# Deco network site crashing?? HERES MY REVIEW



## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

Does anyone know what is going on with deco network today?

I think I have now suffered 1 bug too many and its now time to start shouting which has been a very passive opinion about this overpriced system.

I have been using this system for approx. 12 months now and today
I went to do a quote and all I have had for the last half hour on 2 browsers is a stupid spinning wheel!


I have also tried to access the sites support and thats bugging out too,

Deco is a bag of stress sometimes , especially when you are trying do a quote on a saturday and cannot even get support.

I have had weekly bugs with this software and its sad because I have put about a years hard work into tailoring the products to suit my needs , To make things worst the uk ralawise catalouge is half done as many of the products That deco have supplied for them have the back view missing and have to be re fixed , Also there are allot of ralawise products that are not even in deco catalogue so I have had to enter them manually myself which has been very time consuming, on average including bugs a quote can take up to 30 minutes if the product is not in deco catalogue. 

Another thing :

When you are doing a big customer quote ( which may take up to an hour, the last thing you need are the following errors:

A slow buggy quote page,As the more products you add the slower the system gets and errors start occurring.

Sometimes when you override a price it changes back on its own , Or your quote will not save due to a system error


dont get me wrong guys I love the whole concept and the software is great when it works ,and as much as I have been tempted to cancel sometimes due to the constant bugs, the pros of this software make you bare and grit in hope that things will only get better eventually.

but I do I feel some hard truth needs to be known about deco because I have had daily issues with this software and I don't have the time to make daily support tickets so I guess its all coming out today.

COME ON DECO :

Fix up guys , $149 per month is a lot of money for such buggy software that comes with some very basic templates and £950 for a more than basic looking web template is a bit much considering you are charging such a high monthly fee..


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## hbapparel (Jan 16, 2012)

I agree. I have tried 4 separate times over 2 years to use deco, hoping changes have been made. Truth is, it is not ready for prime time. And after all these years, not sure it ever will be.


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## headfirst (Jun 29, 2011)

brianrudie said:


> Fix up guys , $149 per month is a lot of money for such buggy software that comes with some very basic templates and £950 for a more than basic looking web template is a bit much considering you are charging such a high monthly fee..


Agreed. We spent a year with them until I realized the amount of time I spent on-hold with them was seriously affecting my earnings.

We had the same problems as you describe. I'd love to use Deconetwork but they dropped the ball too many times for me to try them again.


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## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

its funny how nobody from deco has anything to say here?


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi all,

I hope I can answer some of your questions here and I will do my best without knowing the details of each individual case. I will love to do so however.

First I actually didn't know this post existed. I do have alerts for keywords deconetwork but never got alerted on this one. I wonder if it because the title says "Deco network" and not a whole world. I'll see if I can tweak my keyword alerts.

I am surprised to hear of the crashing you said you have been experiencing. We've certainly not had any support calls related to it so I'd like to arrange a GoToMeeting with you to see these crashes in person. Is this OK by you? I will arrange it UK time to make it convenient for you.

RE support site: You might have been unlucky to hit the site as we were doing an update of our support platform over the weekend. I'm sorry about that and I can see how it compounds the issue! We chose this time hoping it would be a quiet period, but there was a message saying the site was offline temporarily. This had no affect on DecoNetwork websites, just our support tool.

I would also like to touch on the topic of SEO. We've had lots of comments on SEO over the years and in some cases, as with Doc Sheldon, there were misconceptions. I have come to know Doc fairly well stemming from a post he wrote on his forum. Doc later admitted his post was inaccurate and that he had actually not looked at DecoNetwork, but took the word of another person. Turns out this person was not familiar with SEO and how DecoNetwork worked therefore was not aware he could configure his site accordingly. Doc did make a follow-up statement confirming this. I'm sure if you reach out to Doc he will be happy to confirm this.

As I work with our Australian clients can I only really comment on their experience. But the feedback we get is honestly good. Some have employed SEO companies to consult and I can recommend Ross Langley-Essen from Independent SEO Consultants | Best SEO Company Comparison. He did a great with a client in Australian to get their site ranked on page one in just over a week. I'd be happy to put you in contact with some other DecoNetwork site owners in Australia who focused on their own SEO and built their traffic up to where they are doing hundreds of thousands a month by online sales.

Duplicate content is handled in DecoNetwork and you have control to set unique titles and meta content. I'd be happy to do a GoToMeeting with you to review those settings if you like.

So again if you have no objection I'd like to meet with each of you at once or all at once if you like in a GoToMeet to review you concerns. It's hard in forum text but a lot easier if we do a few screen shares and calls.

We're honestly here to help any way we can and would love you guys to also be the top of rankings and drawing in the online sales as well. 

