Thread

First you sell bug filled products, then you start to ask MONEY for support requests. This product is dying soon…

Ironic right? If we went the free open source route, at least we would have support and we would have paid 0$.

I feel the same, we paid the software and now support is gone, you need to pay for it as well, the community is also pretty much vanished.

I guess the software will be completely dead in 12 months, because its funny how the account looks now. You can reports bugs for free, but support is paid for a PAID software.

I don´t know a single company that sells software and then ask money for reporting problems for it as well. If they expect people just to log in and report bugs for free with nothing in exchange, nobody will. In some months since nobody will be reporting bugs, it will be a so bugged that it nobody will use it. Same with allot of softwares.

The only reason a software, mostly in open source models works is because:
1. Allot of users report bugs
2. Have a great community

Problem is you rely on the free developers for bug fixes, if they software is huge, this is not a problem as they get fixed very fast. Without a community a software is pretty much dead and this is what I see with EE today. People are gone, the forums are empty, they now even charge for reporting problems with their own software.

Its seems someone wants to kill the company on purpose. Otherwise why would they alienate users like this. I see on other “competitors” forums allot of EE users, that want to migrate.

FinPete, you have personally received over 60 hours of free support for ExpressionEngine. Even at an average help desk rate of $15/hr, that’s more than $900 worth of support that you’ve received. What you expect from us is not sustainable and does not scale. New users get three months of high quality private support for free. If they need continued professional support beyond that length of time, it is available as needed. Free community support is still available, with improved tools for finding and providing solutions, and our documentation still rocks.

Nibb, just a brief clarification, we don’t charge to report bugs nor do we rely on free developers for bug fixes. Likely your incentive for reporting a bug in our software is the same incentive I have to report a bug to the maker of my text editor. I use the product and want their developers to know about issues I have found so that they can fix them. I don’t expect anything in exchange other than hoping it will be addressed in a future release. They’re not trying to trick me, I simply found a defect that they weren’t aware of. This process is separate from providing assistance using or learning the software, and rightly is not tied to our support plans. Anyone can log in and report defects at https://support.ellislab.com/bugs.

FinPete, you have personally received over 60 hours of free support for ExpressionEngine. Even at an average help desk rate of $15/hr, that’s more than $900 worth of support that you’ve received. What you expect from us is not sustainable and does not scale. New users get three months of high quality private support for free. If they need continued professional support beyond that length of time, it is available as needed. Free community support is still available, with improved tools for finding and providing solutions, and our documentation still rocks.

Nibb, just a brief clarification, we don’t charge to report bugs nor do we rely on free developers for bug fixes. Likely your incentive for reporting a bug in our software is the same incentive I have to report a bug to the maker of my text editor. I use the product and want their developers to know about issues I have found so that they can fix them. I don’t expect anything in exchange other than hoping it will be addressed in a future release. They’re not trying to trick me, I simply found a defect that they weren’t aware of. This process is separate from providing assistance using or learning the software, and rightly is not tied to our support plans. Anyone can log in and report defects at https://support.ellislab.com/bugs.

Of course users report bugs because they are affected. My point was that the less users use a product, the less bug reports they will get, so it will have more bugs. The more people use a product, and more it will sustain the tests of time and usage, and so bugs reports will flow in allot faster. I would love my customers reporting bugs, and they don´t. Even if I pay them 1$ for each bug they find in the website, even like that, nobody even cares to report me a bug when they see one. That was my point. Bug reporting should be something that is helping a product.

I don´t expect Ellis Lab to install EE for me, or to configure it, or to custom code me something. But what happens if something happens wrong in an upgrade. Like it did for me 2 days ago, as I have a custom “admin.php” file name, the installer said the page did not exist. And it failed. The installer failed. I figured out for myself and renamed the page back to admin.php and the installer worked. This is something not explained in the upgrade either. As far as I see, I could not even ask for help, because that would be support.

Yes. Support is free in the forums, but honestly what will happen when most free contributors start to desert? A forum is just as good as its members. If someone posts a problem in the forum and they never receive a solution that is just as good as no help at all. What will happen if the same user post his problem in a Wordpress forum and gets 10 replies the same day with help and solutions. You don´t need to be very smart to see which product they will choose.

Don´t get me wrong. The model of Ellis Lab can work but only if the forums remain active, and if support is actually something of value. A company would be willing to pay 50$ a month even if they don´t need it, because its a guarantee for their website, but when they need it I don´t think they will be comfortable to wait 2 days for a reply. That was my point.

Also, if we go that route, I don´t see how that model is any better either. 50$ a month or what ever plan you choose for unlimited requests. Why not make a support plan like pay per go, 3$ per request, or something similar. That would stop support abusers sending tickets for every single issue they have, as even when the fee is low, its still a fee. And this would not alienate little users like me that cannot afford an extra 50$ a month right now.

Your conclusion is based on the assumption that our user base is dwindling or will dwindle, but that’s not what we’re seeing take place, though there is understandably some visible turmoil with the changes. However, these changes are intentional to intensify our focus on what’s important, and to avoid overreaching and dilution of that focus. That has an end result of a better product with fewer bugs that is faster at innovation with better education and support resources to go along with it.

I do appreciate your feedback on the pricing of the support plans, though. If you haven’t already, please activate your Silver Support plan so you can experience it first hand and measure its value to your business. You will have three months to try it out before ever being billed.

Im not sure what exactly means support regarding EE. I don´t have any problems with the product itself, except that I can´t use it very well as its to new to me and it requires more a developer mind in order to do some stuff. If support actually does involve this developing questions which are probably the ones I have, “how can I do this, or that” then its worth every penny.

If its just for support with the product, like problems on install, errors, etc. I don´t think I need it right now. Regardless if what it does or does not include, I think the pay as you go model could work very well as well. I know this because I also had “unlimited support issues” for a fixed monthly price for my customer, and the ones that paid it made me work all day just for them for that money, so im sure in some models the only way support can work, is to charge per time or issue.

And I do agree 100% with going after a commercial/enterprise model, the reason why I went with EE is because it was a paid product in the first place. Nothing wrong with open source, but I just want to feel safe a company is behind it when something is going or can go wrong. I just feel a bit sad when I saw some users that seems to be really into EE that want to jump of the ship. I would love if the community stays strong as this was one of the things I read for days when Googling about EE before my decision, that it had a strong community and that is a huge point for me.

The bottom line is that our customer advocates want you and your client to succeed. Try them out and ask your questions. If it’s something that’s outside of the scope of what we can provide an answer to, I’m willing to bet that they’ll still point you in the right direction, because they simply love helping people.

That is the problem. Most people here are web designers, web developers, etc and have their client for which they build a website/web app. Im the end user. I purchased EE for my own use and I plan to use it for another site as well in the future when I master it a bit more. Sadly I don´t have time to play around to much, so even while its running, the biggest feature I used so far was the snippets and global variables. I actually even still edit my pages externally. I don´t use anything else yet, no channels, no entries, nothing. My needs where very basic, but I still went with EE because I wanted something that could scale in the future.

Well we still want you and your client to succeed, that sentence in your case just refers to a single person. 😊