rosmac Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 I was considering buying IP Board Enterprise and after reading through your community forums and seeing "real time" how the staff handles questions, ... I will stick to vBulletin 4. I get my questions answered the same day. Glad I took a look around before purchasing and got a first hand look at how IP handles their current customers, responds to questions and slams posts. :no: They just lost a potential customer! And no I do not work for VB, I was extremely serious about using your product on for my forum that has over 60,000 members. Ross MacLane Founder - FileMaker Today .Com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pereira Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 Let me get this straight, you'r not purchasing software based singularly on the response times of their staff? I agree that staff have not been as fast as usual but I do understand that they have just released a new version of the software with new skin editor, admin cp, skin, post editor and such. IPS have been very fast with their ticket responses for me and have resolved all my issues. If you look at the bug tracker, they must have fixed around 500-600 bugs since the 3.2 release in July. Also can you give me an example where an IPS staff member has "bashed" someones post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rikki Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 Hi, I'm sorry to hear that. Please bear in mind that official support is handled via our client area, where customers can expect prompt replies to their questions (we even provide an SLA so you can be sure of what to expect). Our forums are for informal support where time is not of the essence or where it's appropriate for other users to provide solutions. Hope that helps to explain what you see :) Regards, Rikki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallieJo Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 I am a current user of IPB, VB, & Xenforo. Comparing support with all three, I would say I get great technical support from them all. However, they do not all handle support in the same fashion. To compare IPB support with others, you'd have to use their ticket support system to experience just how fast, detailed, & accurate the support really is. Their forums are not the official support outlet, as far as I'm aware. If you are happy with VB, great. It has it's own greatness and weaknesses as any of the competitors do. If you are considering IPB for it's own greatness, I would highly recommend you to not judge the support based on the forum discussions. As for slamming posts...I'm confused. I've never seen a staff member slam posts here nor respond any differently than you'd get at VB. I've seen several members slam posts. But, I have seen that at VB as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex K. Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I will stick to vBulletin 4. I get my questions answered the same day. The business/enterprise licenses guarantee ticket responses on the same business day, and the enterprise licenses have 24/7 emergency support for critical issues. Forum support is not the primary support method, and as such won't have the same response time; it's more for casual questions than major ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrej Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Ticket Responces are timely and quite fast, since it is the official first support channel. :) Rikki is right, it is when a new software, there is more questions, problems, etc. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAA Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I was considering buying IP Board Enterprise and after reading through your community forums and seeing "real time" how the staff handles questions, ... I will stick to vBulletin 4. I get my questions answered the same day. Glad I took a look around before purchasing and got a first hand look at how IP handles their current customers, responds to questions and slams posts. :no: They just lost a potential customer! And no I do not work for VB, I was extremely serious about using your product on for my forum that has over 60,000 members. Ross MacLane Founder - FileMaker Today .Com Ross I have both boards, IPS and vB. They both have ticket systems. They both have help forums. I see no difference in responses. I think you have it wrong and are also a bit out of line. And no, I do not work for IPS. And no, I do not prefer one over the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.Ian Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 The support forums have been official support for some time now.Technical Support IPS offers these forums as a support resource for our customers. Here you will be able to post questions and receive help from IPS staff as well as other customers. Please feel free to also answer questions you may know the answer to. To ensure your question or issue is addressed accurately and efficiently, please be sure to include all relevant details such as error messages. You may also attach screenshots in this forum (please blur out sensitive details!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorhawke Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Another case this month of a vB "customer" with fewer than 5 posts who claims that IPS support is crap and fails to acknowledge the blatantly obvious possibility that the official support system might not actually be visible to the general public on these forums, and then finishes their post with a URL to a site containing a vB forum as if to indicate that they are legit. Hmm .... Technical Support IPS offers these forums as a support resource for our customers. Here you will be able to post questions and receive help from IPS staff as well as other customers. Please feel free to also answer questions you may know the answer to. To ensure your question or issue is addressed accurately and efficiently, please be sure to include all relevant details such as error messages. You may also attach screenshots in this forum (please blur out sensitive details!) There's nothing in there saying the forum support system is official. The official support system is the support ticket environment, inaccessible to the public in order to maintain confidentiality. From my very brief experience using the IPS support ticket system to date, the service was very reasonably prompt. I have a consumer package, but the vast majority of my support ticket inquiries were still answered within one day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giray Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I've just moved over from VB4 to IPB. Had one issue and I got a response, via support, in less than ten minutes, on a Saturday! At this point, I think that vBulletin has 'more' under the hood, but that 'more' is slightly bloated. I would rather have a more robust and stable environment than one with too many features. Time will, of course, tell if I made the right choice, but one thing is certain, I would not make my buying decision primarily based on service response times via the forum, I would make it based on the quality of the product first, and official support second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorhawke Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I've just moved over from VB4 to IPB. Had one issue and I got a response, via support, in less than ten minutes, on a Saturday! At this point, I think that vBulletin has 'more' under the hood, but that 'more' is slightly bloated. I would rather have a more robust and stable environment than one with too many features. Time will, of course, tell if I made the right choice, but one thing is certain, I would not make my buying decision primarily based on service response times via the forum, I would make it based on the quality of the product first, and official support second. I agree about vBulletin being bloated. I have used vB before, and taking a look at their Admin CP today, they haven't changed. More than half of the settings in the vB Admin CP revolve around ridiculous minor things that will never be tweaked, ever. Granted, there are one or two things that vB has by default which I wish IPB had (by default), but all things considered, I would take IPB over vB any day (given current feature sets, pricing schemes, etc.