I'm not sure where to post this, this seems the most appropriate.
This is not a post driven by anger, but an honest review of my experience with socialapps.tech. Of course, I am angry with the whole experience, but more importantly, people should know about how they work before they purchase their packages. And reading thru some of the posts here, it seems my experience is not unique.
1. Products
Their products are not polished, and do not work as expected out of the box. To be specific, many of their plugins have multiple bugs. UI bugs, logic bugs etc. I spend most of my time raising tickets to fix simple stuff like dropdown menu being covered by the content, buttons not aligned, buttons not consistent throughout the website etc. Heck, even their emoticons set is not consistent across their plugins. And I spent months and months raising tickets like these.
2. Response time
Tickets are usually picked up only after a couple of days. And the response is something like "We noted the error and can reproduce it, please give us some time to resolve it". Then they will disappear for 1-2 weeks. Granted some are answered faster, but NEVER at the speed at which they claim on their website or during sales. Never on the same day, never resolved within 1-2 days
3. Tickets not resolved
Many of my tickets are not resolved to satisfaction. And in frustration I have given up on many of them. They are not critical to the function of the website but it makes the whole experience so much worse.
An example is emoticons will display as gibberish when posted from mobile. I raised this issue and MONTHS later, its still not resolved despite bouncing back and forth. They just fix the post that I screenshot to them many times, but the root of the problem is still there.
Another problem with networks and profiles, members showing up in wrong networks etc, up til now, can't be resolved.
3. Staging website
They just setup a duplicate website on the staging site and that's it. All debugging is not done on the staging site and the bugs that were there stayed there. Up to a point I don't even want to ask them to debug on the staging site coz of their response time. Imagine taking so long to do something on the staging site, then repeat the painful process with them on my live site.
Anyway, I thought at one point, that updating my socialengine version will solve many issues, so I went ahead and bought the upgrade and socialapp's service to upgrade for me. I requested them to do it on the staging first. And I kid you not, it took 2 months for them to upgrade on my staging site, reasons being that their plugins not being compatible (what they said) with the upgraded version. AND this is the version they advised me to purchase that is supposed to be compatible!
I was in contact with them throughout the 2 months, sending chasers after they don't respond for days or up to 1-2 weeks. And finally when they say its done, i checked and yea, bugs all over. How on earth can I entrust them to proceed to upgrade it on my live website?
I gave up, I've paid too much for their plugins and custom work and the upgrade for it all to fail like that and I still don't have the website I want. But I've got to cut my losses. I'm gonna rework my website from scratch and remove everything.
Thank you for posting in a professional manner. This is the appropriate place to post reviews for third parties and their products. I am sorry to hear you are having these issues. v6 is a major improvement and the removal of mootools, plus the custom zend upgrade, would require plugins to be reworked and probably custom work too. I hope you have a better experience moving forward with your site.
I am getting so close to posting my experiences with them!!!!!
Jason Stone said:
I am getting so close to posting my experiences with them!!!!!
I have not use socialapps.tech but was closed to use them. I am working with the team from socialnetworking solutions, and i am building an extremely complex site, probably the most complex site ever created with SE script.
It has been a tough ride- but overall the guys have been responsive. But yet again, my budget is probably way over what normal users have here. But a new plugin or adaptions dont have to cost the shirt. Just be specific and they will do what you need if it is possible.
Myself had many suggestions to improve both site security, login security, fraud screening, etc. It would be to much to share here.
I have no clue what you want to acheive with your site- but i dare to say this- i know the SE script well enough that i really know its capabilities.
Br
Well I don't dare to say that I am very technically inclined or know the SE script super well. Thats the very reason that I wanted to go with SE, a solution that has most things working out of the box. Just need some customization on the themes, the logos, the nitty gritty like profiles, network etc. Didn't think I'd have to troubleshoot the functionality of the plugins to that extent.
Glad that you have a better experience with SNS. They are now the new owners of SE right? Makes sense that they should be more responsive and better equipped in terms of compatibility and technical.
scandi said: I have not use socialapps.tech but was closed to use them. I am working with the team from socialnetworking solutions, and i am building an extremely complex site, probably the most complex site ever created with SE script. It has been a tough ride- but overall the guys have been responsive. But yet again, my budget is probably way over what normal users have here. But a new plugin or adaptions dont have to cost the shirt. Just be specific and they will do what you need if it is possible. Myself had many suggestions to improve both site security, login security, fraud screening, etc. It would be to much to share here. I have no clue what you want to acheive with your site- but i dare to say this- i know the SE script well enough that i really know its capabilities. Br
You said a lot without saying anything other you have a big budget. This will come across negative, i'm aware but your post didnt contribute. We have been in a stale mate with 3rd party developers for Se and a competitor for years, unfortunately the patter is the same, bugs in products, which they may fix but dont tell you how which adds to my annoyance. In my own opinion, SE should do away with 3rd party providers because the latest have been poor. and just movce to a bi annual sub where they update their product with the most popular apps-addons and uold their income from that.
