Let me start out by saying a couple things…
- From my limited experience Upverter appears to be leading the pack and is of good quality
- Software is difficult and so is eda in general to be sure
- I realize my expectations can be too high sometimes
- Upverter is quite frankly very bad-a__!
Having said that I have some feedback for the Upverter team which is really supposed to be constructive but, you know, if I’m being honest does come from a certain amount of frustration (warranted or not). I often see the survey request at the top of my editor window so I figure this feedback will generally be well received. I’ll try to be concise and then expand. tl;dr is fair.
- There is a lack of documentation of features and tools
- There is an over-promise that hasn’t been met in terms of some advertised features
- As a paying customer I expect a certain level of support which I believe is fair
- Performance vs features
- Concierge
Documentation
Some of the tools don’t appear to have any documentation. I’ve come across 2 primary sources which are the Getting Started guides which are videos but are mysteriously captioned “Read Article” (I get that it’s prob a RSS generic caption).
Sometimes I also come across an html outline doc but the detail is sometimes lacking on nuances and details of particular tools or altogether missing.
Other than that it seems a bit hodgepodge-y.
Over-promise/Under sell
I understand that we live in a world of balance - of trying to sell your wares, providing quality software, building a customer base, temporarily living with some shortcomings and bugs, and eventually moving forward.
What I don’t understand is the blatant (perceived) misrepresentation of selling point/feature. Scripting/API support is what comes to mind most for myself - primarily because I was hoping that I could fill in the gaps of certain features with my own js/http request injections. Why advertise that if it’s non-existent??
Paying customer argument
I don’t think I’m asking too much here which is to have a support ticketing system that tracks my support requests and provides a “paper” trail. Right now it’s an email to support@ which is ok especially since I get responses within a couples days and sometimes from one of the co-founders. I’d be surprised if Uv doesn’t track requests interally using some system like Jira - maybe it’s simply not exposed to customers.
But I’m paying $125 / month (or $1200 / year). That’s not cheap. It’s certainly better than the $1K that was the pricing model before but that quite frankly was crazy. I, of course, have no idea how many people bought that but considering it went away probably not that many. Point is $125 is a lot considering the alternatives based on features (Eagle, CircuitMaker). Is Uv vs Eagle Pro worth it? I guess. Probably. But still - it’s good money - some basics are in order - namely support. The only thing I think I’m getting for the $125 (so far as I see it) is the concierge parts bump but I’m not even sure I’ve maxed that out even. Aside from supporting a company which I want to see succeed I’m just asking for a little bit here.
Performance vs Features
I understand that Uv is trying hard to build customers so that they have more leverage for better financing terms. Not everything will be fixed or added overnight. What is key to keeping customers is communication and setting expectations accordingly. All I need is a note that my request has been logged (pref immediately on receipt) and then notification of expectation of resolution within a couple hours - not the actual resolution - just the expectation of timeframe. This happens sometimes but other times I don’t get a response at all.
SIMD javascript engine support and additional js performance enhancements (multi-core utilization) will eventually arrive at the browser level I suspect. Not my area of expertise so I may be off base here. I’m not worried about that stuff too much right now.
If I had my druthers I would like to see more feature support for high-speed digital design support. I’d rather spend $ on my workstation to maximize my Upverter experience rather than hand over $10K / yr to Altium. Possibly even add an a la carte pricing model to support add-on features. And yes I am aware of some hard stops in terms of browser support (callstack limitations, memory limits, etc).
Concierge
Concierge is AWESOME. I want to spend time building pcbs not parts. I suspect this is what is going to catapult Upverter past the competition and possibly even past the established EDA players.
There have been some stumbling blocks but overall it’s been nice except for the occaisional bug or delay of up to a week to see results.
Maybe this post was just a bunch of hot air but hopefully it was received well. At the end of the day I do actually use the tool, want to see Uv succeed, and hope that it continues to grow and become more powerful. And if you’re anything like me and hate to constantly hear customers complain (which I tend to do, ironically) then know that you guys kick ass and to keep up the good work.
Thanks!
e