SC Product Options

Its unfortunately got 1 too many bugs

I've been using this app for at least six years, with only a few minor bugs under bold control. Since Shop Cycle took over the app, there have been more issues than one would consider acceptable, and service has deteriorated; they requested access to my store four days ago to see if they could solve it, and they have yet to access it. I made modifications six days ago, and they still have not been updated. This is not the first time we've experienced syncing issues that took days to showup. On one occasion, our options simply disappeared, and we had to re-add them. Definitely not the app it used to be.

Are your servers down?

Update: Feb 15, all of my stores options disappeared but thankfully someone was able to log into my store to fix the code within 20 min.

Last night Feb 2, 2024 The app again stopped adding options to products. I tried the same trick of changing the cache's last two digits in the code as they instruct on their website and that didn't work. And I can't use their Refresh App with Shopify button within the app because it will WIPE out all product options for my entire store and they don't warn people about this before hand. I gave them permissions and the options are still "waiting to refresh" 24 hours later. Speaking to customer service will get you frustrated because it seems like no one is actually listening to the issue and they keep recommending the same tricks that I've already explained that I tried or can't because of a bug within the app. I may need to move on and try the competing app offered in the Shopify store. I've used this app since 2016 when it was under BOLD Apps before ShopCircle took it over and I've had nothing but issues since then.

Jan 17th 2023 For the first time in 3 years the app within Shopify went down tonight and will NOT load. All of my product options for my products are not showing and this needs to be fixed. I now get within Shopify Admin a grey page that says: options.shopapps.site refused to connect.

I've checked a few stores that also have product options running and it's not affecting all shops, only some of us which makes me think I'm not on a good server.
They stated they had server issues and that it's fixed but now product changes are taking over 45 minutes to refresh. Still waiting for answers but just getting canned cut and paste responses.

----------------------------------------

After speaking with Alina from Shop Circle, she was able to get the required changes made and make it look a bit more seamless than it was on the initial install. I'm happy with the changes made and look forward to another 3 years of use.

-----------------------------
After having this app for 3 years under Bold and it working perfectly, the app was sold off to a company named Shop Circle. At this point I'm not that impressed and I'm concerned that the service isn't the same as the previous company. I've been left hanging with an open request to install the app on a new Shopify 2.0 theme and it's the only thing holding me back from being able to publish my store. They'll also just log in, makes changes and disappear without a word still leaving the app not functional nor addressing my initial concerns for what needed to be integrated.

After an initial delay for the install, it appears things will be resolved soon and I am really excited to used the app with the upgraded features on my store.
I look forward to adding an update once live.

Some of our primary items use this app as we have too many variants. We have been running this for 18 months and since the beginning, about 2% of orders are not charged due to some issue caused by the app. This means that the customer is not charged for their shirts in our case. Our shipping dept has to check each order for this issue and then we have to contact the customer to collect CC info and payment. The problem has never been resolved. We have a developer firm working directly with Bold and there has been no resolution. In general, this app adds a lot of complexity. I would not use this app again. I'm writing this because we are now having a higher occurance rate and I have not heard back from Bold for 5 days. Unfortunate.

Have used this app for a few years now. I came here to praise Jeff for his customer service on the app. The product options weren't always syncing or if they did , it would be not immediate. I give 5 star for Jeff and 3 star for the app. I am on the basic plan. I also run a woocommerce site and adding the product options directly under the product description is so much quicker and easier. Anyway... Thank you again Jeff for your help.

17 Dec 2019 - I have to again downgrade the rating for this app. I am trying to create product options and app does not save the options. Which means all the work lost. It's been two hours trying to fix this and is a very common problem with the app. It is one of the busiest periods for us. We pay all year round for this app and we need the most it stops working.

I have updated my review as finally, the customer service managed to solve my problem. Hope it works well from here. Thanks

Extremely frustrating app. It does not add products and keep showing the original product price. Contacting Bold is almost impossible. It keeps asking for a password before we can even ask a question.

