I own all extensions individually and will not buy another - read why!

I have been a customer of Webassist since they built the first extension for Drumbeat. (Look it up if the name doesn't mean anything). I have bought every extension and upgrade they have offered since, with the exception of one or two products. I was mainly a Classic ASP developer and even changed my main focus to PHP when WebAssist no longer produced their extensions to support Classic ASP. Needless to say, I have been a loyal customer since day one.

This new move by WebAssist to combine their individual extensions into a group was a great idea. I was excited that I could now expect to only have to install a single extension for my previously purchases.

Where they have lost me as a customer is when they combined the extensions, made a minor update, then want to charge me $200 to upgrade. I own every extension they offer and the only real update I see is that the data assist forms are now displayed in a lightbox rather than a separate web page.

After their message saying I would have to upgrade to their "collection" of extensions to get the updates and they will not be offering updates to owners of their individual extensions, I thought long and hard about forking out the extra money... $200 for one and $199 for another. I considered the previous updates I have purchased and considered the new extensions they have offered the last year (though nearly worthless and easily created without purchasing - spry tooltips and social media buttons I had bought them to support the company).

When I get to work, I have a few web sites I check for new extensions. I check dmxzone.com, extendstudio.com and webassist.com. After today, I will remove the later from my daily check of sites. Hui, I wish you the best, but screwing those of us who have been with you since day one is not a great business move. Maybe you will find someone to replace me for buying your new extensions. I am very disappointed that I have invested the money I have and will be very hesitant to every purchase another extension.

I hope you continue to keep your e-cart extension updates and upgrades offered outside of some silly "collection." If not, I will continue to use the last version until I decide it is best to switch to Telerik.

Since you own all of the stand alone extensions, you would be eligible for an upgrade price to Design Extender for $39.99 and Data Bridge for $149.99.


Contact our sales department for details on upgrade pricing.

Adding the delete to a light box is far from the only update that was made.

In Design Extender, the Pro Maps for google extension has been updated to map V3 API.

Site Sculptor was updated to use the same the same code base as Power CMS.


In Data Bridge, Data Assist has been updated to allow for saving Application Type Presets, There are some prebuilt application presets for user management, product management or a product catalog.

In the Data Assist, you can use from design presets that you create with form builder.

you can add validation to the forms directly in the wizard. You can set form elements to use HTML Editor or a File Upload filed and configure upload settings.

You can set a field to use a select list to make selection from another table. Fields that use a select list will automatically generate a joined query on the results and details pages to display the name instead of ID value.

these are just a few of the many updates that have been made.

eCart will remain as a stand alone extension.

It is unfortunate to hear a customer is feeling this frustrated. I think you are underestimating the work and new functionality we have included in Data Bridge and even Design Extender. You are over-estimating the upgrade cost for a customer with your purchase history, and you are blaming the wrong person for your frustration.

I'll start by saying that as of Feb. 1st, Hieu has left employment at webassist. After 4 years with Hieu as the acting president... I have taken over as the president and CEO. I am behind the product consolidation strategy as well as intricately involved in the pricing decisions made since that date.

I would like to reinforce what Jason has already pointed out that the updates made to the Data Bridge wizard are far from minor. We have added presets, added the ability to create your database tables for you, integrated form builder, integrated button styler, added form validations and encryption options, integrated HTML Editor, File Upload, and File Managers... and more significant improvements... literally too many to remember them all.

The original plan was to just update DataAssist and likely charge about $149 for that upgrade alone. I decided to do the consolidation plan and include it in the consolidation so that people wouldn't be charged again when the consolidation was complete, and still only charge $149 for Super Suite owners and owners of the integrated extensions.

The Design Extender upgrade was given for only $49 to super suite owners and people that own all of the existing extensions. This means the total for both upgrades is under $200 combined. That is a dramatic 75% discount, which I still feel is generous given the many hundreds of hours we put into improving them.

I understand your frustrations, but I think in this case they may be misguided and misdirected. I hope you'll consider changing your conclusions and giving us another chance. I think you'll find we are trying hard to do right by our customers and will be improving our customer experience and the benefits our customers enjoy.

With regards to eCart, we don't plan on bundling or consolidating that extension into one of the others. We will continue to offer 3 for sale extensions with Data Bridge, Design Extender, and eCart. If you would like to discuss your frustrations further with me, or just vent to someone who really does care, feel free to email me with your phone number: ray@webassist.com and I'll give you a call and we can discuss your experience and I'll give you a demo to help explain the additions and improvements that we have made as well as have a candid discussion about our plans for the future.

Hi Ray,

I did reply to your request. I sent an e-mail on 6-7-2012 and a follow-up on 6-12-2012.

I apologize for the harshness of my original "rant." The frustration of the changes really chapped my hide. Like I originally said, I have been a loyal customer since 2001 and have spent $3,009.49 purchasing and upgrading WebAssist extensions.