I love the product but the choice and support for some advanced features is bad, its always been bad. If SE wants to survive, you need to change your model.
Donna you're amazing, your apps are the only apps i've used bug free.
A foot up the ass is what is needed now, we have moved on from old tech to new, but the apps provided by 3rd party is bad.
its time for SE to own advanced apps and give their customers what they want.
This forum needs a mega rework too, i only quoted a post on the above and look how it turned out
Yes, I do get what you are saying peppa pig killa. What areas are you looking for improvements? Which plugins?
Since SE with all plugins from Socialnetworkingsolutions (i use 80%) of theirs it gets quite a heavy site, and many challenges arise.
For videos i mainly u se a third party script (in development) because it has it own specific needs.
Photos i think mostly the mobile experience needs improvements.
If there are any specific areas you are looking for developement in- reach out, we can chat.
Br
PeppaPigKilla said:
This forum needs a mega rework too, i only quoted a post on the above and look how it turned out
That's how to keep the threads visible and to help the developers improve.Donna where do you post your plugins? Are they available for download?
Isnt socialapps a moderator in this forum as well?
Glad to see the forum is under rework.
I would consider looking at SE as it is now as standard, then look at the advanced plugins and start to sell niche add-ons for the company, every 6 months a small fee for updates, also an additional small fee for niche updates every 6 months too.
I would be happy enough to pay social engine every 6 months 50-80 USD for renewal updates and advanced features.
Similar to IPS.
Let's make this product bug free, bring it in house, allow indie devs to continue what they do but not at the magnitude they do with the poor support they do.
rabbithole said:
Donna where do you post your plugins? Are they available for download?
Isnt socialapps a moderator in this forum as well?
I can think about finding a way to distribute them.Thanks to Rabbithole for the professional content. I have the exact same problems. I have purchased several socialapps plugins and extensions and almost none of them works bug-free. Most of the bugs came after I upgraded to SE6.3 and then upgraded my plugins to version 6.3.
It has been more than 2 months since I am struggling with frustrating scenario of sending tickets back and forth. Each bug takes at least a week to fix and then I come across several more bugs. Most of the time I receive a copy-pasted ticket asking me to wait.
Now after 2 months of challenge, I gave up fixing some of the bugs and asked them to fix only the bugs of two major plugins. Now, they are telling me that their plugins are not compatible with php 8!! They could have said this in day 1 !!
They told me that SE6.3 is mostly compatible with php 7.3!!! and are asking me to downgrade from php 8 to 7.3. I showed them that in official SE article it is clearly stated that SE 6.3 required at least php 7.4 and php 8 is strongly suggested. Finally, they told me to wait several other weeks for them to upgrade their plugins to 6.4 or downgrade to php 7.3 or 7.4.
I really don't know what to do. I'm not sure if Donna has any contact with their higher ranked personnel (as we are restricted to contact them only via ticketing to support personnel). If so, please ask them to put a warning on their site: DO NOT UPGRADE TO SE 6.3 OR ABOVE IF YOU ARE USING OUR PRODUCTS
We are using 6.3 on PHP 8 on our managed sites. It works fine. What doesn't appear to be working fine is their plugins. I am now disabling their developer account per upper management as we have not been able to get any response from them and I sent two emails - one of which was to their owner.
We suggest that you change to another developer who is keeping their plugins updated and responding to you and to us. Either our sister company, SocialNetworking.Solutions , or another developer. At the moment, with a lack of response from SocialApps.Tech, this appears to be our only recourse.
This is a bit sad- but most likely their business is down significantly. With metaverse coming out in 2-3 years it will be tougher to run your own sites,
everyone will get more dependent on facebook, apple, google, etc to be part of their metaverse. This is the future- maybe not in 1 year, but 5-10 years it defintely will be a completely different way we connect with internet.
SE i think should improve more on core and offer more addons together with socialnetworking.solutions (for real professionals). I think thats the way forward.
Or even integrate completely with each other- because when you only deal with the script developers and no third parites- i am not sure what route is best, but thats most likely how I would run it. For me it was why i choose to work with SE and SNS, because you have true support.
