Great when it works, but terrible support

  • We happily used updraft for about six months. I evangelized it to multiple people. However, a recent migration totally turfed one of our live sites. This type of problem happens as I imagine there are lots of complex parts, but updraft was absolute useless in trying to trouble-shoot as well as prominently displaying a zero care factor. Essentially every response was “it’s a 500 error, that’s a problem on your server.” While this is obviously correct, it was a neat way of avoiding the fact that the problem on our server was created by the plugin (it turned out to be that the database was only partially copied across). They had zero interest in helping us try to fix it. or even troubleshoot (I eventually worked out the root cause myself). Lesson learnt.

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  • Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    Hi Dylan,

    I’m sorry that using UpdraftPlus did not work out for you. I searched for your support ticket in our system to see if we can learn anything from the experience. In this case, our support agent asked for your PHP error logs, in order to get more information and context for the problem you were having.

    This was not intended to be understood as saying “not our problem”, but was a request for further information so that he could get more information in order to help you. There was nothing in any of his replies which indicated a “not our problem” outlook, and indeed the final message on the chain is from our support team, asking again for more information so that they could help you.

    They remain willing to help you, and so if you want to reply, they will do their best to do so. The final message on the ticket was requesting if it’s possible to receive a copy of the backup in order to re-run a restore operation using it themselves. But if the previously-requested PHP error log is available, that will help them too.

    David

    Thread Starter dylantov

    (@dylantov)

    This is a slightly disingenuous response. There were at least three rounds of messages where I provided more and more explanation on why I thought it was a plugin issue and was told in reply (in two line emails or less with no attempt to seek additional clarification) that

    ?“You could contact your hosts/server admin and ask them to check the PHP error logs”

    “You need to check with your host why that happened.”

    ”?If you also Google the 500 internal server error it is a server side issue”

    Yes I was eventually asked for a php log after I sent an assertive email saying the above was not acceptable.

    In each round of enquiries – there was at least 24 hours of waiting to be told “contact your host” in which our site remained down.

    The final message also didn’t request a copy of the backup – it told us it was not possible to recover – and we would need to attempt manual recovery.

    We eventually fixed it ourselves using a straight ftp/sql import/export – which seems in my mind to clearly show it was not a server issue – as all issues resolved themselves after files were replaced.

    @dylantov,

    Thanks for your honest and detailed review! I came across this review when trying to find out what kind of support I would be getting with the pro version. I’ve had the same painful experience — almost to the letter — that you describe with every expensive plugin I’ve bought: Elementor, Dynamic Content, Essential Addons. At least with essential addons they offered some explanation: They are on the other side of the globe (if you are in the USA like I am) so when I am logging online for work they have already left work and are heading to bed. This seems to indicate there is no night-shift — since when?

    In the 90s I worked at several telemarketing and customer service call centers in Iowa and people were employed round the clock. I don’t know if that’s a “niche” thing and perhaps software support has “always” been lazy, er I mean cheap, er I mean only working the day shift? When I worked at several several helpdesks including IBM and Mattel Interactive in the early 2000s, we were only open for 12 hours I think.

    I don’t know if I’d characterize UpdraftPlus technical support as totally incompetent, but if incompetence was named “Elvis”, then they seem to be finalists for the Elvis impersonator award based on your review. Often incompetence tries to hide itself from truth by shifting blame. A pro product you pay for should at minimum offer realtime 24×7 chat support.

    Dynamic Content (Dynamic.ooo) is sneaky in that they could possibly technically claim that they “do have 24-hr chat support”. But, they don’t. Sure, you can contact them via their chat interface 24×7, but nobody will even bother replied for at least 8-12 hrs.

    Anyway, I was just about to recommend my boss to pay for the pro version of UpdraftPlus, but after reading your post, I have changed my mind.

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