Interspire finally admit what we've known for years - Shopping Cart Community : Forum Archive

Martin

2012-05-06 13:44:25

It looks like the management over at Interspire have finally grown spine and have announced that they will no longer “officially” be supporting Interspire Shopping Cart beyond July 1, 2012.
Ref: http://www.shoppingcartstrategies.com/off-topic/interspire-shopping-cart-officially-dead-july-1-2012/

For the one or two people who maybe had their heads buried in the sand for the last 2 years... Yes, Mitch and Eddie, this may come as a surprise... To everyone else this is about as surprising as discovering your parents had sex once... Luckily your parents enjoyed that experience a darned sight more than customers of this poor excuse for a waste of space company..

I echo Daves sentiments when he summarises:
Fortunately [Dave] decided to refocus my attention on CS Cart quite a while back but still can’t deny that the whole experience with Interspire has left a very sour taste in my mouth and makes me very nervous for all you BigCommerce customers if management get bored with that project to

Tony Barnes

2012-05-08 13:37:32

What a bunch of tools...!!

Oh well, at least they've 'fessed up, glad I never bothered with last maintenance period extention. Might move over to another solution at some point now here at work, already got people asking me to move their carts elsewhere - 1 to woocommerce (wordpress based), the other to a cart of my picking... hmmm..

CharlieFoxtrot

2012-05-10 22:37:01

It's not news... but it's now official.

I got suckered-in to one upgrade and maintenance period. So glad I didn't go any further than that.

Martin... what will this mean for your discussion forum? I hope you won't disappear on July 1st, also. Many of us cling to this lifeline and for both the bounty (and scraps) of information we can get. ~ I hope you understand what I mean... no offense intended.

I often wish I'd considered some other shopping cart solutions earlier on... but I was so heavily invested (both money and time) with ISC... and I'd reworked and adapted the program to suit my needs... the thought of starting over from scratch was just too much to even contemplate.

Still... we all called-it years ago! Not that it was hard to figure out. All the unmistakable signs where there: Neglect and hostility, lies and misdirection, broken promises, missed deadlines, featureless upgrades, non-existent upgrades, conveniently-timed major-version updates that were little more than minor-version fixes, price increases, abandoned forums, fired liaisons, SEO endorsement lies, lame excuses... the list goes on and on.

Charlie

PS: In my search for ISC information on the web, I'd often stumble upon illegally "cracked" or "nulled" versions of the software. I wonder if this was something that contributed to their decision. Or have they just always been arseholes, and the pirated copies didn't really influence their decision-making process.

Martin

2012-05-10 23:09:00

Just quickly.. The forum doesn't head South or anything crazy but I suspect time will continue a slow decline in interest along with an increase in spam so it'll die slowly unless something takes ISC's place.

I'm still reliant on ISC for now but when funds allow I'll be moving on.

Such is life...

darren1979

2012-05-23 19:21:47

Im glad they finally got some balls, I heard the warning bells a few years back when They advertised Interspire for sale, i believe it was you Martin on the old Interspired forum who brought it to our attention.

Anyway just a little update i received this email yesterday morning.

As you may know if you've been following along, our focus lately has been

on BigCommerce, which is our SaaS e-commerce offering. BigCommerce has

been growing extremely fast since it was launched in 2009 and it's now

very close to reaching 25,000 clients.

When we launched Interspire back in 2003, SaaS was still a new concept,

and our focus, much like everyone else's, was on perpetually licensed

(or "behind the firewall", as it's now called) software. Since then,

times have of course changed and now most software is delivered

on-demand.

As a result, we've announced that on July 1st 2012 we will be

discontinuing the following products:

Interspire Shopping Cart

Interspire Knowledge Manager

Interspire Website Publisher

This means that up until July 1st you will still be able to purchase

licenses of these products, however on July 1st we will no longer be

selling new licenses, upgrades or extra maintenance.

All existing clients will continue to receive support until their

maintenance period expires, however after July 1st there won't be an

option to extend or renew any maintenance period.

If you have clients on Interspire Shopping Cart and would like to move

them to BigCommerce, please apply to our BigCommerce partner program here:

http://www.bigcommerce.com/partners/

And follow our migration guide here:

https://support.bigcommerce.com/questions/1558/

Thank you for supporting the Interspire products over the years and we

hope they've helped you grow your business and revenues. Our focus

moving forwards is on BigCommerce and really empowering business owners

to take advantage of our SaaS e-commerce offering to grow their business.

If you have any questions, please see our FAQ here:

https://www.interspire.com/support/kb/questions/1222/

Best Regards,

Lee Sellers

CharlieFoxtrot

2012-06-01 21:50:18

My favorite quote so far:

IE9+ is not officially supported by Shopping Cart.

Workaround readily available - customers should use compatibility

mode in IE 9 or Firefox or Chrome instead.

Or maybe this one...

IE hasn't been the most popular in awhile.

I can't decide which one I like best. ~~ In any case, these two short quotes speak volumes about their business ethic and their unwillingness (inability?) to meet the commitments and obligations that they already have. I strongly suspect that anyone who dares to purchase one last year's worth of support will see very little benefit for their money.

They're making it very easy to ridicule and take cheap-shots at them... but while we're rolling our eyes and laughing at the absurdity of it all, there are many (once) loyal users who have invested a lot of time and effort (and cash) based on promises that will never be kept. Their businesses and livelihoods are on the line and at risk of disruption because of this company's actions. And then there are the scores of businesses who must now start-over and re-invest in some other solution... more cost, and lost productivity.