Upgrading IPS is like root canal

[FZ]

In that same thread, a few messages down from the above quoted one, was a post by @Stuart Silvester saying that the swap over from API to SMTP would be seamless and that admins wouldn't have to do anything. That clearly isn't the case in my instance. 

Upgrades are supposed to make my life easier, not hell. 

[Stuart Silvester]

1 minute ago, FZ said:

In that same thread, a few messages down from the above quoted one, was a post by @Stuart Silvester saying that the swap over from API to SMTP would be seamless and that admins wouldn't have to do anything. That clearly isn't the case in my instance. 

Upgrades are supposed to make my life easier, not hell. 

For the majority of customers, there weren't any issues experienced with switching over. I see that you already have a support ticket in the queue, someone will look into the issue as soon as possible.

[FZ]

My ticket is beginning to read like a Le Carre novel. I just hope it doesn't turn into Tolstoy. 

[PacmanDo]

If you upgrade regularly IPS is really very good. It's a breeze. IPS is still the BEST. Now that you are upgraded, stay upgraded. It's easy.

I still don't understand why sparkpost API capability was removed. Options are great and should have been left as is. If one has an issue with sparkpost, then don't use them. Simple.

Those of us who like Sparkpost SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PUNISHED WITH A DOWNGRADED OPTION because of those who didn't like sparkpost for whatever reason. ****rant over****

[Dll]

9 hours ago, FZ said:

I went into my site's user database and reset all members who had opted out of receiving admin emails to receive just one more

 

 

8 hours ago, FZ said:

Where I don't agree with your opinion is here: IPS must be accountable for their product in all regards, especially if they go and change things that make a huge impact on the way a community works. I have read quite a number of threads on here about the decision to drop the SparkPost API and I am sure I am not the only user that is suffering with the outcome of now not being able to send out bulk mail. It's a big thing, it really is. 

 

I wouldn't worry too much about IPS removing your ability to send bulk mail through sparkpost too much, as the chances are they'd stop you sending as soon as they start receiving the spam complaints from those people who opted out of receiving email from you. I'd recommend reading their terms:

https://www.sparkpost.com/policies/messaging/

Quote

1. Use only permission-based marketing Digital Message lists (i.e., lists in which each recipient has explicitly granted permission to receive Digital Messages from you by affirmatively opting-in to receive those Digital Messages).

And, I agree with others in terms of your responsibilities. If you're running a site which stores peoples data, you have to keep that up to date, had you done so you'd not be having the problems you are now. Time to step up and stop looking for scapegoats, and maybe count yourself lucky you're only struggling with a few fairly minor issues rather than dealing with some sort of breach and having to explain that to your userbase. 

[Disruption]

On 6/11/2018 at 11:35 AM, Marc Stridgen said:

Always good to have good documentation I agree. In general, it actually shouldn't matter if the files are present as it would not affect the upgrader. In instances where it would, then indeed we would add this to not only the guides, but also within the installer itself where required. In this case however it was an entire 3.4 set of files in the admin directory, which isn't something that should ever happen.

That said, anything where people feel there are items in which you're hitting and you feel could be avoidable with documentation, please do feel free to shout up or even drop me a quick message if needed. We're of course not infallible (ask my wife), and at times it may well even be that we decide to change things in the software to suit instead.

I'm in agreement with the OP on this one. Not a great fan of dental work LOL

Dental work is always the most stressful experience for me. 1/10 do not recommend.

[FZ]

28 minutes ago, Dll said:

 

I wouldn't worry too much about IPS removing your ability to send bulk mail through sparkpost too much, as the chances are they'd stop you sending as soon as they start receiving the spam complaints from those people who opted out of receiving email from you. I'd recommend reading their terms:

https://www.sparkpost.com/policies/messaging/

And, I agree with others in terms of your responsibilities. If you're running a site which stores peoples data, you have to keep that up to date, had you done so you'd not be having the problems you are now. Time to step up and stop looking for scapegoats, and maybe count yourself lucky you're only struggling with a few fairly minor issues rather than dealing with some sort of breach and having to explain that to your userbase. 

