Not ready for high-volume, enterprise use.

  • We have been following the work of Eric and Matt, since they took PeepSo from the stagnant clutches of Joomla.

    Job well done, and PeepSo has gone from strength to strength, on WordPress. Nice work!

    Building a solid app within the disciplines of the WordPress framework, is a good thing, but when wearing technical blinkers, it can be bad.

    I preface this review by saying that PeepSo is a great product. Innovative functionality, frequent updates, and responsive support. No problems there.

    These words are penned with over 40 years on the Internet, extensive experience in building communities. Dating back to the bulletin boards of the ’80s, the online forums of the ’90s, culminating with the social networks of today. We are affiliate marketers, who know how to build communities of hundreds of thousands, into millions of users.

    That, is what this review is about: Scalability and transactional email deliverability.

    Neither of which PeepSo do well. Yet.

    I say this after 5 years of PeepSo use, on 48 communities, and purchasing 50 Ultimate Bundle licenses.

    PeepSo works fine, until you start to scale it. Install the Email Digest, allow users to set whatever notifications they wish, and you have an email problem.

    It’s about the efficient flow of transactional emails. These have to be managed carefully, and piped through mechanisms, that can handle the flow.

    SMTP is not suited for high-volumes. A better solution is HTTP API and passing emails through services specifically designed to do so, like Mailgun and Sendgrid.

    When suggesting these solutions to PeepSo, the answer was to use third-party plugins, which DEFINITELY does not bode well for scalability. Think, weakest link.

    After personal interaction with the CTO of PeepSo, it’s clear that there is no willingness to explore more robust solutions, via API.

    These suggestions coming with strong hints, that our agency user base of 100+clients, and several thousand consulting clients built up over 40 years, look to us for community solutions.

    More commercially-minded vendors would be quick to say, “Let’s see what we can do!”

    To make a long story short, we have come to the conclusion that PeepSo, does not understand transactional email volumes, the limitations of the SMTP protocol, the need to protect IP address block reputations, and the enterprise marketplace.

    While sticking to the WordPress framework has merit, thinking that (wp_email) will suffice, is the technical bottleneck that will also stifle PeepSo’s commercial growth.

    A combination of technical blindness and lack of business acumen, does not bode well for an emerging product.

    In my experienced opinion, and seeing MANY products come and go, PeepSo is destined to remain in the little league.

    Yes, if you are running a Mom & Pop community, and/or don’t expect your community to scale, PeepSo is a good solution.

    However, if you intend to manage a large community, and/or intend to use PeepSo on 100+ communities, like in our case, then PeepSo is not the way to go. Buyer beware.

    This review bears no malice, and I wish PeepSo everything of the best, in the marketplace they wish to thrive in, which is not the enterprise space.

    My thoughts here, are intended to help others, who are looking for a robust community solution, with a transactional email API.

    Cheers,

    Herby

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  • Plugin Contributor Matt Jaworski

    (@jaworskimatt)

    As we already replied in our community (in painstaking detail), piping emails through a third party service – be it MailGun, SMTP or any other – is a job for a third party plugin. That combined with the fact WordPress and PeepSo are both open source gives you all the flexibility you need.

    The fact you felt compelled to repeat yourself in a low star review tells more about yourself than us.

    All the best.

    Thread Starter ZaGenie

    (@zagenie)

    Matt, there was never a personal attack, on you, but if that is where your youthful inexperience takes you, then c’est la vie. You will learn and grow. Been there, done that myself. I’ve been on the ‘Net since 1982, before you were even born, and I made the same mistake of letting my technical arrogance, or lack thereof, cloud my judgement.

    My review here, is a sincere attempt to forewarn others, that the CTO of PeepSo, does not fully understand the technical implications of transactional email overload. No third party plugin, using SMTP, will resolve that.

    The only way for PeepSo to become a serious player in the enterprise marketplace, is to build in direct API gateways, to services dedicated to delivering large volumes of email.

    It’s a technical opinion, based on actually purchasing 50 licenses from you, and giving it serious use, for over 5 years.

    We reserve the right to express our opinion here, and give it as many stars as we like.

    That is what these reviews are for.

    Cheers,

    Herby

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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