As someone who has spent 25 years working with technology and managing networks, I am fairly aware of the demands presented by users who should not have tried to do things themselves, leading to impulsive, negative reviews of others companies. Stop being cheap; do things properly.
There is a huge, huge difference between ‘support’ and ‘training’.. if you’ve never used wordpress, know nothing about html, nothing about php, nothing about mysql, then you need a lot more than support. You need training and you are doing someone else’s job. Hire someone who knows what they are doing, your expectations will far exceed support. Other companies may hold your hand, but that shouldn’t set a standard for the whole planet. Again, know your role, hire an admin/developer/programmer.. whatever..
I do not give perfect marks to anyone. I wont pretend I’ve used other theme companies, I haven’t, so I can’t put Gorilla side-by-side with what others offer. What they did offer was exactly what we needed and as someone *prepared to do the job at hand I had NO concerns at all.
TLDR;
I was shopping for my client and showed them half dozen themes I thought could work for them. Gorilla’s [car dealer deluxe] theme had exactly the components they required; a VIN decoder was “make or break” in the deal.
We purchased a [v4.2] theme which hadn’t been updated in ? years at a premium [top tier] price which admittedly well exceeded the cost of other companies products but we weren’t looking to cut corners or save $30~40.
We got an immediate email with a temporary link to download our theme, instructions how to contact support should we require them to do the general setup… (if you cant do this, you have no business buying wordpress themes)
We uploaded the theme, installed the import plugin, imported the demo content, created a child theme and proceeded to toy around with ideas. Zero problems.
Within ten days of our purchase, wordpress got a few updates and within a day or so of that, Car Dealer Deluxe got a long overdue [5.0] update as well. I’m a relatively active mind with lots of personal projects on the go so I decided to contact support by email, I hadn’t taken advantage of my ‘top tier’ free installation yet and wanted to goof off. Carlos was quick to respond (timezones considered)
By the next following business day my new theme was uploaded, installed, configured, cloned (child), content imported and ready to rip. Exactly what I expected. (thanks again for doing my job hehe)
I went to check out his work, he covered the bases, except one.. Jetpack was a prerequisite for the various forms to operate. An average user may have lost their head and flamed them in a review.. Instead I fetched the php from the parent theme, opened one, noted the jetpack include and did what needed to be done. (*cough*my job)
The rest is history.
I’m sure many of these other reviews may contain truths, I wont even begin to guess.. we can all do the same thing yet come away with a very different experience (skewed by perspective and expectations) but, the forums are a thing of the past, the new v5 theme is clean and simple with a slightly improved look and my overall experience was painless.
Functionality and Support I gave a top score (for me). Graphics I bumped down because our theme really doesn’t use a lot of graphics, the demo content was beautiful but it is just filler which is replaced by our own photos (cars for sale). Theme pricing I really bumped down, solely because this theme is more expensive than every single theme of its class that I looked at. We were ‘happy’ to pay the difference because well.. we’re a real company, we have $40 dollars.. we don’t care what they cost we just don’t want to build them from scratch, another couple hours of my time while they nit-picked would have cost them over $40 dollars anyway.
A small price to pay to save weeks of work. My clients are happy, so I’m happy.
Yes, they did require my credentials to login to my sites, who cares? It was a blank slate and I am root.. there was nothing to break and why would I be concerned they were going to damage something? Ridiculous. They already have my VISA number, that said, login information should be the least of my worries. hahahah (just saying)
Catch ya later Gorillas.