CoffeeCup VisualSite Designer User Reviews

• 1.0 stars

  "Do not walk away from this company. RUN VERY FAST!"

  May 10, 2012  |   By arivers99

  Version: CoffeeCup VisualSite Designer 7.0 build 24

  Pros

  cheap, cheap and cheap

  Cons

  Cheap for a reason
  
  Everything sold a la carte and VSD is so limited that you have no choice but to purchase numerous 'basic' addons
  
  VSD crashes more often than Danica Patrick causing a loss of whatever you had spent hours working on. CC had no logical explanation or fix for this issue
  
  Not suitable for large websites. Could not upload our website using their software which then required 8 hours to upload via 3rd party uploaders. CC again had no logical explanation or fix to this problem and... the 8 hour upload time applied to any change no matter how small. i.e. adding a single word still required 8 hours.
  
  Customer service is not a strong point with this company.

  Summary

  cheap for a reason... don't waste your money
  
  The highlights of our experience with this company:
  
  The VSD software has limited functionality which is why it is cheap. For even basic functionality that is resident in just about every other design software out there you need to purchase 'add-ons'
  
  While I understand the 'a la carte' software strategy their approach is akin to selling a car online that looks complete and then finding out it does NOT come with tires, steering wheel, etc. Of course, if you take the time to read all the fine print I'm sure they mention all this. No one reads the fine print and CC is well aware of this.
  
  Our VSD software crashed more often than Danica Patrick causing a loss of whatever you had spent hours working on. CC had no logical explanation or fix for this issue
  
  Not suitable for large websites. Could not upload our website using their software which then required 8 hours to upload via 3rd party uploaders. CC again had no logical explanation or fix to this problem and... the 8 hour upload time applied to any change no matter how small. i.e. adding a single word still required 8 hours.
  
  Ultimately we scrapped the entire software and website built using this software along with thousands of dollars in wasted manhour costs and asked for a full refund.
  
  Their response was to refund the initial VSD but not the addons which you are forced to purchase due to the limited functionality in the initial VSD. They claimed that as these addons are standalone and since we did not express any dissatisfaction with them they refused to refund these costs even though they are of no use to non programmers. They also claimed that as we had been using their software for 8 months that they were in fact doing us a favour. Hmmm, apparently building a 300+ page website should take no more than a couple of days in their mind... and of course finding out that it takes 8 hours to upload each time is only something that we could find out after the website was finished and we tried to upload it. CC was aware of all these issues and gave no indication that we would not even be able to upload the finished site. We do not consider an 8 hour upload time to be viable option.
  
  As related above and by other customer complaints in this forum, customer service is not one of their strong points. During the course of our issue discussions with them there was the distinct aroma of condescension in their replies.
  
  In short based upon our experiences i.e. sizable but simple business / online catalog website I would NOT recommend this software.
  
  PS - we recently switched to Wordpress and are kicking ourselves for not finding them before. Impressions thus far...pretty awesome and easy to use CMS software.

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