Does anyone else use paid software for support reasons?

I have to admit, that's one of the reasons I've only generally used paid software in recent years, because I know I'll actually get decent support for it.

Whereas for free software, you tend to rely more on volunteer and forum/community support, which is nowhere near as timely or useful. That's not saying I don't like getting support from a support forum, I just don't like to rely on it for critical things like when my site goes down or crashes since it could take weeks or months longer to resolve than it would if I had an official helpline or ticket system to rely on.

I've used free solutions. I use free forums to discuss things like fan games and mods and other stuff, and they just take too long to resolve critical problems. It's not something you can avoid, these people are just volunteers giving up their free time to help people. But I wouldn't want to rely on it for a critical website or anything that involves my money.

I also like the guarantee of timely updates, which is more likely with paid software since the developers livelihoods and career depends on it. It's just too easy to walk away from a free project and consider it too much work.

Does anyone agree with this?

 

That's pretty much the reason why I moved from mybb to XenForo Though I know updates are delayed at the moment, I know updates will be on the way with great support.

 

I have used VB for 5 years and the support was horrid at all times. I use premium platforms because they have the features I need, the community support was always better than what the developers would bother provide.

 

Being a coder myself, I think, I have never had to fall into these pitfalls. I have been working with Wordpress for more than 5 years now, and today, I dont have the need to look out for support. Well, maybe another reason could be the fact that there is more than plenty of information scattered across on the Internet on Wordpress and that helps.

I can however very well understand the need of Technical Support and this is one reason I have been sticking with my web hosts despite the fact that they do not provide me curl and likes on PHP.

I am considering forum softwares and maybe this year, I would launch my own forum. But as money is scarce for me at the moment, it seems that I have to stick with the free versions until I start getting good number of people registering and participating.

 

Free software isn't free. It's included in your adware package.

 

I never really cared for the support, and I only use paid forum software because I like the software. It's rare that I'll ever need to contact support.

 

Support is pretty much on par for even free software, an example being MyBB. They will help you with anything for absolutely no cost.

 

But there's no guarantee, right? Whereas for paid software, you can say the error is critical (if it is) and get a response in a very short amount of time.

Or maybe I've just been burned by volunteers too much and honestly think of them as too much hassle.

 

I would not chose a paid software for support because myBB is free and has great support as well which is just as quick as such things like Xenforo. I pick paid software for features.