Thread

Hi,
I am going to try and keep my English grump attitude out of this, as my opinions do not really matter… but a couple of queries…

1 - Support has gone enterprise, so does this mean the end of the forum based support. Are these forums all but dead now, and going to fade out along with #eecms, #frup, pro network, affiliate program, community, etc?

2 - If the forums are still alive… The lowest plan Silver is response within two days (personally if i am paying, not sure that is good enough, but anyway), so what time line does that put the forums on? Response within a week?
I ask this not to be awkward, but to know what to pre-warn my clients to expect when working with a EL based product, and what time scales to put on projects.

3 - Originally when i started using EE, i was very happy and the support was legendary. Now, in order to get the support level i was used to i have to pay - therefore, i assume that the price of EE will drop to reflect the new added costs of support, as EE no longer comes with support included?
Perhaps this is naive of me, as i know you would never do such a thing, but if forums are dead - well all but defunct due to slow response times, i am not sure what premium product i am paying for? Using the magento enterprise model - it makes sense as it is a free product, but clearly EE is not, and never will be.

4 - If i do take out one or other enterprise support packages. And i file an urgent ticket to you, but the problem is proven to be an EE bug. I assume that “urgent ticket” will be refunded as the issue was EE related? Not sure why we the customers should be paying for a product, paying for support, just to find it was nothing we were doing wrong!!!?

I hope these questions were okay to ask - as the responses will drive my agencies direction going forward. Unfortunately i can only see this being the end of our use of EE as support times and costs will be prohibitive to my clients. I know many will say i have the wrong type of clients, and if $300 is too much, then the projects not worth while. But my agency is built on smaller tighter margins and is quite successful with it, and the projects are more rewarding as such. I can justify everything EL against a fortune 500 company, but my local dentist, less so! But both need a site - i guess just not an EE site!

Thanks, Neil

It’s a little hard to understand why one urgent ticket a month costs $49 and two tickets a month costs $299. Can you please explain what you have in mind?

About 2) I actually thought the 2 days was the Unlimited number of tickets response and the urgent one quicker (I hope I am right!), in which case I would like to know how long the Urgent ticket response time is on the Silver plan.

P.S. Are these posts even being read my EllisLab now? Its a dark dark day for what was brilliant EE!

But my agency is built on smaller tighter margins and is quite successful with it, and the projects are more rewarding as such.

As is mine and that is exactly how I want it to be. To me this is EE saying their product is no longer aimed at our market. I’m baffled to be honest, historically EE has had a great reputation amongst the freelance community and I would have though many smaller sites would be more lucrative than few big hitters. Oh well, I give up, I’m moving on.

While I can see people paying for “premium support”, this is very different from “no free support at all” for a $200 product.

Not a good move.

I used to recommend EE to other Designers. The active EE Staff in the support forums was one of the benefits that I thought came along with the $300 price tag.

I will continue using EE, But I think that the paid price for support is kind of high, and then 2 days to wait for the base support plan (I know that is the worse case scenario), but REALLY?!?

I don’t think I will be able to convert anymore wordpress fans over to EE now.

While I can see people paying for “premium support”, this is very different from “no free support at all” for a $200 product.

Not a good move.

it is no longer a $200.00 product. you can only buy a license for $299 now. the personal version is gone.

At least many others out there are in my business area - and feel the same. EL only want top end agencies, and not smaller agencies and freelancers.

I bet Brandon Kelly is laughing his arse (sorry english spelling!) off with BlocksCMS just around the corner.
In the mean time i’m going to dig in deeper with Concrete5 for as many projects as i can, and only use this as my fallback CMS now, rather than my go to system. It is funny how few license i have bought from EL of late!

Hop Studios have summarised this pretty well too:
http://www.hopstudios.com/blog/ten_reactions_to_ellislabs_major_policy_shifts_eecms

And this tweet is so true too:
Dan Horrigan @dhorrigan
So if you want to find out what #eecms’ features are, you have to look through the docs. Way to go @EllisLab, you made a worse site than M$!

And volume discounts are gone… so am i now, i slap to many from EL.
So i assume a rebrand is coming ExpensiveEngine and EnterpriseLab!!!

it is no longer a $200.00 product. you can only buy a license for $299 now. the personal version is gone.

I just noticed. I guess they don’t need the “small money” any more.

So,
- 300$ Software
- no free support
- no volume discount
- no personal licenses

I guess I need a new favorite cms.

[eta] and spam is back, too.

I’m well peeved that the volume discounts have gone, that was one of the big attractions in the first place - having a reward for loyalty.

Add to that no non-commercial licence any more and that’s instantly added a significant wedge to any small or non-profit site.

$100 may not be much in the US, but in the UK that’s about £60 (+ volume discount) extra that the customer has to fork out. That may only be about 5% on a £2000 site but it all counts. Or put another way £100 could keep me in food for a month!

Here’s hoping Ellislab will consider loyalty and bring back volume discounts at least!

NOT HAPPY!

I logged on this morning to pay for two licenses for two previous quotes i had made…I didn’t proceed because i would have been $100 out of pocket!

I emailed EllisLab about it and have had no response, so i posted in the bug tracker…i got a response then, albeit not a very good one 😊

EllisLab have slapped all their loyal customers in the face…and no matter how much i enjoyed using EE at times I will now be looking elsewhere out of principle!

I’m not sure if the 3 months of support with a license covers license just purchased before the change.

I just purchased a license last month. I tried accessing support, but was not able to. I was just presented with a screen saying “Please subscribe to a support Plan”.  So I have emailed sales(at)ellislab.com yesterday to see if I’m eligible, or just out of luck, but as of yet have not heard back.

Personally I am bummed about the volume discounts being gone, but a company has to make a profit. So I kind of look at it like a price increase. well, OK.

I miss the support forum. I have found that 99% of the time, everything I needed was just a quick search in there. I am going to miss the EllisLab Employees in there.

Paid support, that would be OK, but 2 days! Come on!

Also is everybody jumping ship over there? I have hear of 2 big names gone in the past month. Leslie Camacho no longer CEO, and Lisa Wess is now at Pixel and Tonic.

Speaking of Pixel and Tonic, I can’t wait to see with what they come up with in Blocks

Just wanted to add that I’ve switched to Couch Cms for smaller sites. It’s affordable, you can download and start working with it for FREE and it also has a tag structure like Expression Engine. Once you have finished the site you can buy a 19 dollar license and thus remove the banner. I really tried to use Mojomotor but it behaved unreliable in the front-end (all sorts of js issues) and support was extremely slow/none.

It’s not Drupal, but it’s amazingly easy to use for the end-user, and they’ve really created it with the freelance webdesigner in mind.

Wow, I contacted sales via email with a question on how to set up support for a license purchased prior to the change over. I emailed them at 1:25 pm on Wed the 28th of Nov.

I have still not heard back from them.