Good Plugin – Updated Review

UPDATE 8/3/2017
I’ve had to use support three times since my last update here and each time they have been excellent. Once they sent over a file to fix a problem I was having. I’m very happy with the Social Warfare support team.

UPDATE 7/7/2017
Support has been excellent the past few days. I’m still keeping review at 4 stars until some UI changes are completed (i.e. Click to Tweet color selection options).

UPDATE 7/5/2017
I promised to update this review. Andrea contacted me saying they had responded to my support ticket first thing Monday morning because they don’t work on weekends. Using the info she provided I did a search and true to her word, I had an email shortly after 7 am on Monday. The support response was OK, but it was there. So I have changed my review from two stars to four stars.

Why four stars instead of five? There are some UI aspects of this plugin that really need to be addressed. The programmers assume that everyone using the plugin knows CSS and coding. For example, on their awesome Click to Tweet feature, they have a few color templates then “Add Your Own CSS” option. When a person selects that, it should give them a window to select the four colors they want to use (background, background hover, side, side hover). It doesn’t. It does nothing. You have to do your own CSS coding (if you know CSS) and have to figure out what the class names are, etc. I had to watch a 27-minute video on YouTube of another frustrated Social Warfare Click to Tweet user to figure out how to do this. To complicate this further, they don’t address this in the manual at all. You are left fending for yourself. It’s important to make this easy for users.

I would also suggest they update their site to reflect that they don’t answer support questions on the weekend. Right now it says “within 24 hours.”

Now, those aside, I LOVE this plugin. And the support response, while just OK, was professional. I do a lot of Web marketing (even wrote a popular book on the subject in 2000) and I honestly believe that this plugin is to social sharing what Yoast is to SEO.

Furthermore, the blog articles on the Warfare site are very insightful into increasing your traffic and getting the best from the plugin.

I will update this review (and rating) again in the future as needed. I really hope they keep a strong focus on this outstanding plugin. My original review is below:

ORIGINAL REVIEW
First off – I love this plugin. I read a ton of reviews from a year or two ago and was convinced that this was the best social sharing plugin available. I immediately purchased the Premium version.

I ran into a couple of issues and emailed support through the official support channel. That was a couple of days ago. No response. I then started seeing a pattern of RECENT reviews/comments from others talking about the lack of support. I don’t know what is going on with the team, but the lack of support is really worrisome. Are they too focused on other projects? What changed to go from virtually no complaints of support to a lot of complaints?

A plugin is only as good as its support. Social Warfare has something really special with this plugin and it’s dangerous to allow support to wane and the star rating to decreased from people not getting assistance.

At the same time I installed this plugin, I installed another one – Ad Inserter. I had a problem with it and put in a support request. 12 minute response time! Not only that, but the plugin was updated to fix my issue within hours. Every time I emailed support, I got a virtual immediate response. And their team seems to be smaller than the Social Warfare team! Needless to say they got a glowing five-star review from me.

My point is that people are praising that plugin because of the support and more people will use it when they read those praises. But when people see reviews about the lack of support they get concerned and keep looking.

When support improves I will update this rating. Like I said, the plugin is great. But a plugin is only as good as support. Thus the two-star rating.

Please, Warfare team, do whatever it takes to improve your support as your plugin rocks and deserves more than this.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by jtracy.
• This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by jtracy. Reason: update and grammar
• This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by jtracy.
• This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by jtracy. Reason: update