Insider (customer) view
I am sharing with you the complaint that was made inside the customer area of Elegant Themes forums followed by 1 additional customer complaint confirming the issues and note that there has been no reply whatsoever from Elegant Themes - they basically completely ignored the 2 customers' complaints. Date of complaints was 23 Aug 2019 and date of screenshots is 15 Sep 2019.
Customer #1 Post
Fri Aug 23, 2019 3:09 amSo you release a broken update for Divi Builder which completely destroys my website, i.e. none of the pages made with it load.
You do not allow any way to roll back the update.
(the way i know that it was you who released a broken update is because when i de-activate the Divi Builder all the pages load).
So I contact your technical support explaining the situation and pro-actively providing the TOKEN for them to check/fix.
After 6 hours!!! Zain from support replies with "please update to the latest version released today (the one that broke my site) and then check, also disable all active plugins temporarily and then check, the problem could be caused by a third party plugin"
- he did nothing but copy/paste a template answer
- he ignored the ticket completely and did not bother to check anything
That's already 6+ hours that I am losing both visitors and money.
And now waiting for more hours to probably get another template reply.
Is Elegant Themes going to compensate me for my damages? I guess you will not. How can you be trusted when you release a broken update destroying my website and do not respond for hours to customer support and when you respond you send a useless template copy/paste without checking anything?!
Furthermore, I now understood that Elegant Themes has the power / ability to destroy my entire website with a press of a button, because I was stupid enough to put my entire trust in Elegant Themes using their Themes and their Divi Builder (as if you try to de-activate the builder ALL the pages become totally useless filled with trash code, so they would have to be all re-constructed 1 by 1).
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For other customers like me: this is sharing experience / knowledge
For Elegant Themes if they read this:
- you must allow roll back of your updates to be used when you issue broken updates
- you must fix your broken customer support
- and address the issue of trust (where for example you trash the whole website if Divi Builder is deactivated)
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UPDATE:
1st ticket 2 days not a single reply from the incompetent support of Elegant Themes
2nd ticket several copy/paste template replies over the span of 2 days!
ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!
Further proof that the fault is due to Elegant Themes apart from their INCOMPETENT and NON-EXISTENT support. I deactivated ALL plugins on my site and kept only Divi Builder active and the site is not working (i.e. only pages made by Divi). It ONLY works if I deactivate Divi Builder.
Customer #2 Post replying to this topic
You are not alone, I just had the most horrid interaction with their chat person since I got DIVI and I am completely destroyed, because my site is supposed to launch on Tuesday.Just like with you, my troubles started when I updated DIVI to 3.27.2. I was lucky to have updraft plus so I could roll back to 3.26.1, but even with that update completely messed up my site, I had to upload images again, re-do forms and not all plugins function normally. On top, I got warning from google search console about numerous server 5xxx errors on my site.
Conversing with support was a nightmare, I was also told to disable plugins and after my staging site was completely destroyed by all that, the chat person mockingly asked me, so what are we going to work on next?
The worst thing of this all is that I completely lost all confidence in DIVI and my entire platform is built on it. I had no idea that an update could destroy my site like that and their support will be openly mocking me. I worked on this site for a year, what should I do now? Keep 3.26.1 and never update? Work another year to move the site completely away from DIVI?
I cannot convey how devastating this whole experience has been for me, so I can relate to every word you wrote.
Picture Proof
And here is the full page picture of this complaint against Elegant Themes from inside their member area:Note: it is a very large picture, click and zoom in to see fully.
Conclusion
So to conclude:- Stay away from Elegant Themes and their DIVI builder.
- Most things can be built with the Wordpress's new Gutenberg builder enhanced with advanced modules.
- If your site is already using the DIVI builder on all your pages then you are in trouble as it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to deactivate the DIVI builder as they turn all your pages into trash. Start thinking to slowly transition away from the DIVI pages by re-constructing the pages with the Wordpress's new Gutenberg builde.
- Think ahead - think long term. If there is any error by Elegant Themes such as releasing a faulty update which they have done a number of times then your site will go down and you will lose both money and visitors. And since they lock you in they make it near impossible to leave.
- All that would be fine if they had fantastic customer support quickly fixing things if your site is down, but they do not. Far from it. Their support is absolutely horrible as illustrated in this post. There are numerous other cases of them not replying for a long time or when they do reply sending copy/paste template replies.
Note: there are of course many happy customers of Elegant Themes. This is a normal phenomenon as they are happy because they have not yet encountered the problems that other customers have. For the happy customers I offer these questions:
- Are you aware that you are locked in and cannot leave them?
- Are you aware that if you switch off the DIVI builder all your pages will turn into trash?
- Are you aware that if Elegant Themes sends a faulty update they have the power to crash your entire business and their non-existent customer support would not help you?
- Are you aware that you cannot convert DIVI pages and you would need to completely re-construct all the pages if you wanted to leave Elegant Themes?