Good grief. You consider not being able to send any newsletters to your community a "minor issue"? 

The whole point of this board and my post in it is to provide feedback to IPS about their product and to remind them of their responsibility towards their customers, not a springboard for investigating how I manage my website. I bought a product, I'm entitled to ask that it works the way it is supposed to. 

The support at IPS is very good, but I sometimes get the feeling that it is being done begrudgingly. 

[Dll]

You can send newsletters, it'll just take 36 hours, which if they're that vital to you, should be a relatively small price to pay until you can sign up to sendgrid or sort yourself out another method of sending them - there are countless ways to do that, and you could have probably done it in the time you've spent in this thread over the last couple of days!

[FZ]

19 minutes ago, Dll said:

You can send newsletters, it'll just take 36 hours, which if they're that vital to you, should be a relatively small price to pay until you can sign up to sendgrid or sort yourself out another method of sending them - there are countless ways to do that, and you could have probably done it in the time you've spent in this thread over the last couple of days!

Very flippant remarks. You have no idea what I am going through with this problem, do you? Right now I can send out NO newsletters, whether by SMTP or by PHP. Your advice is worthless. 

[Dll]

13 hours ago, FZ said:

It seems that somehow it is impossible for me to send email on my system using the SMTP settings. I have tried setting this up for SparkPost (which incidentally was working perfectly fine with the API) - no dice. I have also tried setting it up with Elasticemail, same story. The message coming back at the top of the settings screen tells me that the connection is refused at both SparkPost and at Elasticemail, both of which I use for other domains running off the same server, so it can't be my host.

You said yourself that you could send email. And if connections are failing at the email providers, then it suggests a config problem your side (incorrect port, tls setting, auth etc). 

Anyway, believe it or not, I'm not the biggest IPS fan and have had my gripes with them over the years, but is there really any need for the melodrama? 

[FZ]

The system can send email notifications, it can't send bulk mail by any means. Neither PHP nor SMTP settings are working.

This now marks the 6th day since I embarked on my upgrade and still I cannot say the site is working the way it should. How would you feel if you had just spent $125 on upgrades that crippled your 13 year old website project? Do you not think that airing your feedback to the company responsible is important? 

[Aiwa]

32 minutes ago, FZ said:

The system can send email notifications, it can't send bulk mail by any means. Neither PHP nor SMTP settings are working.

This now marks the 6th day since I embarked on my upgrade and still I cannot say the site is working the way it should. How would you feel if you had just spent $125 on upgrades that crippled your 13 year old website project? Do you not think that airing your feedback to the company responsible is important? 

Honestly, you should have restored from your backup after an hour and worked through these issues on a test copy of your site.

[FZ]

So it's all my fault, right? The company has no liability here? 

[FZ]

The most important thing about running a community is the ability to communicate with the people who belong to that community via email. Without the ability to do this we may as well just start Facebook groups because at least there we might gain the attention of the people who's attention we want to gain. 

SendGrid is not a feasible option for site owners who can't afford to pay them $29 a month for the privilege of sending email to their own members (screenshot shows what I will pay based on my community numbers). That is a lot of money that I don't get from my community, yet right now it's apparently my only option in a climate where we as online community owners are under increasing pressure from the likes of Facebook groups who draw our audience away daily. Monetising a forum in that environment is darn hard when there are free options elsewhere. 

How can this be, especially when the previous option to use SparkPost for free worked perfectly for me (and many others)? I'm sorry, I don't accept this. IPS made a decision that has materially affected my entire project and I must just sit down and shut up about it? 

My feedback is that IPS needs to put back the SparkPost API and communicate more clearly to their customers about how these API's are to be used. And they also need to make upgrading a community less painful. 

