Theme Updater & Backups | OOTS

Last year in July 2018 I rated with 5 stars as you can see at the end of this now updated review. Changing to three stars now. The numerous negative reviews of the last two days clearly show the displeasure of the users about the upcoming pricing model of OOTS for the Theme Updater App. And I can only agree as I’m angry as well. While many of the reviewers mentioned technical issues with the Theme Updater App I can only report positive things from my experiences with two shops (both with the Turbo Theme). So far all updates with the free basic version of the app have worked without any problems at all. But now to pay a monthly fee although there is an update available only each two or three months is nonsense in my view. Anyway, also here it’s to dare, that it is possible to subscribe the moment if you want to do an update and then cancel the update immediately afterwards. So if you want to update your theme for example only two or three times a year, you can simply subscribe for two to three times a year for 30 days each! Instead of $108 you can end up with $18 or $27 per year. Due to this flexibility, my rating is not quite as negative. But in one point I agree with most other users: Your support is regularily unsatisfactory. As already mentioned by other reviewers the friendly advice to contact one of your development partners seems unfortunately to be part of your standard procedure. And even worse, I think that OOTS doesn't have any plan to support Shopify's recent possibility to state base prices. At least that’s the statement I received from the support. And this is beyond doubt not understandable, as base prices in Germany and many other European countries are mandatory by legal terms for numerous product types. It is incomprehensible that OOTS does not update the topics here accordingly and thus deliberately avoids a massive business potential in Europe. Dear OOTS Team; you have mega cool themes, a fantastic Theme Updater App ... but the list of negative points is getting longer. The unsatisfactory support, the refusal to support this basic functionality of base prices, is now followed by a questionable licensing policy. Too bad .... With thoughtful greetings from Germany. --- Just fyi my former 5* rating from July 2018 before I made some negative experiences with the OOTS support and at a time while Updater Theme was fro free. Super valuable App! Had our store running on Turbo theme v3.0.3 and performed upgrade to latest v.3.1.0 half an hour ago. Whole process of applying a new version incl. adoption of our tweaks and customization changes took approx 3-4 minutes. Afterwards, a manual adoption of language files was required as outlined in the app description. So, uploaded my used v.3.0.3 language files to TextWrangler editor and compared these two files to the v3.1.0 default files. Review of differences took another 5 minutes including applying required additions to new v3.1.0 language files. Overall, whole upgrade process done in less then 10 minutes. Couldn't be easier! Great app, OOTS-team. Greetings from Germany. Show more

I recently purchased the Parallax theme and just about have my store set up to open and now I get an email saying to automatically update the theme is now $9 per month. I honestly wish this would have happened sooner so I would have purchased a theme from a different provider. Show more

A good idea when it came out, though it was only partially helpful for complex customizations that had been added to the default themes. Unfortunately, now that even the basic version is to be a monthly subscription, we'll be deleting and finding other options. Show more

Very poor service and underhand fees - simply read the reviews. The app doesn't work very well, and now a greedy developer wants to charge over $100 a year (forever) for an app to update a couple of lines of code. Their themes are full of bugs, support is very slow (at times even leaving bugs in the code - I'm looking at you 'Artisan'), and now they are trying to sneakily charge for something that was advertised as part of their theme purchase. I doubt this is acceptable practice, or legal, in most countries. We have already had to change two Out of the Sandbox themes due to bugs in their software, and now they do this. If I were them, I would be very embarrassed as to how they treat long standing customers. The most insulting thing is the email we were sent, spinning this charge as an 'opportunity'. Please don't patronize us with PR, you are simply milking merchants for all you can get before moving on. P.S. Following the developers response: You seem to miss the point - everyone who purchases an Out of the Sandbox theme agreed to do so with the knowledge that the updating app comes along with it (and we have also paid an initial premium for the theme and updater app). You are significantly changing the agreement by now charging for the app, and I would say that is unlikely to be legal here in the EU. Also, you mentioned in one response that you need the money to fund your IT systems - well, if you can't afford to provide a service, don't offer it for free with the intention of locking customers into a 'blackmail scheme'. Have the dignity to admit you simply want more money by charging customers twice. Show more

We run three stores using the Turbo Theme from Out of the Sandbox - and are just about to launch our fourth. The theme was chosen to a large extent because of this app to update our themes. Now, the developer wants to charge an extra $108 per store, per year - meaning they expect us to pay $432 per year just to update a few lines of code once a year. This is a perfect example of how to trap your clients and then blackmail them. Obviously, we are changing themes now for store number four, and then slowly changing the other themes over the coming twelve months. The irony is that BECAUSE they now charge for this app, there is no benefit to staying with Out of the Sandbox for any of their themes. Considering the high costs of their themes, this is slightly mercenary move by Out of the Sandbox, and would appear contrary to their stated aims of helping store owners. If this is how a business is managed, and based on 20 years of ecommerce, I would recommend not using the themes or apps of Out of the Sandbox. Show more