Hello Sublime Developer,

Maybe I missed something, so correct me if I’m wrong:

Is this forum really the only way of getting support for a paid product? I already posted a problem a while ago and got no response by the developer. Actually SL is a good product but this specific problem (i.e. project files not opening on dbl click) is really annoying and I’ve found no way of solving this so far.

What’s the best way to get support for Sublime Text (which I expect as a paying customer)? There should bei either some sort of ticket system or a public available support email address for paying customers to get help and not a support forum where I don’t know when to expect an answer or not, especially since there is NO automatic notification on replies on this phpBB setup. I consider this a waste of time.

Please please, provide a regular support to paying customers or tell me who to contact directly.

Regards, Sebastian

Technically you paid for a license to use the software, not for support.

No offense, but being in the software development business myself this is definitely not
how this works in real life. User support is what makes the difference about the quality of a product.
A product without support is worthless, IMHO.

If I as a user have no way to get in contact with the developer next time I’ll choose
another product because of that bad experience. That’s how it goes, most of the time,
and what I learned from my own customers.

Sublime Text is absolutely the first product not to offer any official way to get support
besides a crappy phpBB forum. I can’t believe anyone actually is supporting this way of
“support”, too.

In my opinion it’s just common sense for a software company to offer (limited) support for
customers, i.e. 90 days after purchase or like many others do - in the first year.

Don’t get me wrong - ST2 is a good software itself, but it has some quirks and bugs and
maybe sometimes a “customer” (i.e. user) working with it in real life needs support
beyond posting here and hoping someone might answer sometime in the future
without even knowing this is read at all.

That’s no good business policy, sorry.

I don’t feel there is a problem opening dialog about support. I am sure there are others that feel the same way.

But in short, it is what it is. I personally find the editor to be of great value, and I am willing to overlook the not so good support at times. If the the support issue outweighs the usefulness of the app, then I would not purchase a license and would possibly support a different editor. I have not reached that tipping point. I love ST2 and plan to continue using. I do wish at times support was better, but it hasn’t bothered me enough to cause me to go elsewhere.

facelessuser, yes - ST2 is a great piece of software, I’m using it everyday and it saves a lot of time.

My long response was a reply to quarnster’s comment and in no way was meant to sound like it’s THAT bad with ST2.
I’m just saying support could be better a bit with ST2 and that John should have an eye on this.

Unfortunately you’re preaching to the choir, I don’t disagree with anything you said and Jon’s seemingly declining involvement as judged by the lack of new builds, posts in the forums and lack of merging pull requests for the Vintage plugin scares me. Jon, if you’re reading this, I don’t know what’s going on in your life but I hope everything is ok with you.

+1

Just as much progress is happening on Sublime Text as ever, it’s just going to take some time for the results to be ready.

[quote=“taenzerme”]In my opinion it’s just common sense for a software company to offer (limited) support for
customers, i.e. 90 days after purchase or like many others do - in the first year.[/quote]

IMO, It seems silly to treat a one-man-show as a company. Everyone’s always trying to tell Jon what to do. Just let him code in peace GODDAMMIT.

@John, thanks for the short followup. I understand problems coming up when a product is successful. Still, it would be great if you would keep your customers informed what’s going on - back on the original topic - and at least think about how support could be handled better in the future.

@C0D312: I disagree, even though I understand what you’re talking about. That’s just not how this works if you sell a software commercially (yeah, it’s not that much considering what you get). John should make the whole thing open source then, which would lower the expectations a lot. But that not the case - it’s a closed source software commercially sold. I can and should expect support as a customer. One man show or not doesn’t matter. Others are doing it too with good support. Look at many one man show Apple AppStore coders. If you make money with it hire someone to handle support request. That might sound ignorant, but believe me (been a one-man-show myself for many years) you can’t just cut out support like that.

I think many buyers of SL2 look at Textmate - look what happened there. We paid good money and in the end no one cared about the product. What’s happening with Textmate2 is a bad joke. IMHO this should not happen with SL2, too. I think many fear that’s going to happen consindering how little information about progress and future plans is available to the public.

Much appreciated, but in terms of bug reports/fixes, there are some pretty big nags out there with a lot of forum activity, like these:
Request to allow disabling of “Preview Tab/View”
“goto anything” performance on retina panels

@swrobel: From the very first line of the preview on click thread:

[quote=“iamntz”]@swrobel: From the very first line of the preview on click thread:

[/quote]

As I reported, this doesn’t affect Goto anything, so it’s a half-solution.

[quote=“taenzerme”]
I think many buyers of SL2 look at Textmate - look what happened there. We paid good money and in the end no one cared about the product. What’s happening with Textmate2 is a bad joke. IMHO this should not happen with SL2, too. I think many fear that’s going to happen consindering how little information about progress and future plans is available to the public.[/quote]

TM is not much of an example. Folks paid “good money” for a product that had similarly responsive dev and active community for support for years and is still a usable piece of software. Now TM2 is being rapidly developed as open source with a free upgrade to TM1 users. I know I got my $60 out of the 6 years of daily TextMate usage.

Nowhere on the site does Jon suggest product support is part of the purchase price. The homepage clearly lists all the features of the product – that’s what is being sold. Nor does it say anywhere on the site that you’re paying for eternal updates. You download the trial, if you like it, you pay for it. Transaction complete. Jon put in hundreds of hours building that product, you bought it based on where it was then.

The sense of entitlement have for a $60 purchase is so weird. I’ve never experienced stellar support from an indie developer, nor have I necessarily expected it as long as the software worked as advertised. Serious bugs that inhibit the usability of the product are the only thing I can understand people being so angry about. But beyond that, we’re just plain lucky to have such an amazing editor for such a reasonable price.

Total agree, I am a new user (was a VIM user for years) the $60.00 price tag is a steal! I purchased the license after using it for one day!, hands down the best editor I have ever used.

Anyone know how get a hold of Jon? He seems to be MIA…

He’s apparently heads-down on some unspecified ‘big thing’ for Sublime. He seems to surface on the forum very occasionally since the v2 official release.

You might try sending a PM: memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2