[Aiwa]

1 hour ago, FZ said:

So it's all my fault, right? The company has no liability here? 

I didn't say that. I implied it's your responsibility as the site owner to ensure satisfactory operation of YOUR community. 

IPS would still be in this position, but your community would be running whilst it's being sorted. 

[Dll]

2 hours ago, FZ said:

This now marks the 6th day since I embarked on my upgrade and still I cannot say the site is working the way it should. How would you feel if you had just spent $125 on upgrades that crippled your 13 year old website project? Do you not think that airing your feedback to the company responsible is important?

Feedback is one thing, drama for the sake of it is another. You've had 13 years, 6 days where you apparently can't send an email is hardly the end of the world, perhaps inconvenient, but maybe some perspective is needed?

How often do you send newsletters anyway, daily, weekly, monthly, less often?

And as for sendgrid, you're being disingenuous (probably for the sake of drama again), as their pricing clearly shows a free tier which allows you to send up to 40,000 emails in your first month. Enough to get you over your initial problems I'll bet (particularly if you only send to those who are opted in and don't spam those who aren't). 

https://sendgrid.com/pricing/

[FZ]

So if we can have a SendGrid API why can't we have a SparkPost API alongside it with the disclaimer that neither will be supported by IPS? 

But as a courtesy to you I will answer your question about why I want to send out more email. My forum has stagnated in recent years because of various factors in the "legacy issues" I referred to earlier. We moved in a different direction and that was not well received by many members. I have had to deal with losing a vibrant forum over the past few years, but I am now in a re-building phase. I am not monetising the forum and in order to re-build it I need to reach out to those members who haven't abandoned the site on a more regular basis. This is also why I want to delete members who haven't logged in for the past 3 years. 

My project of regeneration was set to kick off officially on 1 July which was when the culling of old accounts would happen. From there I had a plan to post weekly email updates to the remaining members to draw them back to the site to consume new content because let's be honest, there are many other places on the net that have been developed in the 13 years I have been running my site. The SparkPost API being taken away and the subsequent failure of the bulk email system to reach them (or Elasticemail) via SMTP has effectively rendered that plan void. So yes, I am feeling a bit dramatic about this. And yes, I feel that the explanation given by IPS as to why the API was removed is not justifiable or warranted. I think they are being disingenuous. 

SendGrid is not a solution for me. While I am in the rebuilding phase I need a longer free tier of bulk email and since I am financing my own project I have no room for the additional expense. 

[Chris Bell]

Dll when things work for you with this new service and 4 years down the road someone decides to just like that pull that support off for your convenience!
without letting you know or considering the consequences this will cause; just to promote ones other service!
do us all a favor and go troll someone else thread!

my solution is simple... i have no more time to spend over what i have already the past few days!

you want to promote someone's business do it on your own dime and time!
i will pay a third party to fix this ridiculesness  IPS decided to pull, 
i will be sending IPS the bill for reverting this back!  
if IPS respects our time and investment in them all these years they will pay this bill; we will not be renewing our contracts before this bill is paid!

can you guys tell how furious i am; you guys in support should know very well!!!
i bet most of the customers aren't even aware yet!

you've gone too far with this!
Revert this back!

[opentype]

11 minutes ago, FZ said:

And yes, I feel that the explanation given by IPS as to why the API was removed is not justifiable or warranted. I think they are being disingenuous. 

Your drama is annoying enough, but you are really going to far with your arguments now. You are literally are calling them liars now in suggesting they are disingenuous about the reason why the support was removed. You better have some proof for such accusations. You can’t just make stuff up to further your cause. “I have no room for the additional expense” is neither IPS’ problem nor does it warrant false accusations. 

