Reviews (306)

Overall rating
3.8
Counts per rating level
  • 52% of ratings are 5 stars
  • 7% of ratings are 4 stars
  • 3% of ratings are 3 stars
  • 6% of ratings are 2 stars
  • 32% of ratings are 1 stars
October 28, 2021

I am just going to say that the customer service is terrible !!!. First, the lady told me to go somewhere else to resolve the issues caused by the Booster app to my online theme ( I am still working on it). Secondly, somebody else tries to mitigate the rudeness on the first email providing the same answer but using a different tone.

One4Boys
United States
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied November 5, 2021

Hi there, thank you for this feedback. We aim to provide a high quality support experience and it sounds like we fell short here. We will be looking into this further and sending a response to you shortly. We apologize and thank you for your understanding.

July 21, 2020

Making the theme updater a paid product is very frustrating, given how much the theme costs in the first place, and will be the reason I no longer recommend Out of the Sandbox to other retailers.

Nikki Darling
Australia
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied July 24, 2020

Hello Nikki Darling Team,

Thank you for your feedback. I wanted to share some details regarding the app to provide some clarification on the paid and free features.

The app offers a free trial period with a theme purchase. The Basic Plan features for the app are available for free for one year from the date the theme was purchased.

This free year is provided as a window for a new theme user to determine how much value the app provides to their store.

After the free year expires, a subscription is required to update the theme while preserving the content and settings configured with the default theme features.

The app is a tool that will speed up the process of updating but it is possible to obtain the latest theme files without paying for the app. Our Theme Updater app offers new updated files for free so that you can update in the standard Shopify process by rebuilding the theme with the latest version.

The paid subscriptions (Basic and Pro plans) offer a shortcut to the standard Shopify updating process. Rather than rebuilding the theme in a new file, the app is able to preserve the content and settings that have been configured with the default theme features.

I hope this clears up some of the details around the subscription plans and the free features that are offered. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team if you have any other questions about the app!

Wishing you all the best!
Out of the Sandbox

December 10, 2019

I agree with the others - I purchased and always recommended outofthesandbox because of their vast knowledgebase and continual updates - but now along with paying for the themes we have to pay for the privilege to easily update - you're turning against your own loyal customers and moving goalposts - not cool

The Architectural Forum
United Kingdom
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied January 8, 2020

Hello The Architectural Forum,

Thank you for taking the time to review our app. We understand your frustration, but we wanted to follow up on this review to clarify a point regarding the update process.

Purchasing a theme comes with free updates for life. These free updates come in the form of brand new files of the latest version of the theme. The new version of the theme does need to be rebuilt, as is the standard process for updating any Shopify themes.

Our Theme Updater app was developed to provide a shortcut for updating. The app can update a copy of your theme while preserving your home page sections and theme editor settings.

We have recently implemented a subscription fee for the app, but all new theme purchases come with a free year of the app’s Basic Plan. The free year begins from the date the new theme file is registered in the app, a process which is necessary to unlock the updating feature.

So in short, any purchase of our themes comes with the guarantee of free updates for life following the normal Shopify procedure for updating. The app is also free for the first year with the theme, after which, a subscription is required to continue using the Theme Updater app.

We’d be happy to answer any additional questions you have regarding updating the themes, or any shop-specific questions you might have. You can reach out to our Help Centre here: https://help.outofthesandbox.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.

All the best,
The Out of the Sandbox Team

September 22, 2019

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.

BirdRock Baby
United States
Over 1 year using the app
Edited April 1, 2019

Avoid these guys. Paid £300 for the turbo theme and it’s broken. The dymanic shopping buttons can’t be relied upon and only work 20% of the time and now I’m getting loads of errors from google because the product schema is not correct. An issue that seems to be badly affecting all their customers yet they haven’t even updated the theme to resolve this.

babita UK
United Kingdom
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied April 2, 2019

Hi babita UK!

Sorry to hear that you're experiencing some issues with your theme! If you have any questions or problems using your theme, our Support team is more than happy to help out! You can get in touch with us here: https://help.outofthesandbox.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and one of our support agents will be able to lend a hand!

We try our best to respond to all tickets within 24 hours (Monday - Friday).

The 'Dynamic Checkout Buttons' are actually controlled by Shopify's platform! If you're experiencing issues with these, we recommend getting in touch with a Shopify Guru. They can be reached 24/7 here: https://help.shopify.com/en/questions#/contact

August 15, 2019

WORST PURCHASE OF MY LIFE! If you want to torment yourself & get nothing done & be set back months then BUYER BEWARE as you purchase. NO SUPPORT at all! No live chat, no phones, and emails are pointless replies that do not help at all. Features like HTML5 video don't work as advertised so emailed them and they won't help make it work then decide to install bare minimal version but first have to update to latest version and when try to do that then site says cannot validate purchase! So no version of Turbo theme is possible to download after paying $350!

