Q: I purchased this the first time around and never was able to use it.
I've been following the Trello board for the functionality I need added and it keeps getting pushed back from quarter to quarter. In fact, looking at the changes on the Trello board, most things in the last year have either been pushed back quarter after quarter or you went through in October and moved them to archives and dropped them completely. We need some honesty here and that is that there has been little to no improvement AND all of the feedback that was created from the first campaign was pushed back further and further and ultimately archived and ignored. What do you have to say for yourselves?
Tatiana_WebTotem
May 14, 2024A: Dear bdragon,
Thank you for purchasing our product back then and caring for its improvement. Indeed, honesty and integrity are the core values for us, especially, when it comes to long-term relationships with our clients.
Coming back here after working passionately on our product improvement over the last few months, we dare greatly to offer You and the whole AppSumo Community the newest, strongest version of the cyber security shield. Since the last campaign, we released these features:
✅WAF custom rules (geomatch - block countries by IP)
✅Show malicious piece of code to the end user
✅Manual URL Whitelisting
✅Manual IP Whitelisting and Blacklisting
✅Server status (hard disc space, RAM Usage, CPU resource usage)
✅Permission Checks
✅Dos Basic Attack Mitigation (rate limit)
✅Brute Force Attack Prevention (login attempts limit)
You can track them all in our roadmap you mentioned under the "Released" section. We believe they show our growth and, more importantly, our commitment to serve our customers, long term.
And because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, some of the planned features got released later than we planned, and a few of them even got postponed. Naturally, we focused on the issues crucial to the majority of our customers first. Succeeding in doing so gave us the confidence to come back here with the product of better value for the AppSumo community.
Yet we are sorry to hear you feel we let you down. Could you kindly comment here or directly to our support chat on what potential features we need to focus on in the nearest future? It will be very helpful to us and all Sumo-lings.
Please know that we truly want you to be with us on our journey. And we sincerely thank you for helping us grow.
Respectfully,
Tatiana
bdragon
Verified purchaser
Let's start with what was already on the roadmap.
First of all, WAF custom rules and showing malicious piece of code to the end user are still on the roadmap for 4th quarter. Have these been released? The Trello board was updated on December 2nd.
Since April the Trello updates are as follows:
#1. Moved from 2nd quarter to 4th quarter:
- Plugin multisite functionality
- CMS version check
- WAF custom rules
- Shows malicious piece of code to end user
#2. Archived (I guess this means these features are NOT being implemented)
- WordPress hardening
- 2 factor authentication
- Integration with Github
- Integration with Jira
- WordPress vulnerability scanner
- Joomla extension
#3. Released
- Drupal extension
- Reactive interface
So just looking at the Trello board there have been 2 released features since after April 5th. Six features have been archived. Four features have been pushed back over half of a year.
From that I'm just confused on what updates have been made in the past 6-9 months and what features were just dropped after pushing back from 1st to 2nd to 4th quarter or completely archived to never be brought up again. I believe these were the features requested during and after the first AppSumo campaign and most have not been released.
I've already purchased from the first campaign so I'm hoping to see some forward progress. It's concerning that there has been little progress AND that you are back on AppSumo again.
Dear bdragon,
Thank you for your follow up. You have some valid points on delays. When it comes to the roadmap, however, we are constantly trying to balance our ambitions with realism and pragmatism within our resource constraints. We regularly address customer requests not accounted for in our roadmap and I've passed along your list to our technical team. Please be assured that we have been putting a great deal of effort into hardening our product as cyber security threats are constantly evolving and calling for new defense mechanisms. While we cannot incorporate all customer suggestions, additional product features are being considered. We appreciate your patience.
Best Regards,
Tatiana
Verified purchaser
Tatiana,
Please understand that these are not my requests. These were the requests from your AppSumo purchasers that were added to the Trello board and scheduled to be done back in the 1st quarter of 2021 and your team waited until late October to archive half of the 50% (6 of the 12) items that were on the Trello board, and haven't completed 4 of them. If you're limited team can't make but a few updates over the course of 9 months then how can we expect this product to grow. If there have been lots of customer requests that have been completed and not put on Trello then please provide a changelog so that we can understand what has been done.
Unfortunately, a 4 star deal for AppSumo is NOT a good rating. There were lots of complaints the first time around and now you are back 9 months later but you can't show us that the team has fixed anything from all of these complaints. In this case your Trello board isn't helping because it shows a lack of anything being done and a lack of completion of requests from the first AppSumo campaign. It also shows no roadmap for the future as it is blank except for custom branding being in the backlog.
I expect more from WebTotem. We should all expect more from WebTotem. Take some time, clean up the Trello board, add in a roadmap, un-archive what was requested and get it done, and be prepared to work hard to complete the new requests you get from new customers.
Dear bdragon,
Thank you for your reply. You have all the rights to expect the best from us and believe me, we are our own worst critics. Fortunately, we have something new we can bring to the table, after nine months of hard work. New, already released features, are:
✅WAF custom rules (geomatch - block countries by IP)
✅Show malicious piece of code to the end user
✅Manual URL Whitelisting
✅Manual IP Whitelisting and Blacklisting
✅Server status (hard disc space, RAM Usage, CPU resource usage)
✅Permission Checks
✅Dos Basic Attack Mitigation (rate limit)
✅Brute Force Attack Prevention (login attempts limit).
The features from the 4th quarter of our roadmap are on their way :) Please stay tuned not to miss them out.
We work with customers requests on daily basis, not only during the campaign. Our managers get feedback from our clients regularly, checking on their priorities and evolving needs. This, together with the reasoning I brought up earlier, may sometimes change the way and order in which we release new features.
We remain committed to serve our clients long term and hope you will be more happy with us in the future.
Best Regards,
Tatiana
Verified purchaser
Tatiana,
I feel like we are going in circles and your unbelievable ability to NOT answer questions is absolutely amazing. Please speak directly to the below:
#1. The following feature requests added to the Trello board during the first campaign have been archived. These include: Honeypot Service, Automated Reporting in Scheduled Time, WordPress Hardening, WordPress Vulnerability Scanner, 2 factor authentication, WordPress Antispam, Joomla Extension, Spam Blocking, OAuth2 (Gmail), and Integration with Jira. More items have been abandoned than completed. Why? What is WebTotem working on for the future?
#2. There have been lots of negative reviews and comments about the firewall taking days to learn behavior, the dashboard stating a website is connected even after the plugin has been removed from a WordPress website, the firewall blocking primary users, sites breaking, and more. You can look at all of the 1 star reviews to see what issues people have been having. You have failed to answer if these have been fixed (reports from other customers say they have not) and if there are plans to fix it, how are they going to be fixed, why haven't they been fixed, etc.
Whatever you do, please do not respond with more marketing speak and obfuscation. Speak directly to the above questions with real answers.
Dear bdragon,
I am sorry to read that you feel I failed to answer your questions, despite my genuine attempts to address your concerns in the most accurate and specific way possible. Please know that what appeared to you as "marketing speak and obfuscation" was me empathising with and respecting your feelings in this matter.
Your comment on my "absolutely amazing, unbelievable ability to NOT answer questions" seems personal and is hurtful. I refuse to respond to defamatory words like these.
Respectfully,
Tatiana