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.Ian Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 There's nothing in there saying the forum support is official. Official support is done through the ticket system, inaccessible to the public in order to maintain confidentiality. It is official - however I accept that the best option is via a ticket which is handled professionally and to an SLA. Official Support on Company Community For years IPS has only offered official support through our support ticket system but today that finally changes. We are renaming the Peer-to-Peer Technical Support forums and will begin having IPS Staff monitor those forums and provide official support responses right here on the IPS Company Community. Having forum support will be a great benefit to all IPS Community Suite users as it allows everyone to engage each other to help in a group effort. We have an amazing customer-community here at IPS and between customers helping each other and the addition of IPS Staff assisting in forum questions we believe that the overall support experience will greatly improve for all. Guaranteed support will still only be offered in tickets and we may still ask you to submit a ticket if, for example, we need to login to your community to diagnose a problem. Forum support will be available to anyone with an active support service for IP.Board or the applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorhawke Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 It is official - however I accept that the best option is via a ticket which is handled professionally and to an SLA. [url=" [/url] Official Support on Company Community For years IPS has only offered official support through our support ticket system but today that finally changes. We are renaming the Peer-to-Peer Technical Support forums and will begin having IPS Staff monitor those forums and provide official support [color=#ff0000][u]responses[/u][/color] right here on the IPS Company Community. Having forum support will be a great benefit to all IPS Community Suite users as it allows everyone to engage each other to help in a group effort. We have an amazing customer-community here at IPS and between customers helping each other and the addition of IPS Staff assisting in forum questions we believe that the overall support experience will greatly improve for all. Guaranteed support will still only be offered in tickets and we may still ask you to submit a ticket if, for example, we need to login to your community to diagnose a problem. Forum support will be available to anyone with an active support service for IP.Board or the applications. Okay, I see what you mean if you say that the forum support has attributes that are considered "official". However, there is a difference between official support responses and an official support system. The support forums might be frequented by staff providing responses that are "official" in the sense that they are authored by staff, but the support ticket system is "official" in the sense that the system itself is structured to provide official responses (and only official responses) in an official manner. I see though that the wording in that announcement post does not clearly differentiate these two and therefore it might be throwing off potential customers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.Ian Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Maybe I read the announcements wrong. Apologies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorhawke Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Maybe I read the announcements wrong. Apologies No you read it right, but the announcement didn't do a good job of differentiating between official responses and an official system, so IPS should probably fix that to better prevent potential customers getting the wrong idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.Ian Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 To me, I always read that the support forums were an official support mechanism and that posts there would get an official response - although it would be slower than the ticket system. I doubt I am the only one who thought that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorhawke Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 To me, I always read that the support forums were an official support mechanism and that posts there would get an official response - although it would be slower than the ticket system. I doubt I am the only one who thought that. Maybe that's true and I'm wrong. But for IPS's sake I hope it isn't an official system because they have been doing a really bad job keeping up there. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*Salvo* Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I'm sorry, but I just read the forum hoping that some user has the correct answer for other user's requests. But personally I have a billion of topics without any answers, so, what it's written in the announcement doesn't correspond to the real state of the facts. I can list here all my questions, without *any* answer. I just use to google, and I like IPB. Bot for the support, BTW. Yes for the peer-to-peer, but id a software is a paid software, you have more espectations from the staff, that sometime I have doubts that it exist. Hope this criticism will be used to improve the presence of the staff into the forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dacho Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I agree about vBulletin being bloated. I have used vB before, and taking a look at their Admin CP today, they haven't changed. More than half of the settings in the vB Admin CP revolve around ridiculous minor things that will never be tweaked, ever. Granted, there are one or two things that vB has by default which I wish IPB had (by default), but all things considered, I would take IPB over vB any day (given current feature sets, pricing schemes, etc.). Out of interest, what do you wish ipb had by default? Lots of things do get unanswered on the Forums (plus, I ask too much!) but I have been very happy with support via ticket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sire Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 The OP might have misunderstood something that many of us are aware of only because we've been here long enough to know the ropes. Maybe there's a better way to clarify the support forums situation to avoid this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted September 11, 2011 Management Share Posted September 11, 2011 Remember that only customers can see the support forums so the OP could not have been talking about them. Hopefully the OP can clarify at some point. Forum support is provided as an extra convenience. Guaranteed support is in the ticket system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clickfinity Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Could I suggest that the support forum be renamed to "IP.Board General Support" because that's pretty much what it is, and it is obviously giving the wrong impression if people think it is the primary support system. Maybe the description could be updated with a clear link to the client area ticket support system for anything that needs urgent attention or is important to the running of your board; maybe with an indication that this is the primary support system for current license holders. Cheers, Shaun :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
• Jay • Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Out of interest, what do you wish ipb had by default? Lots of things do get unanswered on the Forums (plus, I ask too much!) but I have been very happy with support via ticket. Out of interest, why do people use the phrase "out of interest"? Would the fact they are asking the question not indicate interest? :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NenaDice Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I was considering buying IP Board Enterprise and after reading through your community forums and seeing "real time" how the staff handles questions, ... I will stick to vBulletin 4. I get my questions answered the same day. Glad I took a look around before purchasing and got a first hand look at how IP handles their current customers, responds to questions and slams posts. :no: They just lost a potential customer! And no I do not work for VB, I was extremely serious about using your product on for my forum that has over 60,000 members. Ross MacLane Founder - FileMaker Today .Com I will have to disagree with this. The Ipb staff is very efficient, professional and takes real good care of their customers. P.s. Can you please post the links to those topics where according to your claims, the Ipb staff is "slamming posts" btw? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spincycle Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Evey time I have submitted a ticket, it has been handled quickly and politely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.