Shaun F.
eDirectory one problem after the other with aweful support throughout
Unfortunately there has been nothing but problems after problems while using their directory. I will be honest, I think their directory is easy to use and I like it, it has promise, it is just the fact it has loads of bugs, errors, issues; between their hosting services and their directory software , you try to use support, who can be rude, out right wrong and I believe even lie, they take a lot of convincing before properly investigating issues but not until pointing blame every which way but themselves, they take ages, many hours, days and are more than happy to completely ignore you if you don't chase them up every couple of days. Feels like to much to list here really, so will skip past the many smaller bugs and issues experienced in first year, eventually after a load of server down time I was getting frustrated with the down time and the fact they either have no systems in place to detect down time or they just ignore those systems; it took customers or staff telling me server is down again, for me to chase support to then it takes them like 6 hours to get it live again, having admitted to me on numerous occasions all that was needed was to reboot server (6 hours?!). So I requested the required permissions to do this via SSH so that I wouldn't have to wait 6 and more hours to simply reboot my server when it goes down… every other day!; first I was told this would possible, then it wasn't possible, then having given up fighting for administrator access to our own server!! It took a future dispute over even more down time to finally be given sufficient permissions to reboot server. Through this time I was fobbed off with all sorts of excuses for the down time (like using CloudFlare, something I argued we had used for a year mostly without issue, and had used page rules to solve their claimed problem with CF), never their own fault but ours, until I fought enough to convince them and stopped using CloudFlare, where they had run out of excuses and discovered what they believed was the issue; the servers max number of clients was too high and causing the crash, so they reduced that, still happening, then they claim the server they sold us was not fit (specification wise) for the version of their software they sold as, so I asked why did you sell us the software server combination if it was not fit, we had discussed the details of this over enough time for someone to have realised this, I challenged them further as was not convinced, I queried if the huge number of fatal errors in server log files was anything to do with it, anyway eventually I caved and advised my employer to upgrade server… and still more down time, so then the excuse was lots of bots visiting website and crashing site, that is a reasonable answer but should never have taken about a year to actually investigate properly, however they have now blocked such a huge number of IP addresses I am not even sure for good reason and our analytics has taken a huge hit since. Anyway I implemented my own server downtime monitor and now reboot web server when have issues, or wait on them when whole server is down, which we should not have to be so concerned with so often. We had purchased mods, that had not worked right out of the box, they had bugs instantly, to then find months later they had stopped working altogether, so got onto support, few weeks later mods were working again, weeks! During these issues we were told why not buy our expensive new version of the site, as some of these problems in our slightly older version have now been fixed, where I had to politely explain that usually when you buy a faulty item it is fixed or replaced, judging by the number of issues experienced so far and the lack of fixing, we would not be risking investing in a whole new version (full price) as we had not long ago purchased the faulty version (full price) and judging by your standards it was be a very risky move to give you any more money and trust that you truly have resolved these issues. Then we did have database access for a year, we have some of our own custom made scripts to get data from our database that we either can’t via eDirectory software or we would have to buy their faulty and expensive mods to do so, then all of a sudden access stopped, after a little fight and denial of any issues their end, mid conversation (conversation lasted days) it suddenly out of the blue started working, coincidence? Maybe but consider this, the issue had not been on one laptop inside just one private network, but the issue had happened on numerous computers, different operating systems, from inside different private networks for both WorkBench access and script access, so having explained that yes I was sure the credentials were correct and I doubt it’s my end due to the wide scale nature of our inability to access it just suddenly started working mid conversation. A few days later I see its down again, more telling me they have done nothing to our server since so can’t be them (more lies), where I had to remind them they had indeed made numerous changes in their attempt to solve the recent spat of downtime as can be seen in this email and that email etc, more stubborn this time, must be my end, so having shown them direct evidence that they had blocked access it suddenly starts working again… after me express I felt they were intentionally preventing me access the database, most likely because they do not want me to make scripts that do what the mods they sell do. Then the much acclaimed Daniel Storm from above, our sales man, not even the decency to respond to my emails throughout the year and a bit that we have suffered endlessly with these issues and I would like to say the issues above are not all our issues. So while the eDirectory platform had promise, the company and its many bugs means I would never recommend it to anyone.