I own, and have paid for upgrades, to all the extensions included in the Design Extender "bundle" and Data Bridge "bundle." Now, if I want to continue to receive updates to those extensions, I must pay another $200 (according to your reply)... $500 according to my "Upgrade Center."

As a programmer myself by day and an independent web developer by night, I am acutely aware of the time and effort involved in conceiving, drafting, developing, testing and releasing a product. I am willing to discuss and review the changes to the now-bundled extensions and determine, in my opinion, if they justify another $200/$500 investment.

Ben

I have forwarded this to ray, he should be contacting you today probably by phone.

I appreciate the personal call, Ray. It says a lot about a person and company to take on a client who is obviously rather irate. Taking time out of your day to attempt to address my issues really made a reassuring impact on me - as a customer.

Reflecting on our conversation, I believe your professional, but both politely understanding and excitement and enthusiasm for the products you create really took a lot of the bite out of my anger.

I am taking you up on purchasing the "bundled" extensions for the test run you mentioned before I decide if the updates justify keeping the purchases, but, if you look at my purchase history, you will see I have yet to return an extension I didn't just turn around and purchase again (once).

Your explaining the move to the bundle approach actually makes a lot more sense than I thought. I store my activation codes in an Excel spreadsheet and I have had to make notes in the document of which extensions to install before installing others so they would work together (CSS Form Designer & HTML Editor 3 for example).

I also took a few minutes to review the rest of the site and it seems you are still selling some of the extension individually. Will these extensions receive updates and upgrades, or just service-pack/hot fixes?

I had just a few more questions if you have a few minutes to respond...

1) (QUESTION) Which extensions still support ASP and not just PHP?

2) (COMMENT) I noticed you mentioned that the Date Picker supports jQuery themeroller, you should consider expanding that to having all elements support jQuery themeroller.

3) (COMMENT) You have integrated SPRY inito a lot of your pieces, you should consider moving those components to jQuery - which seems to be in use more widespread than SPRY.

4) (QUESTION) Now having Design Extender and Data Bridge and a copy of eCart, which of your extensions do I have (owning them all) which are not installed between these three?

5) (COMMENT) Could you have someone generate a graph showing the technologies used/supported by each extension and which extension interact or potentially interact between each other? For example,

EXTENSION HTML4 HTML5 CSS JAVASCRIPT VBSCRIPT ASP PHP
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cookies Toolkit 3 Y Y N Y N N Y
FormBuilder 2 Y Y Y Y N N Y
etc. x x x x x x x

Reading through the details section tells what is included, but hard to determine which is required or other extensions are used to perform/include certain functionalities...

FormBuilder2 -
Uses Universal E-mail to generate emails
Uses Universal E-mail (File functionality) to accept uploads
Uses Universal E-mail (File functionality) to provide downloads
Uses Security Assist for encryption functions
Uses Security Assist to maintain registrations, logins and encryption methods
etc...

Those are just a few comments and questions I had after the talk. Once again, I really do appreciate the personal call and appreciate the understanding and taking the time to provide me witch your reasons for the changes.

I look forward to my evaluation and will comment on my experience. My past relationship with your company has always been one where I could count on quality product and decent support with the few questions I have had in the past. I am hoping this experience removes the bad taste in my mouth.

Thanks again,
Ben

The extension install tips thread should give a good idea of what is integrated into other extensions, including Data Bridge and Design Extender:
showthread.php?t=24005


The current version of extensions, including design Extender and Data Bridge support only PHP, we have not bee supporting ASP For some time now.

If you take a look at our Extensions page:
dreamweaver-extensions/

any of the extension versions listed on this page will not support ASP.

You ask which extensions you own that are not included in Design Extender or Data Bridge, it is easier to tell you what _is_included in DE and DB:

Design Extender
-- CSS Sculptor
-- CSS Menu Writer
-- Framework Builder
-- PowerCMS Builder
-- Pro Maps for Google
-- Site Import
-- Site Sculptor
-- Social Media Toolkit

Data Bridge
--CSS Button Styler
--CSS Form Builder
--DataAssist
--Digital File Pro
--Dynamic Connections
--Dynamic Dropdowns
--Dynamic Web Charts
--Form Toolkit
--HTML Editor
--Image Resizer
--SecurityAssist
--Universal Email
--Validation Tooltips for Spry

Any Extensions that you may have that are not on that list will not be included with DE or DB. Some extensions you may have will have been discontinued and no longer supported (BOSS Search and Photo Assist are 2 examples).

The Extensions page i linked to previously shows the currently available extensions that have not been discontinued.

I have forwarded your other comments to our Documentation department

Thanks Jason.

I have a few issues after installing the Data Bridge, Design Extender and eCart extensions on a fresh install of both Windows and Dreamweaver CS6. I sent an e-mail to Ray with the issues and asked him to forward it to someone in support as I assume he really needs to focus on something other than tech support.

Thanks,
Ben

What are the issues? We can offer support here through the forum.

Are you getting error messages? if so what are the errors?

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