eDirectory.comReviews of edirectory.com

I purchased self hosted enterprise license and used it for over a year. It was a painful experience to get the website and mobile apps up and running. I wish I could add screenshots to make my points clear, but below is a summary of major flaws with this software: 1. The core software architecture is from the 90s with some modern looking widgets. There is no RSS feed, social media platforms are limited to FB, Insta and Twitter only. No Zappier or AirTable integration. SVG image type is not supported, which makes the graphics on mobile apps and website look ugly on high resolution displays. You can’t even use an HD logo image. 2. Search is completely broken. There is 'type ahead' suggestion capability, but if you do not type the exact ‘keywords’ or listing, article name, nothing shows up. There is no recommendation or fuzzy search… Did you mean this? Or Try similar sounding names? MySQL Fuzzy Text Searching Using the SOUNDEX Function has been around for many years, but they chose not to implement. 3. Native comments for articles, blogs and listings are are now removed and sold as an extension or advanced review plugin. There is no option to use Disqus for comments. The only option is free Facebook comment plugin, which is pretty useless as young audience don’t use this platform anymore. Documentation still points to comments capability being included, but that is not true. 3. Poor UX on both desktop and mobile - Themes are not dense. About 70% of the screen space is wasted in all the default themes. Users have to scroll to see more information. Widgets come in different shapes depending upon the summary abstract. 4. Mobile apps have too many bugs in the GUI and haven’t been updated since many years. 5. Signup, login and claim listing UX is completely broken… to many links and pages to click through 6. Data harvesting - eDirectory support has a ‘super admin’ login and they also use ‘Mixpanel’ analytics to collect data. This may be helpful for support, but no mention in their documentation. It is very easy for eDirectory support personnel to export all your customer data, emails and payment info. This is precisely the reason I purchased ‘Enterprise’ license to protect my customer’s information, and Arca solutions is not very transparent with their policies and data handling practices. In a nutshell, this software is just a bait to sell you PHP customization services and plugins at three times the developer market rate. Better bet would be to open source the software so community can help improve and Arca can offer professional services.

First, I bought the source code 3 years ago for another venture we did not move forward with then. The support was bad then and I complained to management with no improvement so posted reviews here and other places. eDirectory responded to the review 3 years ago by offering me free upgrades if I removed my review. So yes, I saved $200 that way and was convinced (bribed...) I am telling you that because I suspect many other negative reviews have been fixed that way distorting the real reviews that are here. Last year I paid for an upgrade and started on new venture. The technical support is mostly not good. The team is all in Brazil and has no sense of urgency, none. I don't think they have a standard response window. I needed custom development done and thought easier to work with the company that developed the software. But I was assigned a junior staffer and there were communication issues of what I wanted and how it would be implemented. This was despite writing details instructions and requests and duplicating what I wanted. It took extra time to try to explain great detail in writing. Then with support and development I did not always know when it would get done, if it would get done or the quality. I got upset and someone from management would get involved but it would also drift back to same past issues. Same story as 3 years ago. I sold enterprise software so was used to real support and predictability. If you just need the hosted solution it has many features off the shelf and you can customize yourself. If you need more interaction or to rely on them for development I would buy the source code and hire people from Upwork to do customization or go with other option or have custom website done. I also moved hosting to Amazon Web Services (AWS). You really need someone with technical skills to work on AWS and do the move. That was another point of contention. It took almost 2 weeks to get the right credentials from eDirectory to be able to move the hosting. At this point for what I need now, I would have been better off just building a website from scratch. Daniel on the sales team does a good job. I don't know how he can sell though having to get involved with negative support issues I think a lot. eDirectory might be a good simple solution to use the site as is. For anything beyond that I would not use if you will need major custom work. I rarely write reviews for anything but I lost a couple months of time fooling around with them and am still pissed. I know have a good team of PHP developers in Ukraine I found on Upwork. I have hired 27 people on Upwork in 10 years. I start with giving 3-5 hours to test them and start bumping up to see what they can do.

Software UI looks very neat, but it is buggy. Live support is only good for answering simple questions. Anything else requires them to escalate it and you will not hear back from them for days or weeks. Presales is amazing. Aftersales is awful. Support is terribly slow and often not solving the issue. Go somewhere else if you need a product that works out of the box.

Daniel was great at explaining the software and answering any questions that I had. This software is exactly what we were looking for. EDIT - Signing up was easy and great. But getting help since then has been a bit of a pain. Have to copy Daniel in on everything to get help. Our website is not allowing people to sign up. We are not sure how long this has been going on but it has been two days since we brought it to their attention and it is still not fixed.

This is my first month with eDirectory, licensing their product for $200 a month. I also bought $100s of dollars worth of addtl plugins at one time fees. Things like yelp integration, drop down menu, article association... some cool lil perks. - Upon purchasing there is something wrong with the VERY FIRST PAYMENT BUTTON. This is a web development company and the first button you click, trying to actually pay them, doesn't work... I was charged twice. The second charge refunded several days later. - Less than 24hrs ago I took my site out of maintenance. There is no traffic to my site, its like 3 pages. And today the server was "experiencing instability" according to support, the site inaccessible for over 4hrs. The main page only loading, the rest are still HTTP error 500. What happens when people actually use it? /// The logo on my site has also not loaded the rest of the day. - I've discovered at least one feature that does not work as it should. The "Awards & Badges" - you make them, name them, upload little picture - and it shows up nowhere to utilize. Listings just reroute you back to the page were you can make them. - The only mass control you have over ALL listings (or any listing more than ONE)... to delete them. You can't add multiple listings to a certain category, you can't change the listing type of multiple listings (batch upgrade to a premium listing), you can't change the status of multiple listings (bringing them offline/online or pending/active.) Positive? IDK I want to give them a chance cause there are soooo many features and cause I like what I'm doing. But if I keep building this thing and I can't rely on them to maintain their end... the features don't work, their servers aren't stable, and editing the listings takes forever... Ugh, its frustrating.

I would recommend this script for its location features. Compared with other similar script its location seo options are great Update on 8/22/2018: -Does not work with php 7 -does not compress the images when uploaded wich will slow the site down( a lot) -if translate the languages 2-3 visible words can not be translated -difficult to set up - i wanted to sell my script , i wrote support of Edirectory to ask if i can do this but no reply ( already 3 months)

I chose eDirectory because it offered all the functionality I needed to run my small business, plus much more, for a fraction of the price to have a custom-built site. The modules make for a more robust system, the CMS is easy to use, and the frontend is attractive and streamlined. The sales staff responded quickly to all of my questions, and offered additional solutions for my needs. I look forward to a long working relationship with this team. UPDATE 11/26/16: The software has some glitches, but overall performs as promoted. However, support is slow or non-responsive. My site has been down part of the time every day for the past three days....unacceptable! I'm glad I purchased the source code so I can move it to another host.