Invision Community Classic Avaliações 58

I've been using Invision software since 2001. It's flexible and has quite a few features. The support staff is first class. I gave this a 4-star rating due to the fact of some changes made from v4 to v5. Some features that my users and I liked were changed and/or removed, however; I still prefer Invision over any other forums software that I tried and used over the years. It would have received 5 stars were it not for the recent changes.

Quite surprised to see such negative reviews for Invision Community.

As a Cloud client for almost 2 years now, self hosted (now Classic) for maybe 10 years prior. I could not be happier with the software, pricing and support.

Matt and his team (special mention for Marc) respond quickly and professionally to any rare issues and I would not hesitate to recommend their Cloud offerings to any new or existing community owner.

With the latest release of 5, it could not be easier to create your community with drag and drop page builders, a new theme creator by the Wizard that is Ehren.

The awful and negative reviews below are quite frankly absurd.

Heed the reviews on this page. The switching costs for this type of software are high. Don't get stuck with this company. The software itself is outdated and confusing. I still have no idea how to navigate the backend. (When I complained about this to Invision, they said I needed to give it time.) They don't care about their customers. If you raise a concern or issue, they tell you why they're right and you're wrong. Excellent customer service. There are so many options out there. Find one that values your business and cares about making a decent product.

Mediocre software at best, atrocious customer service, and absurd pricing for something that costed far, far less years ago, yet it does the same exact concept. They seem to think their bogus features and ugly designs are worth thousands. Yeah, sure. Don't recommend and stay as far away from these bums as possible because they'll rob you in a heartbeat then just ban you once you disagree.

Do not get involved with this company. They are money-grubbers and goal post shifters. I have had 2 licenses for the full suite for over 10 years. They used to be great, but now you just can't trust them at all. Support is rude and as others have said they no no longer even allow those whose support licenses have lapsed to even post on their forum. Such a pity that their greed has overtaken their souls.

EDIT after IPS reply:

I started my online community in 2006 with free open source software. As the community grew I had to find better software to manage it. That software turned out to be IPS (now Invision Community). As Matt mentions in his response below, I have been using this software since 2011. When I was using version 3 I spent an inordinate number of hours building customised templates for camera lens reviews that were always available for free to all members. When version 4 came out I discovered that ALL my work had pretty much been destroyed and that I would have to start again. Lesson learned. Don't trust software "developers". They are not in it for your benefit, they only want to benefit themselves.

Since being on version 4 I have seen IPS destroy the 3rd party developer marketplace, which contained templates, themes and plugins that I had paid for but which can no longer be updated. This essentially scorches my community user experience because small things we have come to love will no longer be possible to use.

People who complained about this were shut down and censored on the Invision Community forum. That is a fact and I challenge IPS to deny this.

For me the last straw now is that because I have elected to not pay for the support on my self-hosted licenses (2 of them) I am not allowed to even post on the community support forums. And this is just absurd.

The reason why I have decided to not renew is that they have also changed the licensing of the self hosted products to an annual fee of $200 - you have no option but to accept their new T&C's if you don't want to pay that fee. This is a ridiculous amount of money and cannot be justified in any way, because the software is STILL THE SAME thing it was 10 years ago. It doesn't do anything different. Sure, they may have added some features and glitzed it up a bit but it doesn't do anything different to what it did when v4 first came out. It is a forum, gallery and blog with a very limited content management system attached. It can also act as a paywall with extremely limited payment gateway options (because who in their right mind would develop a gateway for a company with such fickle attitudes to 3rd party devs?). This product does not justify a $200 annual fee. Not in the slightest.

What has truly broken the camel's back for me is that I cannot believe the amount of bot sign-ups I am receiving since allowing the support to lapse. Try as you will your registration net cannot filter these out, or even delete their un-verified accounts from the queue automatically (a supposed feature of the software I paid for) unless you pay the $200 to IPS. How do they do that? I strongly suspect that as soon as your support license lapses they sell your details to some nefarious organisation and give them the instructions on how to bypass the reCaptcha option for signups.

