Why make updating theme paid when the theme has already been purchased? This is deception and cheating.

I just wanted to Upgrade from Turbo to Flex but not anymore. If you don't move back the pricing of the updater app to free plan and pro , like it was before, you will loose all your clients. I was told when purchased the Turbo theme that we have free updates forever, doing this manually is impossible. Especially when the previous version has glitches , and now we can't do anything without paying the extra buck.

I was happy with the theme whilst the updates through their app were free. At $500 for this theme, I would expect all the future automatic updates to be free. This is by far the greediest and unethical company I have ever come across. All they are doing is ripping people off by making the manual updates too difficult to install by a layperson and thus locking them into the paid updates plan. I am very disappointed with this company and DO not recommend Out of the Sandbox to anyone. There are plenty of other great Shopify themes out there. Do not waste your money on this theme as it is not worth. It is majorly overpriced.

I did a lot of research and selected OTSB for our theme choice. Never had an issue, questions were answered timely, and no problem with previous updates.

I didn't so much mind the $9/month if it kept my theme updated which I assume is the proper thing to do. So I did sign up, did update the Responsive theme with this latest update, and now ALL of my critically important options are a mess apparently from some light customizations for options and for the cart by another popular and commonly used app provider. Even on the product pages the options are all out of order!

I submitted a ticket 2 days ago to OTSB w/no response yet, and then submitted a priority ticket yesterday, which I should have done initially not realizing how critical this problem is.. The timeframe for a ticket response says the same thing- 1-2 days so what is the priority ticket advantage? And I do NOT want to talk to someone from zendesk with a generic response that never takes care of a problem.

What is the advantage of updating if it deconstructs the current theme/website? I could have stayed with wordpress for that! This was our whole purpose of selecting OTSB for shopify!

We are launching this site NEXT WEEK!! I contacted a shopify expert and they want hundreds of dollars to update these few lines of customization! WHAT??? No thank you!!!

I am also reading all the complaints here and the responses from OTSB do not sound very empathetic or helpful to those having problems with the update.

We were fine with previous updates and NO ISSUES until this most recent one! I am hoping to hear from someone TODAY and how this will be taken care of!

I would advise anyone considering an OTSB theme to hold off. I am happy to provide a previous positive review AFTER this has fixed!

UPDATE: I did receive an email back from OTSB and they did take a little deeper look at the issues we had with the theme update. They were very courteous and somewhat helpful but basically threw it back to the options app we were using to fix the issues. Interesting that one of the suggestions was NOT to do the update, or use a previous saved version before the update, and work out the issues later. This is opposite of what OTSB suggests on their site. We did work with the options app and they have been very very helpful. Again, we did not expect OTSB to fix these (light) customization issues, but did expect a heads up notice that upcoming updates can and most likely will affect the architecture of your site. The majority of Shopify users are not web developers, coders etc. . Most purchase a theme so as not to have build a site theme from scratch (note: a big selling point on the themes is you can customize it however you want), which is why we switched to Shopify/OTSB..It was our expectation that this would resolve the Wordpress issues of a current site, however at least Wordpress always gives you a heads up on major updates. We are continuing with it for now as we have quite a bit of time and money invested, but we are wiser to the communication and limitations we experienced and hope that OTSB sees all these reviews and will give their fellow business owners and customers a better experience in the future as promised on their sales pages.

I've been a loyal and happy customer for years having purchased the Parallax theme and now on the Turbo theme. Received the email like everyone else and decided to update prior to the price increase for the basic plan. All of a sudden updates that were smooth with no user input from me, changed to 'we cannot update these three customizations'. Following the instructions to manually update the code, I keep getting an error on one of the customizations. Emailed support multiple times and no response AT ALL which has never happened in the past. Why all of a sudden is there radio silence from a support team that was very responsive in the past [even though I upgraded to the PRO plan as they wanted which is supposed to get me priority support]. I'm very disappointed in Out of the Sandbox. If you're going to start charging for updates then at the very least offer support for your products. Given my current situation and the feedback of other irate customers, I would NOT recommend purchasing a theme from this company in the future.

Developer response is useless as it seems that they haven't even read my review. I've already submitted two support requests with NO response.

Update: I'm upgrading my rating to 2 stars because after writing my original review, tech support helped me update my theme. If it works correctly the next time I try to update, then I'll upgrade it to a three. When the app does work, it works well. (Although the default file name isn't the actual version you're upgrading to, it's whatever version you already have plus the current date. So the UI is oddly inaccurate, which definitely doesn't help if the app hasn't been working correctly so you're already frustrated.)
I used the paid version of this app for awhile and was able to update my theme two or three times. Then in early June it stopped working correctly. I experienced multiple problems just getting to the update screen. Then when I finally was able to get there, the only option I got was to "update" to the theme version I'm currently using (7.0.5). I spent the month in a fruitless back and forth with OOTS tech support to resolve this problem. I tried using this app on three different computers (MacBook Pro, iMac, HP laptop) and five different browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, IE). I gave OOTS tech support access to my Shopify account to try to fix the problem, and after a cursory go at it, they suggested that I upgrade my OS and browser to the most recent version. So I did that, even though it might have meant that some of my software and printer might no longer work. And guess what? Problem not solved. At that point, they finally admitted that they were having some problems with the Theme Updater app and browser cookies. They said they hoped to have it resolved soon. It still wasn't working by early August, so I uninstalled the app. Now that it's the end of Sept., I decided to try it again in the hopes of being able to finally update my theme. But nope, same problem. The fact that I actually paid for several months of this app without being able to use it is ridiculous. And that it still doesn't work is more ridiculous. As much as I sometimes hate cable/internet companies, at least when your service isn't working they refund your money. Not so with OOTS.

If I could give 0 stars I would! I have been managing this website for our company for over 2 years and I can't think of even one time that we've used this app. And now I come back from vacation to an email saying this week (because they only gave a weeks notice) the Free Basic Plan will now be charged $9 per month.

I've read many of the other reviews and the responses from OOTS -- they seem to not understand why we all are frustrated with this. Regardless if there's a way to update themes without the app -- there's only a handful of updates throughout the year, but yet you want to charge us PER MONTH for these handfuls of updates -- that I should add we've hardly ever if at all, used.

This subsidy website has been temporarily on back-burner -- it's most definitely not worth an additional $9 per month for practically nothing in return. I will be deleting this app -- this theme had too many conflicts with other apps we've tried to use and no solutions available anyways.

I'm in complete agreement with all the recent (re)views of this company. I've bought two of their themes; Turbo ($350) and Flex ($450). One of the main reasons we chose to buy these themes is because the FREE Theme Updater helps to make their very high price tag slightly more digestible. Their recent decision to start charging for this app is a ridiculously shady move; luring people in with a free service and subsequently charging for it is the ultimate form of greed.

...And before someone replies to this review suggesting that manual theme updates are still free - the idea that manually updating the theme is supposed to replace the Theme Updater is laughable.

This behaviour coupled with THE WORST customer service we've ever come across, is enough for us to leave $750 on the table and go in search of a company that values their customers.

This is quite frankly disgusting behaviour. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Really obnoxious bait-and-switch money grab. I've bought several themes from this company in the past but won't do business with them in the future, and am on the hunt for a new theme now.

Really obnoxious bait-and-switch money grab. I've bought several themes from this company in the past but won't do business with them in the future, and am on the hunt for a new theme now.