HEART PUP on SHARK TANK Dog Carriers and Pet Slings by HeartPup
United States
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied August 16, 2019

Hello Heart Pup Team,

We're sorry to hear about the difficulties you've had with your theme and with our support team. While we cannot provide over the phone support or a live chat, we are committed to supporting your theme and it's built-in settings and features in any way we can through email correspondence.

In order to use the Theme Updater app, you need to register your theme license. When you purchase a theme, your license is attached to the email you used at the time of purchase.

We have received your support request about your difficulty with registering with the incorrect email address, and it's great to see our response made it to you and that you have successfully registered with the correct email address - you should now be able to update your Turbo theme to the latest version. We're pleased we were able to help you with this one, but feel free to respond to the message to let us know if anything else is amiss.

Regarding the HTML5 video issue, we'd like to work with you to inspect the issue and provide support - we haven't been able to receive a reply to our messages to assist with the issue, but we're still keen to help! Feel free to reply to our previous messages, this message, or the request for a Collaborator account, and we'll be on the case.

At Out of the Sandbox, we pride ourselves on the level of support we're able to offer over email correspondence - we're awaiting your response to our offers to assist you as much as possible; we'd love to get this squared away!

Sincerely,

OOTS Support Team

June 13, 2020

This whole Theme Updater show is a total rip-off. Out of the Sandbox sells their themes with the promise of providing regular updates for free. Confronted with that they tell you, well, we do but you have to start from scratch and rebuild the whole store if not using Theme Updater, which only comes with an expensive monthly-subscription-scam instead of a one time fee. Out of the Sandbox blames that on Shopify. It looks very much like two companies working hand in hand, trying to suck more money out of their clients who of course depend on them if they want to keep up functionality of their e-commerce businesses. This is absolutely ridiculous!

it's us or naked
United States
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied July 7, 2020

Hello!
Thank you for the input on your experience with updating using the Theme Updater app; we apologize that it didn’t meet expectations! We take your input to heart as we continue to improve the app to make updating your theme faster and easier.

It is true that updated versions of any Shopify theme you purchased are available for free - however, free updated themes do not possess your past setting configurations nor code customizations. While it is unfortunate that this requires the time-consuming process of reconfiguring the theme to retain your past set-up, you can optionally save this time by using the Theme Updater app, which will 1) obtain the most recent version of your theme, 2) apply your past setting configurations and 3) detect your past code customizations, all in one step, without you needing to do these steps manually.

This is a tool we created to help our customers (Out of the Sandbox and Pixel Union theme users) through the complicated updating process; rest assured, your online store functionality can be retained without the Theme Updater app, but the manual updating process will take more time. The main features of the app are available for free for the first year after your Theme purchase, after which time an ongoing subscription begins, ensuring the app’s time-saving and convince benefits are available for the regular subsequent updates.

Thanks again for the input, and feel free to get in touch (support@outofthesandbox.com) with any questions you have about updating your theme! All the best.
-The Out of the Sandbox Team

May 24, 2023

Worst customer service. I bought their theme 4 years ago for $425. At first you could upgrade for FREE. Now you have to pay $9 to upgrade. Knowing that from July 28, 2022 to November 2022 there were no less than 6 updates of the theme because each time the new updates had bugs.

This is a total disrespect towards the customer. It's already not the cheapest theme on the market, but to have to charge again its own customers to get updates? That's really taking people for cash machines.

Viking Shop
France
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied May 24, 2023

Hi Viking Shop team!

Theme Updater Plus' free plan allows you to register your theme, install the latest version of your theme, and receive email notifications for new versions

If you are interested in streamlining the update process, we recommend looking at our Pro Plan, which includes the ability to preserve most settings and customizations when updating, identify code conflicts in new version, and automatically include new language files.

Thank you very much for your review of Theme Updater Plus!

All the best,
Out of the Sandbox

September 19, 2019

We run three stores using the Turbo Theme from Out of the Sandbox - and are just about to launch our fourth. The theme was chosen to a large extent because of this app to update our themes. Now, the developer wants to charge an extra $108 per store, per year - meaning they expect us to pay $432 per year just to update a few lines of code once a year.

This is a perfect example of how to trap your clients and then blackmail them. Obviously, we are changing themes now for store number four, and then slowly changing the other themes over the coming twelve months.

The irony is that BECAUSE they now charge for this app, there is no benefit to staying with Out of the Sandbox for any of their themes. Considering the high costs of their themes, this is slightly mercenary move by Out of the Sandbox, and would appear contrary to their stated aims of helping store owners.

If this is how a business is managed, and based on 20 years of ecommerce, I would recommend not using the themes or apps of Out of the Sandbox.

MissieMay
United Kingdom
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied September 19, 2019

Hello MissieMay,
Thanks for sending this along, we appreciate your input on the upcoming changes - we're happy to hear you've used Turbo for multiple stores, but regret to hear the upcoming changes have come across this way.

