[Plugin: Tribulant Newsletter]: Some bad experiences with the company

  • menathor

    (@menathor)


    12 years, 1 month ago

    Hey all,

    Just wanted to share my recent experiences dealing with Tribulant after buying their WordPress Newsletter Plugin. They’re not great.

    The short version is the plugin doesn’t work out of the box with Weaver. They offered to edit the theme for me which was nice, but I don’t like breaking auto-updates so I declined.

    Unfortunately, they’ve been very stubborn about offering me a refund. There are no issues with piracy since the plugin does a serial check with their servers whenever it runs. Cancel the serial key and it’s useless.

    So I naturally assumed if it didn’t work they’d be happy to give me a refund. I didn’t think to look at their “no refunds” statement which is in “Policies” under the “Support” section (isn’t “Support” normally something you click on AFTER you’ve bought something?). And there were certainly no mention of this policy on the plugin or checkout page.

    They offered me a “credit”, but if you’re only interested in the one product a credit is as good as keeping the money.

    To top it off, when I politely brought these points up with them, they just stopped responding to my support emails.

    Very, very disappointing guys. You don’t offer a demo version to try despite the fact that it’s serial-protected, don’t make your refund policy obvious to new customers.

    M

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
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  • Wysija

    (@wysija)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    Try wysija newsletters:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wysija-newsletters/

    Check out the video demo, and you’ll get a sense.

    We have a freemium model, so you can use us out for free until you get bigger or need more features.

    alexranc

    (@alexranc)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    You can also tryout OptinSkin. I recently got it and it works wonders too. Their support is also top-notch 😉

    All the best,

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    That Tribulant Newsletter “plugin” has already been on the top of the list of worst buys since 2009.

    It’s actually unbelievable that those guys still manage to pull off that trick, some business model.

    Well basically your only safe bet is solutions like MailChimp, Aweber or Constant Contact as sending lots of email through your own host never is a good idea…

    Wysija

    (@wysija)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    To respond to Piet, you can reach very good deliverability rates if you mix the Wysija plugin with a professional SMTP provider.

    Because this is an important issue, we have 3 emailing partners. Check it out:

    http://support.wysija.com/knowledgebase/send-with-smtp-when-using-a-professional-sending-provider/

    Thread Starter menathor

    (@menathor)

    12 years, 1 month ago

    Yeah, tell me about it! Ah well, live and learn I guess. Hopefully the fact that this is the first result here when people search for “tribulant newsletter” will save some others from making the same mistake.

    I’ve gone with phplist on my server sending via an authsmtp.com account. Works really well, great delivery rates because of authsmtp and it’s much cheaper than aweber etc. Worth checking out as an alternative.

    Syrehn

    (@syrehn)

    12 years ago

    I was really surprised to read the negative comments about the Tribulant Newsletter plugin. Any Google searches with “tribulant newsletter plugin review” yields positive reviews from 2009 to present I hadn’t found one that was on a list of “don’t buys” right off the bat.

    I’ve had nothing but success with them. I have the software installed on several sites, several themes, with 0 issues.

    I’ve contacted support a few times (wait time was a bit long) but everything was always resolved. I’ve even suggested several feature changes to them in the past and each one of those were implemented into updates.

    Sorry to hear about your troubles menathor. 🙁

    It was neat to see the alternative mailing list option links. I might have to look into the WYSIJA plugin at some point.

    metadataconsulting

    (@metadataconsulting)

    12 years ago

    Warning about Tribulant Shopping Cart, recommend do not buy.

    Tribulant’s Canada Post shopping cart module implementation sucked and provided no gateway error feedback to user like the UPS module. Good luck trying to debug that in a reasonable time. I fixed the logic error after 10hrs of work. Anyhow the Canada Post module is a direct copy of of http://www.allaboutweb.ca/sf/canship/developer.demo.php !

    More at http://metadataconsulting.blogspot.ca/2012/03/tribulant-wordpress-shopping-cart.html.

    Help was doggy and defensive, these are a bunch of kids, be warned.

    If you need help setting up Canada Post module I have can help. Contact me and I have set-up the Canada Post Gateway correctly on Canadapost.ca and Tribulant side. Documentation is missing greatly for this.

    keeperbay

    (@keeperbay)

    11 years, 11 months ago

    I installed Wysija Newsletters – it is the ONLY Newsletter plugin that actually works, but it’s like some Kiddy Toy. I can’t give that to a client – I need something professional.

    Wysija guys, Good job, BUT can you please make something that isn’t drag and drop. I need templates clients feel comfortable using and can save to be used time and again. They need HTML editors and visual editors.