No, sorry. IPS are the equivalent of the mafia when it comes to community software. I cannot believe how far they have rolled from the tree of usefulness.

2ND REPLY

"As part of the license cost/renewal, you get our cloud based spambot registration filtering. Once your purchase period ends, then you will no longer have access to this paid service. "

Thank you for confirming that. Funny how none of the dozens of WordPress websites I have designed and manage for customers has this same issue of spambot registrations bypassing reCaptcha.

3rd Reply:

Since writing this review I have private messaged Jeff to give more reasons why I have written this review (which has nothing to do with their v5 product at all). My message was not well received and I was given a warning on their system for daring to give them a piece of my mind via private message.

Well, it's pretty obvious that IPS are not the company they used to be and it reinforces my statement above that you should not get involved with them if you are planning to start an online community.

Do I have any good things to say about the current IPS? Unfortunately no. They do not understand their purpose in the world of internet communications and seem to be under the delusion that they decide what's important and what isn't to the people who have actually created the online communities that they provide software for, i.e. their customers. When you start to dictate to your customers you should know that we won't be by your side forever. I would rather spend the $200 on a Xenforo license right now than pad the already fat IPS wallets

Ich hatte in der Vergangenheit IPS (Cloud-Lösung) für ein geplantes Projekt herangezogen. Allerdings wurde das Projekt bezüglich dem vorhandenen Budget (<2'500 USD) mit einer Lösung aus dem Mitbewerb umgesetzt.

Grundsätzlich hatte ich mit IPS nur positive Erfahrungen gemacht (Geschwindigkeit // Usabillity & Optik. Der Support hatte immer zeitnah reagiert und für den DACH-Sprachraum gibt es - noch heute - eine grosse Community (Übersetzungsarbeiten // zahlreichen Add-on's usw.). Besonders gefallen hatte mir die Funktion "Pages", eine eigentliche CMS Funktion, was IPS zum umfassenden Framework macht.

Einziger "Wermutstropfen" war der Preis (Cloud-Version). Viele ergänzende und tolle/spannende Funktionen sind ausschliesslich in höheren Ausprägungen (Versionen) enthalten, was für ein kleines Forum am Start fast unbezahlbar bleibt.

Grundsätzlich kann ich IPS für grössere Projekte und einem soliden Budget gerne weiterempfehlen (weiterhin auch als Self-Hosting Anwendung erhältlich).

This company is a complete disaster, prices have skyrocketed several times recently! In a time when forums are collapsing! On top of that, their cloud service keeps experiencing outages! If you don't know how to do something, don't get into it! Not to mention, all negative and critical opinions about IPS on their forum are being deleted... At least here you can see from other people's reviews how pathetic this company is. I have a feeling that in a few years this company will be gone with such practices and astronomical prices. There are plenty of cheaper and less unreliable cloud solutions.

I had an account on there from years ago which was mysteriously banned. Now they claim they cannot find my account, even though I am getting an email back allowing me to reset the password.

They will claim they cannot find an account with your email if it is banned.

Very poor experience.

I've been a longtime Invision subscriber, both the software and their cloud hosting. Their off the shelf product remains best in class, but man am I disappointed with their cloud hosting.

They're expensive, bureaucratic at every step, they don't provide ftp access, you have to go through them to perform backups and restores, they consistently lay blame on their customers, and they nickel and dime you every step of the way.

The final insult happened today, when I'd finally had enough and decided to self-host my forums. They told me I'd have to pay $500 to change my plan (plus an additional $200/year for the service itself). I agreed -- what choice do I have? -- only to get an error when I tried to download the software. So what do they say when this happens, after I've spent $500 for the privilege of switching plans? No apology, no circumventing the system to just get me the software I just paid for. Instead, I receive this note:

"After reviewing your request, we have determined that it is going to require further investigation by our advanced support/development team.

I have escalated your request to that department and they will provide further assistance as quickly as possible. Due to the advanced nature of your request, please note that it may take longer than usual to fully address your concern. Please also note that advanced support is only available Monday through Friday. I apologize in advance for this delay."

