Theme Updater & Backups | OOTS , 267 reviews

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.

Okay before I dive into my negative review, I know the developer will respond by giving me a generic reply however there is clear proof with over 90 1-star reviews how trash the support is for Out Of The Sandbox.

For starters, I am all for supporting people's business and I understand things cost money, keeping your website up to date costs money too however what doesn't sit right with me is how there is no support for anyone who has a custom code.

I decided to purchase the higher member tier for this app, thinking it was going to be a 1 click solution to update my out-of-date theme however, I ran into an issue where my theme couldn't be updated and I needed to contact customer support.

Basically, they looked into my theme and updated it however they had to copy my live theme and said that some code elements couldn't be transferred. Basically, my whole website was scrapped to nothing..

This was the email response I received:

"The error message here is expected and is related to Shopifys recent 'Section Group' changes which have affected the header and footer sections.

As a result, the mega menu would need to be rebuilt, but this will be a one-time inconvenience."

Pretty much Out Of The Sandbox doesn't give you any true help and tells you to outsource a freelancer to Storetasker which is the biggest money grab I have ever seen.

Look I am no expert but I am not a complete noob when it comes to technology and I know transferring a code isn't complicated.
I was charged $500 USD to transfer a few codes which is only less then an hour's work...That is the biggest scam I have ever heard. It costs more to transfer the code than the actual cost of the theme, and I know 100% that Out Of The Sandbox and Storetasker have some kind of agreement.

For anyone reading this, do yourself a favour and hire someone from Freelancer, it only cost me about $20 and the code was completed within an hour..

Destroyed our theme twice in a row. Furthermore it places the wrong items in the cart via mobil (happen also twice). No real support, "because of custom design". Well, the custom design is just basic CSS so no real adjustments. That should be able to handle the update but it doesn't. Support is very nice and friendly, but useless. They've created a storetasker ticket for us, but there was no reply by anyone. Great looking themes but be aware of adjusting anything - not even the font (like in our case). (PRO PLAN)

We write very rarely reviews but in this case this app has been bothering us a lot. We have bought the first team from Out of the Sandbox many years ago. At that time we didn't need to pay for the theme updater app at all and it was a free of charge which I think is the minimum as themes from Out of the Sandbox are not cheap. But since last year they figured out they want to make more money by charging for this app but in the same time reducing the quality of service. In the past we always got feedback within 24 hours when there was an issue or they needed to resolve something. Now we need to be lucky to get feedback in 3 days and this is called priority service.

So for us conclusion is that if we want to buy more themes it will definetley not be an Out of the Sandbox theme.

We would even not mind to pay for the theme updater app as it is useful but what they charge is too much 14USD per month for priority support taking too long. And yes we do request it through the theme updater with the priority support and a general email. If you go outside of the priority support you should be happy to hear something in 1 week and sometimes even 2 weeks which is completely ridiculous

Update 14-07-2020 According to feedback of out of the sandbox the question has been answered. But this is not the case still waiting for an answer on some changes of the theme they made which changes the design of the header

I have received an email telling me that they intend to delete the free plan of this app, so think twice before to buy one of Out of the Sandbox theme: without the app you will have to start new every time they publish an update! I am utterly disappointed by their policy...

This app makes me want to switch to a new theme company entirely. I (along with seemingly several other users) have an issue with Flex rendering on mobile crawlers, so google believes my site is not responsive. After emailing back and forth with them, their only solution was to install the updated theme. But, you can't download and update flex anymore without using their app. This app costs 80+ per year. If their theme doesn't work on mobile, then why would I be responsible for paying to update it? Out of the Sadbox used to be the best Theme providers, and now its just so terrible, and falling behind other apps I use on other sites.

Awful app and for the amount the theme actually cost I'm not impressed. I have a layout issue so the theme doesn't load web pages properly in mobile desktop mode and I've asked many times for help but never get a response

Getting rid of the Free Plan and starting to charge $9 for it? Big Mistake!

You, As a Company that sells templates (For Big Money!) and charges money in order to update them, create very, an extremely bad business relationship between a provider and a consumer.

Does Microsoft charges money for their Automatic system Update?

Or Does Adobe Charges Money for their Automatic system updates?

I can provide you with many more Companies With good and Loyal Marketing towards their Customers.

But You are simply getting Greedy. That will be a downfall for you if you actually gonna initiate your policy.

Customers and their Loyalty come First. Without Customers and their Loyalty there is No Business. Don't Forget about this golden rule before getting greedy

difficult to work with. Resistance to helping their client. Days to get help but it is false help!

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.