themes. On both of my paid installations the login page (where you register for event) is not mobile friendly. The right half of the page where the login form displays is cut off. Its your responsibility to fix it. They claim its the theme fault and they can’t build it in, but I use GeneratePress on one site, and on the other a very popular theme. Both times the form is not responsive. In this day and age, how is not having a mobile friendly login form not standard? Yet WooCommerce login page has 2 blocks side by side (and so does every other plugin) that work with every theme. I don’t buy their reason it can’t be implemented due to theme. This is a nagging problem.

    Summary: The software itself is mostly superb and has many, many features. Honestly, I love the software for the 2 sites I have used it on. They do offer support its just not that good if you run into problems. With such robust features and lack of great documentation you are likely to ask questions then wait around in their forum to try and get answers. They have helped me with several issues, a few issues not so much. And not having a mobile friendly login form is a nagging problem. If you are enabling guest login no issue. If you require accounts and login, ISSUE. I don’t like giving them 3 stars and never complain about software, but am tired of them not addressing this after I spent lots of time outlining the issue in support and no solid answer on how to fix the CSS. I am not a free customer but a paid one with 2 purchases under my belt! You have been warned!

    I doubt I will purchase this software for another client. Moving on from here on out. Their support is a waste of my professional time, especially when I am paying them $150 per year. This is my truth.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi Dayton,
    EM user here too. First of all, you are more than entitled to your opinion, of course. So, I am not attacking you in any way. ??

    I totally agree with you on the technical “speed” of the pro forum!

    I do not agree with you on the responsiveness of the booking from. EM comes with a default layout, but you can customize it 100% to your own liking. Layout/styling is not the responsibility of a plugin developer.

    To make anything responsive on your website, it has to be targeted by CSS @media queries, mainly in your theme’s stylesheet. The breaking points for that depend on the screen size(s), font types, font sizes, the theme lay-out and the actual output you are targeting.

    Again, you can style just about anything the way you’d like it best. The only “limit” might perhaps be the CSS knowledge of the webmaster. ??

    I, for one, have styled my EM Booking form to be very responsive according to my blog layout (theme). I am showing the labels above the input fields on small screens, but iPad and up, the labels and inputs are next to each other. That is 100% pure css. Using the same method, you can also decide if you want the log-in form above or below the booking form fields. Above would make more sense to me, btw. ??
    Really, it’s quite easy if you know CSS.

    If you are still interested, I am willing to send you my version of the css used on the booking form to help you get started.
    If so, please open a new topic on this WordPress forum. The review section is not the most suited spot to do that. ??

    Kindest regards,
    Patrick.

    Thread Starter Dayton Design

    (@wbbuilder)

    Thanks for your reply and your time Patrick.

    I do know CSS fairly well and use Firefox Developer tools to identify the CSS on a page but often times get tripped up by the many multiple layers and CSS sheets used by WordPress. Sometimes, I just miss the target. In fact my calendar turns to a list in cellphones using media quarries since a calendar gets too small in a cellphone. To say: “Layout/styling is not the responsibility of a plugin developer.” is very subjective. The person who decides this and makes this statement/rule is the plugin developer. Can you imagine if WooCommerce, WP Bakery Builder, WordPress or any other paid plugin developer made that statement? They would go out of business. The vast majority of WP Events custom software formatting already works properly inside my already responsive template, its just the calendar and this login form that doesn’t typically play well with a responsive template. My point: It should work already once inside a mobile template by default for the most part. Its just this nagging login form.

    Which is why I asked for help in their forum and got no clear answer. They could have offered a bit of help whether they make the statement to help with CSS or not. Many other WordPress plugin developers will help a little even if its outside their plugins fault or their responsibility, if you are a paying customer and if it affects their plugin. Not that its guaranteed or offered.

    Its very nice you offered to help, I am appreciative of your gesture. Its more their responsibility to assist with good service (regardless of what they decide to list in their terms) than yours. This wouldn’t have been that hard to assist for them especially for a paying customer. To me, this is lacking customer service on their behalf.

    Layout is not the responsibility of the developer. They can assist and point in a certain direction, but not responsible. Simply because the entire layout is subject to many other things a plugin developer has no control over and are specific to that blog. Down the line it is the webdesigner who is responsible for the end result of the design. ?? A developer is responsible for the technical part of his plugin (no errors, safety, technical usability, etc).

    Any layout is always subject to taste. You may find something looks great, while others get goosebumps. ??

    It should work already once inside a mobile template by default for the most part.

    A theme can never target plugin-specific css classes. How is the theme developer suppose to know how the plugin developer named his outputs? And how is a plugin developer suppose to know which theme will be used? It’s up to the webdesigner to simply combine the two: add the plugin class names to the already existing theme classes in its stylesheet or create new ones if the defaults are not sufficient.

    There have been attempts to standardize layout (think of Bootstrap, Genesis, etc), but that is not mandatory, of course.

    Also, I’ve plowed through the Pro forum and have not found any topic in more than a month that could be yours. There were other questions about styling the booking form and the Support Team did answer them all by giving helpful pointers, etc.

    I am sorry you feel ignored by them. As a five-year customer I just do not agree they give bad support. But that’s just my opinion. ??

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Outstanding Software, Support is Poor’ is closed to new replies.