They sent this on a Thursday afternoon, btw. I am so angry.

EDITED TO ADD: I just read Invision's response below and I want to point out that I'm not complaining about paying the $200/year for the new plan. I'm complaining about paying an *additional* $500 for switching to that plan... only to encounter an error when trying to download the software and then be curtly informed that it could be days before they address the issue.

Inquired about a cancellation and refund via their support e-mail, given they've recently closed their marketplace and was told "We offer free trials on our software to test out any functionality to prevent cases like this" without any further assistance in resolving the matter. Their customer service is absolute garbage. I've since initiated a dispute for the $99.00 charge.

As a Developer. Invision community documentation is the worst I have ever come across.

Simple things that one needs to add manually are no where to be found. The documentation just assumed that everyone who's going to use invision is part of the core team that developed invision.

Discussing any form of criticism on their forums for their recent terrible decisions will get your account permanently suspended for "spreading fud"

Look for another software. They're going downhill fast and trying to push their self-hosted customers away to force everyone into their cloud services so you can pay x4 the price for the same thing.

EDIT
In response to the IPS response, they note "temporary" restrictions. I've been permanently restricted from posting for over a year. Never received any previous warnings or citations.

As with their "cloud" services, while this has been around for a very long time, it's only recently they started pulling features from self-hosted and releasing cloud-only features to try and box you out of being able to self-host.

I just got scammed
Watch out for this company.. They will scam you and they say they cant refund your money if you already have paid. I asked for at refund 6 days after I bought the script and it was not used at all and still they cant refund my money. Scammers!

There are also a lot of bugs in their system and also if any errors are pointed out they will blame you for making those errors!

Before I paid the support was nice and fast. After I paid the support was not responding for 3-4 days.

Keep your money in the bank, because these scammers will rip you for nothing.

Update:
Thats why you are scamming people! You dont answer e-mails until the trial is run out, so you Can keep the money. Very smart move!

We are two information technology managers and consultants both having 20+ years of experience who decided to launch a community directed towards executives.

We chose “Invison Power Board” (IPB) from Invision Power Systems (IPS) as the tool for this since it had one for our offering critical functionality. The software had also been around for 10-20 years (depending on how you count a major version upgrade) and could be expected to be stable. This explains why we stayed on board through an 18-month-long orgy of bug reports.

We used the SAAS “Invison Power Board” from May 2021 to October 2022. The application was used by two admins configuring and testing multiple use case scenarios and front-end designs. The site was plagued by quite a few issues. We estimate that the 18-month-long process would have taken us about 6 months with a stable and fully documented software, and an open-minded Support.

A few issue samples:

Autumn 2021
IPS support suddenly communicates that we had changed the program code, effectively leaving us without support – if we did not reverse the change. The Support was, as always, very confident and not open to arguments. “Our flag shows that you have changed the code.” End of discussion.

Since we had not changed any program code there was nothing to reverse. We then communicated that we had decided to leave IPS. A Support staff then, but not until then, manually checked the code and concluded that we had not changed a single letter. Another one of these bugs. No excuse was given, but we decided to return to IPS due to all the hours invested. A critical mistake by us when viewed in the mirror.

Autumn 2021
During our tests a large portion of new members’ registrations stalls. A showstopper. According to IPS Support everything points towards that our environment is to blame. In fact, nothing pointed in this direction. Quite the contrary, during three frustrating months we did several hundreds of user registration tests on all kinds of hardware, three different browsers and two separate networks. With the same result.

Not until a senior IPS developer was engaged the IPS Support blame game stopped. Within two weeks of further testing and analysis, the error was found - in the IPS environment (the service worker).

May 2022
During our tests, a large portion of new members’ Stripe payments stalls which (once again) effectively stops new members’ registrations. Another showstopper. Again IPS Support points towards our environment, despite us once again presenting a solid test battery showing the same stalling issue no matter what environment we use. In August 2022 Stripe Support asks for specific information from IPS but this is never provided despite reminders. The stalling issue was never resolved.