[Chris Bell]

by design smtp protocol doesn't require authentication when sending mail off the host;
you cannot authenticate an unknown mail server to another unknown mail server!

you can authenticate as a client but not as another mail server trying to deliver mail to another hence no authentication required! 
its also by design and no accident that port 25 is open and doesn't restrict who can connect to it!
as such anyone can terminal into any mail server and send mail right off it with no restrictions or interference,
 
if you also allow unrestricted smtp traffic out; you're mail server will become a hornets nest for spammers in -5 minutes your server will get black listed!
there a good reason providers restrict smtp protocol and port used by it!

smtp do too its natural vulnerability by design is used in a server to server communications with ip restrictions in any secured environment,
you cannot seriously expect providers to simply allow this out of the blue because IPS decided to promote some new mail relay provider no one heard of!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol 

14 minutes ago, opentype said:

Your drama is annoying 

mine too? 

he is 100% correct being upset over this, and so am i!

[Matt]

In the future, how would you guys like to know when services are removed or added?

Email only offers around a 20% open rate, so it can’t be guaranteed to be read. 

We do put things on the forum, but not everyone reads them. 

I’d like to hear your ideas. 

I know there’s a few upset at is removing an email service that often didn’t send emails or got you blacklisted. It wasn’t done on a whim. We had hundreds of support tickets about how unreliable it was. We spent hundreds of man hours trying to figure out why emails weren’t being sent or people were validating without clicking links. Or why people were being reported as a spammer, etc. 

The bad service and increasing support overhead for that bad service forced us into dropping it. 

No amount of shouting, capital letters or foot stomping is going to see it returned. 

We care about our customers too much to put them through that experience again. 

[Chris Bell]

Matt i respectfully disagree,
who's emails weren't being delivered? and why? we had no issues with our provider all this time!
once the transmission is relayed over to third party there is enough mechanism in smtp to assure delivery and is not IPS responsibility!
this is the wrong solution just for the simple reason I've listed before your post,
just give spammers time to learn of this new ridicules practice!

stomping my feet and shouting is because I've wasted hundreds of dollars the past few days,
we lost thousands of dollars in business over this; and i'm about to spend even more to fix this!
all the while we trusted IPS and supported your business and efforts; this is hurting my business! why?

all the while support knows they cannot help me but letting me figure it own my own,
our shop send thousands of emails which are crippled now, my host wont jeopardize his customers and i very well understand why,

so i ask you where does this leave me and my company who's been supporting and trusting IPS all this time?
maybe this slipped one mined but most your customers are likely busy managing their community forums you sold them and possibly their own business?
maybe expecting them to spend time on this forum isn't the best way to get feedback from these people who are the ones paying IPS bills!

you could have at the least email us an urgent advisory; add the new functionality and leave us with the option to choose,
instead of forcing a one fits all solution that doesn't fit all and disrupting our businesses!
 

if you really want to hear us; just listen!
if we are shouting and you still don't; what does that say?
shutting the door in your customers face as you just did is biting your nose to spite the face!

 

Chris

[opentype]

46 minutes ago, Chris Bell said:

if you really want to hear us; just listen!
if we are shouting and you still don't; what does that say?

It says your logic is terrible (as always). The conclusion of “I don’t get it my way” is not “so they don’t listen”. 

[Chris Bell]

@opentype
unless you got something positive to contribute... kindly STFU and go troll another thread!
while your at it stick your nose in your own business!

[opentype]

6 minutes ago, Chris Bell said:

@opentype
unless you got something positive to contribute... kindly STFU and go troll another thread!
while your at it stick your nose in your own business!

It’s a public forum. I have the right to point out the flaws in your arguments. Did it it in the past, will do it in the future. You can count on it. Your childish “I write angry in 72 point” will not work. Trying to shut me down by ignoring my points and getting personal will also not work. You don’t control this debate so that only voices that (as you say) are “positive” and support your wishes will be heard. It doesn’t work like that. If you can’t stand opposition, that’s your problem, not a reason for me to leave. 

And it IS my business. I am one regular IPS client just as you and I used the SparkPost API. I have exactly the same right to speak on these matters as you. Exactly the same. Try to think about that.