SimplePress Suddenly Starts Charging For Support

I didn’t like the way simple press yanked the support from underneath us in which we now have to pay for support and plug-ins. However, I need a simple plug-in but I don’t like paying $39. Does anybody want to share in the membership cost? I just need at least 1 other person but preferably 2 or 3. If so contact me at my member name at juno.com.

Interesting this discussion, as I have been looking at wordpress integrated forums, and short-listed Mingle and Simple Press does anyone have links to their existing forums so that we can view them?

The fact that they haven’t entered this discussion in four months says a lot about their commitment to supporting the product. It doesn’t exactly give one confidence that spending $39 would be good value.

Simple:Press looks like it will do everything I need, but the information that is publicly viewable is pretty sparse.

So how do I know that the information hidden away behind the too-expensive support fee is any better? Answer: I don’t! And I’m not going to pay $39 to find out that they don’t give a stuff, or that they talk in riddles, or that they take ages to reply.

If these people had a clue at all about marketing, promotion and customer service they would have a user-supported forum which they kept out of and so didn’t “waste” their valuable time. There is a place for paid-support, but as the only avenue for product configuration information it’s a very poor business decision.

I looked at Mingle Forum some time back and the big feature it was missing was no ability to notify members of new posts to the forum or to follow a particular thread. The developer kept threatening to provide that feature for a long time, but nothing ever happened. Has that changed?

I think it’s just dissapointing that they don’t tell you upfront. It is still “fronting” as a free tool but once you’ve sort of committed you get to the page where the price is a surprise. They can charge whatever they want but they have wasted my time because they lead one to believe it will be free.

AND its not just $39, it’s $39 a month right? I hope I am wrong.

$39 for two months, $99 for 12 months.

Utterly absurd whichever way you look at it.

It’s not cool SimplePress did this, but I understand why.

If people are looking for truly free forum software MyBB, FluxBB, and Simple Machines Forum (SMF) are probably your best options.

I was searching for a forum earlier this year for my site that played well with WordPress; preferably integrating with it seamlessly.

I tried Mingle forum at first. It was ok. If all you need is the barebones, Mingle will do. I decided I was looking for something more robust. After doing a lot of research, it came down to VBulletin or Simple Press.

VBulletin is considered the most comprehensive forum software around. A license will cost you over $100 though, and it doesn’t integrate into WordPress seamlessly.

On the other hand, the Simple Press forum software is free, though you have to pay either $39 for two months or $99 for 12 months to view and write in the support forum, and download the various plugins.

For me, Simple Press won out because I only had to invest $39 for help and the plugins as opposed to over $100 for VBulletin and more importantly Simple Press will integrate into WordPress perfectly. In addition Simple Press has a lot of bells and whistles I was looking for.

If you only need barebones, go for Mingle. If you need or want a more robust forum experience, I’d go with Simple Press. In my opinion it is worth the minimum $39 you put into it. I’ve received outstanding support. My inital questions get answered within 2 hours.

They are now offering a demo experience for those on the fence: https://demo.simple-press.com/

This still does not excuse their behaviour and treatment of current users, Boba.

I guess you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs…
It’s not possible to please everyone, especially when it comes to business.

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After Simple:Press drove me away (see my first post above) I kept looking, and I came up with a different solution altogether.

Think about it: exactly how much WordPress integration do you need of your forum? For most people it will simply be the same look ‘n feel across your WordPress site and your forum, and a common login to both.

The ability to customise appearance is built into most forum software, so look ‘n feel doesn’t really become an issue. So thinking that the implementation of the common login might be possible with code, I broadened my search parameters to include ANY forum software.

Keeping the story short, after many trials I settled on giving Phorum software a good run, and I haven’t looked back since. It’s flexibility is incredible and, although I haven’t implemented that feature myself yet, making a common login between WordPress and Phorum is quite possible and has been done by many participants in their *FREE* support forum. Oh, and did I mention that Phorum itself is also *FREE*(donations encouraged and welcome)!