Donna said: We are using 6.3 on PHP 8 on our managed sites. It works fine. What doesn't appear to be working fine is their plugins. I am now disabling their developer account per upper management as we have not been able to get any response from them and I sent two emails - one of which was to their owner. We suggest that you change to another developer who is keeping their plugins updated and responding to you and to us. Either our sister company, SocialNetworking.Solutions , or another developer. At the moment, with a lack of response from SocialApps.Tech, this appears to be our only recourse.
This is sad, and really angers me. They promised the sky when communicating with their sales team, upsold me the full package and along the way got me to pay for support and plugins that don't work well. At least hearing all these real user reviews now, lets me know that I was not alone in the experience. But thats still thousands of dollars down the drain for a dysfunctional website. Looking on the bright side, I'm glad I cut loss when I did. Anyone has any real user reviews of SNS, please do share, I was on the verge of switching full scale to them, but held back coz of my terrible experience with SAT.
scandi said:
This is a bit sad- but most likely their business is down significantly. With metaverse coming out in 2-3 years it will be tougher to run your own sites,
everyone will get more dependent on facebook, apple, google, etc to be part of their metaverse. This is the future- maybe not in 1 year, but 5-10 years it defintely will be a completely different way we connect with internet.
SE i think should improve more on core and offer more addons together with socialnetworking.solutions (for real professionals). I think thats the way forward.
Or even integrate completely with each other- because when you only deal with the script developers and no third parites- i am not sure what route is best, but thats most likely how I would run it. For me it was why i choose to work with SE and SNS, because you have true support.
If they had been producing quality plugins but lacking in support due to manpower issues I can still understand.
In fact, if they had been producing quality plugins that works out of the box as it should, I don't even need so much support. So the issue is not that the business is down significantly, its that they are churning out half baked plugins that are not fully tested and charging for it, and expected to get away with it.
The reviews I see here mostly give up on chasing the tickets after sometime due to frustration.
I do agree that SE and SNS should be more tightly integrated, and SE should vet through 3rd party developers more tightly before featuring them or giving them any exposure at all in your forums, website etc.
rabbithole said:
I do agree that SE and SNS should be more tightly integrated, and SE should vet through 3rd party developers more tightly before featuring them or giving them any exposure at all in your forums, website etc.
Thanks to everyone for providing their valuable info and comments. Specially thanks to Donna for being responsible and present for each and every topic in this community.
I have three questions and it will be appreciated if anybody with experience with socialnetworking.solutions and socialapps.tech responds:
1- Are socialnetworking.solutions plugins tested and compatible with php 8.0?
2- Do you have any experience with socialnetworking.solutiolns support (I don't want to re-live that terrible situation)
3- Is it possible to have some plugins from socialnetworking and some other from socialapps? (I haven't fully checked the socialnetworking plugin list yet but may be they lack some of the functionalities that we need)
Best Regards to all
Dr. Mahmoudi, We have used Socialnetworking.solutions extensively. They have been very professional and responsive to our requests. They have a variety of plugins which extend the basic SE platform to provide features our community expects. Because we are 12 hours behind in our time zone, we are patient because we know they will respond.
Best of luck.
drmahmoudi said:
1- Are socialnetworking.solutions plugins tested and compatible with php 8.0?
2- Do you have any experience with socialnetworking.solutiolns support (I don't want to re-live that terrible situation)
3- Is it possible to have some plugins from socialnetworking and some other from socialapps? (I haven't fully checked the socialnetworking plugin list yet but may be they lack some of the functionalities that we need)
Yes, I also confirm. SEA had a lot of trouble keeping up with the evolutions of the CMS.
They had to update all their plugins and it took a long time.
From our side, we knew it would happen but we had already purchased dozens of plugins for several sites. Currently, we have migrated only one site and have enormous problems...
And worse, we are still in version 5.9 on our sites for fear of migrating definitively.
So we've been waiting for all plugins to be up to date for 15 months.
We are very very worried about the future of our sites and are thinking of leaving SE permanently to change CMS.
We are losing money every day because of this situation. (Which we had planned when SE was taken over by SNS).
Let's pray that everything gets back in order quickly to move forward and develop our sites.
Thank you for your testimonials and we will continue to support SEA... loyal to our suppliers.
Or we will definitely move to wordpress.
Leaving would be worse than changing out your plugins for other up to date plugins though. You still have third parties to deal with in order to get the features you want and I've used the various community plugins there and they didn't compare to this.
Precisely, we do not know if it is possible to change the plugins.
Serious malfunctions may have altered the contents.
We spent a lot of money, were very very very patient.
And for us it is clearly becoming financially critical when everything was going very well before.
We don't know what to think or do...