First of all, many people believe Bold have the monopoly on this type of App. Not true. I checked them ALL, and there is *one* other that is comparable. We went with Bold because we had less problems getting it to work to begin with. It is difficult, cumbersome and fiddly to get everything set up and working correctly if you choose the Auto option, but if you know your way around Liquid you'll get there.

Support genuinely seem to want to help, they're just not very good at it. I get the impression there are support personnel Tiers and when you get moved up a tier you have to re-explain the whole situation to them, despite a recorded history of text and submitted video files. One bug on their end that caused their backend to hang forever in certain circumstances took about a month to fix.

Swatches are nice, but very bare boned functionality. The boxes even at 'Large' setting are very small (about 50x50px) and there is no hover-over functionality allowing a better look at the image. When I suggested this basic user experience feature (which if I had access to the Liquid code I could have fixed in a single line) they said they'd pass it on, but ultimately it was a custom feature request we'd have to pay for. I eventually got a solution running in three lines of CSS.

While parts of the code are stored in your theme files, you can't improve them because they are overwritten by Bold sometimes multiple times a day, so you are at their mercy for basic functionality adjustments. You are given an outlet for custom CSS and that is all.

The most constantly noticeable issue is that the back end is hosted on Bold servers and is extremely cumbersome to load, and to navigate. You can have an Option Set, which contains a list of Options, and those Options can have a list of products (in the case of automatic price adjustments). You can't alter a product through Shopify normally because all the data for the Option Sets are stored on Bold servers and they don't know the change occurred. You are required to alter products through the interface provided by Bold.

Every time you make any change through the Bold interface, everything connected to that change needs to be updated. If you change a product in an Option, every Option Set that is linked to that Option needs to be updated. If you change a product in an Option and that product is also in other Options, you need to manually go into those Options and save them so the changes will be recognised.

Every change you make requires a long waiting period where the system goes up the tree and readjusts everything internally - the more Options in the Option Set, the more Option Sets the Options are used in and the more products within an Option, the longer the wait. We're talking a minimum of 5 seconds for the most simplistic of Sets, and a minute or two for complicated branches.

Finally, changes made (especially when actually applying these Option Sets to the store front products) take often up to 10 minutes to actually be reflected on the web site - and some times they just don't take at all. Some times you just have to go back in and save the Sets again hoping this time it will work.

Overall, the App works mostly well as far as front end code goes (although a lot of modifications were required to get everything working as expected on our non-Shopify bought theme, a task I expect most people aren't up to). Almost all of the issues come from a complicated and cumbersome imperfect back end, and Bolds reluctance to improve their product as noted by other reviews - which is inexcusable for a subscription product. But when it's working, it shows the potential to be something of great use.

I definitely don't use the app to it's fullest, but I love the ability to create seemingly endless product customizations. HOWEVER, the three star review is for their terrible customer service regarding a simple fix. I have since submitted negative feedback and was told (I kid you not...) to change it by the rep because it reflects on their performance. It was a simple fix that I resolved myself ("change the cart to Page instead of Drawer"... all I had to do). However, I was first told about "priced options" which wasn't my issue ... then the "buy it now" button on the product page, which related but didn't fix my immediate problem. I was also told that I needed to install their application after the rep took and sent me a screenshot of my store WITH THEIR APP INSTALLED?! Like... yes your app is installed, I don't need to give you admin access to install it. If you're looking to download this app for the upload feature... DON'T!!!!! Find another app. The upload feature doesn't seem to work with certain file types (or file size?? I don't really know) and never shows the image to the customer in their shopping cart. For a shop that has a ton of customizable products that requires photo uploads, this wasn't the best for me to choose. I've since downloaded a separate upload app but will continue to use Bold for it's customization features. I also doubt I will ever upgrade since certain features can be found in different Shopify themes, like swatches.