If you want my direct email just IM me.

Thanks again and I hope we can resolve your issues.


Cheers,
Brenden


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

P.S. RE SEO consulting: Ross said you are welcome to email him direct on:

[email protected]
Uk: +44 (0) 208 144 1866
Australia: +61 (0) 280 916 098


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

Wow, Brenden. That covered a lot of info. I use Deco, and while I haven't noticed any of the issues being mentioned in this post happening to me (thought I have had a few other issues), I learned a lot just from that post...I hope OP's problem gets worked out. I think it could be helpful to you guys to have some more documentation for your service, as right now it seems to be pretty severely lacking, which has caused me to go to support quite a few times.

I don't know if you have any control over issues like this, but your main support site even has a pretty bad issue. You have a section called whitepapers, and there is an article written about Google and SEO there. Well, the link to the article is broken. I was able to fix the link and make it what it was supposed to be so I could access the paper, and I sent a message to support to notify them of the problem, but never received anything back and the problem is still there...

So, I guess in short, I just think it would go a long way if you guys would expand documentation a bit and give people more info about what they are getting/have gotten themselves into. Personally I like the service, and Cristofer has been very helpful to me every time I have a problem, but I completely get why people have issues with the service.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi ETA,

We're in full agreement We're certainly aware our help articles are lacking at the moment but you will see a change here in the coming weeks as we roll out our new help system (as noted above with the site upgrade performed last weekend).

DecoNetwork is very functional but with it lots of functions comes some complexity. This is also being resolved in our next version where you can strip DecoNetwork back just to the core features you need in your business. We'll certainly be looking for beta testers of this new release when it is available so if as a DecoNetwork site owner this sounds enticing then let us know if you want to be included on beta.

Beyond our formal article help our DecoNetwork community at DecoNetwork forums :: Category Index | DecoNetwork is very active with lots of contributors of both internal team and customers to help.

Of course, ping me any time and I'd be glad to assist 

Cheers,
Brenden


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## stevegamble (Apr 14, 2010)

Ultra Cottonâ„¢ 100% Cotton T Shirt - ACME Printing

CLICK DECORATE NOW

=

ERROR 404

?

I don't know who to sign up with as we are simply looking for a product that works, and won't aggravate my stomach ulcers.
It is the commitment of time that hurts when you don't get the results you were expecting.

We were testing the free catalogue demo site to see how smooth it could be for us before signing up.


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

I think the Deco team is fixing some bugs right now and it messed up a bit of functionality -- that 404 is almost certainly a very temporary error, I am actually currently talking to the support team about the effect it is having on my site. While it is frustrating that things aren't working properly, this doesn't happen often in my experience. Hopefully it will be worked out soon.


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## stevegamble (Apr 14, 2010)

Thank you.
I signed up for it, a month or more ago and have not been able to test yet.
I'll try once or twice a week to see if it gets fixed.
Would love to find some happy clients on here .


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

stevegamble said:


> Ultra Cotton™ 100% Cotton T Shirt - ACME Printing
> 
> CLICK DECORATE NOW
> 
> ...


Hey Steve,

This is actually our beta catalog site not the general public stable release. You can test the full non-beta (stable) designer at Home - DecoNetwork Demo Store.

We're actually in the process of rolling up an update and fix to the beta Catalog product which is why some pages are not loading. Give it a few minutes


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

No problem! I actually really like the service, though it does have some serious flaws. My personal advice to you would be to wait a couple weeks, they are supposed to be pushing out the version 7 update, and that should bring a LOT of changes (hopefully for the better) and some better documentation.

I think one of the things that is severely lacking right now is community involvement. There is a really good forum on the Deconetwork site where people can give suggestions or look for help, and for the most part, it all gets responded to by not only the rest of the community but the development team as well, but it seems like lots of people just aren't asking for the things they want to be fixed to be fixed.

I have had pretty good experiences with asking for help with whatever I want supported or cannot get to work, but I do understand that most people go into the service not expecting to have to ask for things.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

stevegamble said:


> Thank you.
> I signed up for it, a month or more ago and have not been able to test yet.
> I'll try once or twice a week to see if it gets fixed.
> Would love to find some happy clients on here .


Hi Steve,

Did you sign up for the free catalog solution or a full site? Ping me on PM. Be happy to go over your site with you 

And yes while I don't want to drive users away from this forum, DecoNetwork users hangout in our DecoNetwork forums. It's free, public and no posts are removed or moderated (accept spam).

BTW, the update is finished and the pages are loading OK now 

Cheers,
Brenden


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

Brenden, was this update affecting any site that is signed up for the beta, or was it just your catalog site there?


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Only DecoNetwork Catalog sites on version 7.0. The V6.0.12 public full version beta was unaffected.