Unfortunately I’m no coder yet, but even I have managed to make some tricky behind-the-scenes modifications to the way that Phorum operates. As a beginner coder the only problem I have with Phorum is that some of their most advanced adherents sometimes speak in shorthand in reply to technical please-help questions. But if you are polite, persevere and keep digging, you will find what you need and you can do pretty much anything your heart desires with this software.

If you are already competent with PHP and CSS there are no limits to what you can do as far as modifying Phorum to your own requirements. But even if you are a coding dummy like me this solution is WELL worth looking at. Even in its stock standard form it is the best forum solution of the many I looked at.

https://www.Phorum.org

I agree with this discussion. I originally gave a sizable donation for their efforts. They gave me two months free(?) support when they changed to a fee base support system. I too get their desire to charge for support, but think that a lot of issues can be resolved within the community and the principles need not even get involved.

I am now in the process of changing to a different forum software. I originally started with Mingle Forum. It was a nice, good performing system, but has some major limitations (for my needs). I’m now running a test forum using phpBB3 – https://www.phpbb.com/. It’s free, but it isn’t a WordPress plugin so there are some difficulties with bridging it with WP. There is a plugin, WP phpBB Bridge…but I have not been able to get it to work (and frankly have given up). There also is a plugin called WP United – https://wp-united.com , but it is in a major overhall and previous versions haven’t worked for me. With all that said, I think phpBB3 will be the way to go. It has some major similarities to V-Bulletin which I am very familiar with. All support is free and the community has developed a lot of add-on’s to improve the forums based on specific styles, tastes, etc.

I’ve used phpBB3 for nearly a decade and it’s the best forum software around but it will never properly integrate into WordPress. It’s not a plugin and never will be. So I looked at Buddypress/bbPress but those solutions seem light years behind phpBB3. It’s almost like no one there has real experience running a large message board. Plus, the designers and users seem to disagree about a lot of things.

That lead me to WPMU which requires $39.50/mth and honestly their plugins just don’t look like I think they should. The Chat, for example, seems almost cartoonish.

So next was Simple Press. I think that’s the closest to phpBB3 that I’ve seen. They seem to have a good idea of how message boards are supposed to work. But I looked at the support boards and noticed that you can’t read any of the replies to some important questions unless you’re paying for support. And frankly, how a company answers support questions tells the real story, because no matter what plugin you choose, you’re going to have a lot of questions. Also, they claim to have a importer for phpBB3 but I can’t access the docs for it so without paying I really don’t know what its limitations are. In other words, I’m not sure it will work for me.

I’m really not sold on any of these at this point.

yea i think they should have a free site as well. i downloaded simplepress months ago, after usng phpbb for years, and simplepress ran fine without me even needing anything; i jus kept everything at default. i just ran the default but then i logged into my site today and simplepress had disabled all my forums because it said it needed an upgrade. so i clicked upgrade and now the simplepress forums has somehow become detached from my web site and no longer integrated. and of course i’m not going to pay a monthly fee for a simplepress on a web site that only gets views from like 10 people a month. the money just does not justify the means to pay so much for it.

I have a bit of sympathy with the SP devs. They were putting a lot of work into improving the plugin and providing support in the forums, and presumably weren’t getting enough back in donations.

However, so far I’ve been reluctant to pay $39 or $99 when generally I only need to ask one or two questions a year. If I could buy a week’s access that’d be much better.

Actually, I’d much rather they charged a fee for the plugin itself, then provided support FOC to their customers. The extra functionality plugins for the forum could be sold for a small fee too.

As it is, there’s nothing to stop someone setting up an unofficial forum to provide free peer support. If it did well it might make the SP devs rethink their pricing policy. Anyone fancy doing this?

While I was in the process of changing to phpBB I had a Simple:Press update that I installed. Forums broke after the update, can’t post anything new…the editor is not functioning. I’ll bet there is a simple fix, but since I can no longer view the Simple:Press forums there is no way to find out. An error on their part and they want me to pay for fixing it. Ain’t gonna happen.

Well, I have phpBB running now, have all the database transferred and deleted Simple:Press. Adios! Simple:Press.

It’s too bad really, I liked Simple:Press. It had some advantages over phpBB, but I’m not going to look back now.