August 2022
IPS Support does a ticket count and notes that we have filed 145 support tickets since May 2021. You might expect that this would render an excuse from IPS due to a software having more bugs than a stray dog. As you might guess by now, this does not happen. What happens is that IPS Support recommends us to look for an alternative community solution since they seem to think that we are to blame for their frustrating workload. A fascinating kill-the-messenger strategy.

From August 2022 IPS Support reduces its support to us down to zero, thereby being in breach of the service agreement.

We then escalate the case to the IPS CEO who reviews it and concludes that we are good to go ahead and use the solution. But since we still get no response from IPS Support we take a deep breath, cancel our IPB plan and let about 2000 hours of work go down the drain.

We have now moved on to a different vendor where we have experienced about 5% of the issue frequency as compared to IPB.

Conclusion
Do yourself a favour and choose any other of the 100+ vendors of community software solutions.

/Joachim

2022-11-26
I note that Invision communities in their reply state that we said above that we are still being plagued by the stalling issues that (among 100+ others) ruined our experience with them. We understand that the company is eager to interpret our story above like this.

Facts: We haven't had a single network-related issue and no stalling with any of the three vendors we have evaluated since we left Invision communities. Neither did we have any of these issues with the seven other SAAS vendors we fully evaluated before we decided to go for Invision - nor in any other site we use.

An example: It took us between 5 and 15 minutes to establish a fully functional Stripe payment process in the three recently evaluated vendors. With Invision Communities this was not possible for months.

/Joachim

Invision Community is modern-day robbery. Avoid at all costs!

After running forums for the past 15 years+, I decided to go with Invision for our latest project a few years ago. The reason being is that Invision WAS an established name in forum software. In total, I ended up spending $400 USD and I didn't really mind until the day they decided to drop support for the product. The only thing left was "community support".

What kind of a joke is that? You pay a premium for a sub-par product then you're on your own for any issues.

What is the point of the renewal fee then?

If you don't pay your renewal fee and an update comes out, be prepared to close a pop-up window on YOUR website every 24 hours alerting you that an update has just come out.

Nearly all the plugins and themes you require cost decent money too as well as have a renewal fee.
This means the monthly costs really start to add up.

The problem is you can use other forum software that does the same thing (or better) for free, and the plugins are free or have a one-off payment.

You can really tell how much this company wants your money when you try to log into your client portal. There is simply no login for existing customers above the fold, we need to go all the way into the footer of their website for a tiny link.

Invision Community, Invision Powerboard or whatever they call themselves this week is simply a shadow of its former self with a team who has no idea how the modern web works.

Go elsewhere for your forum software!

The customer service is about as great as the software. Have to escalate everything to the devs (who are not speedy), even on very basic questions like how to edit a page. Why isn't this documented.

Awful overpriced forum software...i bought the self hosting because why pay serious amounts of money just to have no access or control over files? so i got self hosting for like $600...just for after like a year they want me to pay like $60 to renew my key or something? complete robbery..$600 and thats for the forums....then they rob you $60+ for good themes then plugins which you'll want minimum i would say 5 at like $10+ and most are way over $25..i think for my community i spent over $125 on plugins and a theme...so total over $785 then you've got web hosting...no wonder everyone just gets nulled tbh, don't get me wrong the software is pro and looks slick but no way is it worth that amount of money...so over priced its unreal..."but get the cloud plans" why pay $45 a month for nothing but an admin panel and 65 visitors? do people not realise how low this is..funny thing is someone can just bot your website and stop all your visitors even getting on it..and 65 is nothing when you have large servers..i had over 3000 people signed up, really think these people need to sit down and get back into the real world...its 2020 and you still charge this amount of money for a forums software? downloads $75...gallery $75 but hey atleast they give you a calendar free..and they wonder why for every 10 forums you visit 7 are nulled as people really want to use the software but aren't silly enough to spend this much money on it...sure they shouldn't null it but with these prices what do you'll expect.