    However, out of 10 newsletter plugins Wysija Newsletters is the ONLY newsletter plugin that has worked.

    Tribulant Software

    (@contrid)

    11 years, 10 months ago

    Good day,

    Thank you for posting your feedback guys!

    @menathor: The theme (Weaver) which you’re referring to was badly coded and doesn’t follow WordPress conventions. We’ve been fixing hundreds of themes injecting scripts into the header, not executing wp_footer() and wp_head() functions, loading their own Javascript, etc… and these are one of these. We cannot take responsibility for it and as you mentioned, we did offer to fix it for you.

    @piet: Top of the list of worst buys since 2009? I honestly don’t know where you get that from but we have the best Newsletter plugin for WordPress. If you don’t know how to use our software, please submit a ticket to us and we’ll assist you in a step-by-step manner.

    @syrehn: Thank you for posting your positive feedback. This is how we try to assist all our customers so that they can use our software as intended.

    @metadataconsulting: This thread is about the Newsletter plugin, where you at? Our Canada Post shipping module in our Shopping Cart plugin works perfectly fine. I remember you Skyping me wanting to sell debugged code for a very, very, very high price and we declined because the module does work. Please ensure that you followed our documentation accordingly.

    All the best,
    Antonie Potgieter
    Tribulant Software

    wpweaver

    (@wpweaver)

    11 years, 10 months ago

    Hmm..

    Weaver II follows all WP coding standards and is completely compliant. It does not do any of those things – it follows all standards with wp_head and wp_footer and enqueues scripts as per standards.

    If Antionie would like to tell me specifically what he believes is non-compliant, I’d like to know.

    Actually, Tribulant Newsletter is one of the very few plugins I’ve had reported as incompatible with Weaver, and most others that didn’t work required manual modification of theme code as part of their installation.

    Wysija

    (@wysija)

    11 years, 9 months ago

    Everybody, Tribulant has created a nice software at the right price, honestly. They offer powerful features which Wysija doesn’t have, but that might put off newbies.

    @keeperbay If you play with HTML without being an expert at email client compatibility, your newsletters aren’t going to display very well, every where.

    We’ve tested our template system against 30 emails clients, trust us, your newsletters are always going to look good.

    Let us know what other features you want to see in the editor, like background colors to text for example. We’re looking to improve it!

    DADOK – Global Internet Solutions

    (@deckercz)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    I purchased Tribulant Newsletter plugin Developer license for a lot $$$ and that plugin doesnt work, in debug mode have a lot errors in clean WP. So after activation doesnt work pages, menus in administration, coz they use similiar functions as WordPress and that finally collapse. If i send them i want to my money back, they respond with sorry no way to refund my money.. i was freaky about that but if i want update in the next case, my account expired and my plugin still doesnt workin at all my clients sites.. big problem, shitty support.

    They are from Africa, dont purchase their products its lost money.

    Phil Meyer

    (@philmeyer)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Hi deckerz,

    I think the problem goes far deeper than our plugin. You should perhaps start pointing the finger at yourself, with that kind of forum post.

    I’ll have you know that we have MANY happy users of our plugins – 11,000+, to be precise – and that our plugins do work. Unfortunately you will always get situations where the WordPress environment has adverse effects on the software. That’s part of life, as any developer will tell you.

    Things like other plugins, themes, scripts, server operating systems & setup, versions (users expecting ancient plugin versions to work with the latest WordPress) etc. will ALWAYS play a role in any software behaviour.

    And what does Africa have to do with it? Have you ever been to South Africa? Do you know that South Africa is a world leader in several technologies, including IT and software?

    Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, please feel free to contact us at our support desk: http://tribulant.com/support/ – we’ll even be prepared to give you an updated plugin once without you renewing your subscription, to show we’re not the ogres you make us out to be.

    Tribulant Software

    (@contrid)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Hi Ondrej Dadok,

    We see that you have opened a ticket for this and we tried to help you in there but just received a reply with threats of suing us and that your lawyer will contact us, etc.

    We have shared the latest version of the Newsletter plugin with you so that you can have the latest version without having to renew your subscription. I offered in the ticket to assist you with the installation as well if you want me to.

    We’ll wait for a response on your ticket accordingly.

    Thank you for your business and support!

    All the best,
    Antonie Potgieter

    DADOK – Global Internet Solutions

    (@deckercz)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    OK accepted & resolved, I’m glad that dont need to do new solution of newsletter for all my clients.. Thanks.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
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