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

Gotcha, thanks. I was experiencing some issues with my 6.0.12 beta site earlier, and thought it might have to do with the update, but apparently not.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

No as they are different code bases. But keep in mind beta implies there could be issues  So if it's not something you want to work with I wouldn't run in beta but we leave beta open as an opt-in program because some people love to get early access to the tools and features.


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

Well, it's all sorted out now  so I'm not worried at the moment. It only seems to have affected things for about thirty or forty minutes. I have liked using the beta so far and am in no way deterred from it by this one bad issue, overall it has been a great experience.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Awesome great to hear. You wait till you see DecoNetwork 7 

Well this happy camper is off to bed. It's nearly 1am now and got a 6 am meeting!


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

Super excited for 7  get some sleep! Thanks for the chat.


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## stevegamble (Apr 14, 2010)

Wow !!
Demo Site looks awesome.

Q. Why does the design on a shirt front have to be so low ?
I am sure I'd get people asking me that same Q when they attempt a design upload.
Looks way to low to me ?.


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## ETA (Mar 14, 2013)

I worried about that before I started using the site too, but all the design areas are adjustable, so you can always move it up to where you want it. Their designer tools give you pretty good control over location, you just have to configure them for each product (so each blank shirt you use, you can pick a different area to allow the print on.)


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## stevegamble (Apr 14, 2010)

ETA said:


> I worried about that before I started using the site too, but all the design areas are adjustable, so you can always move it up to where you want it. Their designer tools give you pretty good control over location, you just have to configure them for each product (so each blank shirt you use, you can pick a different area to allow the print on.)


Great Thanks


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## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

Another suggestion, 

when I am doing quotes and i override the price and then later changes the quantity why does the price then default back the original pricing , I find this very irritating as overriding prices should not go back to default unless you un-tick the override box.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Indeed it should not. I'll check it out for you.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hey Brian,

I did some testing and I can't seem to reproduce this. Here is what I did.

- Open Business Hub and create a new quote.
- Added a product and then selected the size / qty column and checked "Override Price" and set a price of $17.50 each:










- I then close the Size / Qty dialog, then reopen it and change the quantity to 55:











In my case the price remained as $17.50. Can you confirm what steps or price fields you are changing, and also what browser and version you are using? 

Cheers!
Brenden


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## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

brianrudie said:


> Does anyone know what is going on with deco network today?
> 
> I think I have now suffered 1 bug too many and its now time to start shouting which has been a very passive opinion about this overpriced system.
> 
> ...



Heres another one, 

Three items copied but one has a different price , frustrating, 

Also today screen print option would not allow artwork to upload on chrome and safari AAAAAAGGGHHH!!!


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi,

Just to confirm you have reported this to the support team so they can raise the appropriate development task?

Thanks ,
Brenden


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## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

brenden said:


> Hi,
> 
> Just to confirm you have reported this to the support team so they can raise the appropriate development task?
> 
> ...



Hi brenden 

With all due respect its faster to post up on here , The support system I have experienced ( although short ) sucks, the only response I have had from them is " we will notify the developers" and then I hear no more?

Also is there a way to adjust the measurements for an uploaded design as all of my mockup measurements are incorrect? For example,

A t shirt design which in reality is 21cm wide x 21 cm high is showing as 13cm x 13cm which is giving my quotes incorrect measurements as a decent size front chest print specified as a left chest size measurements. I have had so many of my customers query this and I have to tell the to ignore the on screen measurements.



For me its too long winded to fill out a support form every other day as I have a business to run.

Perhaps you could take note and get your team to fix from what you read here.

I have a love hate relationship with deco at the moment and I have seen so many bugs during my days at work its tiring but at the same time I love the system ( when it works well on the good days ) .

Another issue is there is no VAT charge on rush order fees , is there a way to switch on VAT for rush order fees?


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi,

Honestly support ticket is best. As you can imagine while we try too we just can't monitor the web for comments in various forums. Your request will get lost however as tickets it is in our direct system linked to our team and developers.

Take rush order fees for example - it was raised as a ticket by someone else and is in our system to be updated now. Task DNC-13152.

When a task is raised to development the ticket is updated with a tracking ID and you can check the status anytime. We have a team of 4-5 monitoring these tickets.

I'll raise this one for you for the team to investigate.


Brenden


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## brianrudie (Dec 16, 2009)

brenden said:


> Hi,
> 
> Honestly support ticket is best. As you can imagine while we try too we just can't monitor the web for comments in various forums. Your request will get lost however as tickets it is in our direct system linked to our team and developers.
> 
> ...


Thats fair enough , but if I had to fill in a support form for every issue I experienced, Including the ones I just ignore I had I think I would need a serious subscription discount?


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