Rest assured, updated theme files will continue to be FREE, so you can continue to take advantage of improvements we're making to the theme for all your shops.

We understand that updating a Shopify theme by uploading the updated version and reconfiguring the settings can be time consuming, so we have worked to develop and maintain this tool to make this process easier and faster. While using the Theme Updater App is the preferred method to update a theme for many of our merchants, we do not intend to trap you into using the app if you do not value it. You will not be signed up for a subscription automatically without opting-in.

We sincerely hope you continue to use the Turbo theme for your three shops, and consider it for the fourth. Turbo's performance features and robust set of theme settings/features are not found in many other themes, and while we know the change in price isn't well-received, the Theme Updater App provides a unique method to speed up the updating process, which is otherwise conducted manually for any other Shopify theme (other than Out of the Sandbox and Pixel Union themes). We want to continue to offer you this value, along with exclusive perks we've added to the app, and we hope you'll consider one of our flexible subscription options.

Best regards,
-The Out of the Sandbox Team

May 2, 2020

I just purchased a subscription for Theme Updater to save me the job,

However I updated the theme and the app is functionless since it doesn't work at all.

The theme I updated is exactly as if I've installed the theme (EMPIRE by Pixel Union) and there are no changes at all, it's all at its defaults.

This is so annoying.

These are the files which don't have any changes (it's a ridicule amount of files, it doesn't make sense in most of them).

Empire (Dec-23-2019) (May-3-2020) has been successfully installed.

However, 55 template files contained customizations that could not be automatically applied to the latest version.

- Hide template files
assets/Account.bundle.js
assets/Contact.bundle.js
assets/ContainSwatchTooltips.bundle.js
assets/DynamicBlogPosts.bundle.js
assets/DynamicFeaturedCollection-StaticCollection-StaticProductRecommendations-StaticSearch.bundle.js
assets/DynamicFeaturedCollection.bundle.js
assets/DynamicMenuList.bundle.js
assets/DynamicNewsletter.bundle.js
assets/DynamicPromoBlocks.bundle.js
assets/DynamicRichText.bundle.js
assets/DynamicSearch-StaticHeader.bundle.js
assets/DynamicSearch.bundle.js
assets/DynamicTwitterFeed.bundle.js
assets/DynamicVideo.bundle.js
assets/GiftCard.bundle.js
assets/instantPage.min.js
assets/Page.bundle.js
assets/polyfills.js
assets/PXSMap.bundle.js
assets/StaticAnnouncement.bundle.js
assets/StaticArticle.bundle.js
assets/StaticBlog.bundle.js
assets/StaticCart.bundle.js
assets/StaticCollection.bundle.js
assets/StaticFooter.bundle.js
assets/StaticHeader.bundle.js
assets/StaticHighlightsBanners.bundle.js
assets/StaticPassword.bundle.js
assets/StaticProduct.bundle.js
assets/StaticProductRecommendations.bundle.js
assets/StaticRecentlyViewed.bundle.js
assets/StaticSearch.bundle.js
assets/StaticSlideshow.bundle.js
assets/theme.scss.liquid
assets/vendors-DynamicBlogPosts-DynamicFeaturedCollection-DynamicInstagramFeed-DynamicTwitterFeed-StaticCol-09aa5aa9.bundle.js
assets/vendors-DynamicFeaturedCollection-StaticCollection-StaticProduct-StaticProductRecommendations-StaticSearch.bundle.js
assets/vendors-DynamicSearch-StaticHeader.bundle.js
assets/vendors-main.bundle.js
assets/vendors-StaticCart.bundle.js
layout/none.liquid
layout/theme.liquid
sections/dynamic-instagram-feed.liquid
sections/static-article.liquid
sections/static-cart.liquid
sections/static-product-reviews.liquid
sections/static-product.liquid
snippets/cart-item.liquid
snippets/product-form.liquid
snippets/product-grid-item.liquid
snippets/product-price.liquid
snippets/product.liquid
snippets/structured-data.liquid
templates/404.liquid
templates/page.contact.liquid
templates/product.liquid
The template customizations will need to be manually applied from Empire (Dec-23-2019) to Empire (Dec-23-2019) (May-3-2020) only for these individual files.

Ameyalli
Mexico
Over 1 year using the app
Out of the Sandbox replied May 5, 2020

Hello Ameyalli,
Thank you for sharing these details! We're very sorry for the inconvenience here - the Theme Updater App was experiencing a temporary issue with certain versions, and we believe this version of Empire was impacted. The issue has been addressed, and attempting the update again should result in a more expected outcome.
We have followed up on the support request as well, where we can continue the correspond if there's anything amiss with the update - feel free to let us know the version number of the Empire theme you're updating if the issue persists, and we'll get it squared away.
All the best!