How can we simulate millions of users, servers, and client experiences if you can’t simulate your own experience? 

Maybe having a second server with a single domain and/or a lab for testing based on your past experiences that have caused you issues would help?

We have a responsibility but you have a responsibly as well.  For example, we never install Windows or Linux updates / patches without throughly testing them on as many environments as we can.  We also have different levels of uptime throughout our infrastructure and start bottom up.  

From a SmarterTools perspective, we offer weeks (if not months) notice about BETA's that we will be releasing so that companies can plan accordingly.  BETAs themselves often last months so that testing can be planned.  We often reach out to customers who have had an issue and let them know it's resolved in a BETA so they can test it.  We put a lot of work in communicating with our customers so that efforts can be made so that success for all can be achieved. 

If you choose to test a production release, we offer a pretty fantastic level of support that often respond within hours.  It doesn’t mean we can diagnose the problem immediately because in most cases, we can't replicate the issues because each of your environments are unique as our the servers and clients that your severs are connecting with.

We use products from nearly 100 companies, and not one of them provides the level of service and support that we do. I can think of two companies we use that has a CEO who is intimately involved in the products and actively works with its customers. Very few of them provide custom builds to fix issues and/or release on the intervals we do so that customers get fixed as soon as possible. (Which is logistically difficult, but we believe crucial.)

At some point, you need to evaluate your approach rather than blaming the company you use.  That’s not to say we don’t miss the boat sometimes, and we will take responsibility. But we also work hard and also give 100% to ensure our customers receive the best possible level of service no matter the approach they take. 

Everything we do is an effort to create win/win scenarios, even at the expense of our profitability. We genuinely care about our customers' experiences, which is why we will stick up for ourselves. My employees work hard for the right reasons, and a customer’s tone impacts our well-being. A company that operates with a sense of pride about their product, and that can back it up, is the type of company we want to work with, and they’re hard to find.

We had a few people spamming stuff throughout the community and it’s caused a lot of noise and customers had been downgrading when they just have a configuration issue, etc. Helping the handful of customers having issues became much more difficult because some customers decided they wanted to vent in the community, which just caused more noise and confusion. Any customer who impacts the ability for other customers to have success, we will tell them to no longer use our products or we will remove them from the community. 

We hope customers appreciate the efforts we make and we will take responsibility for our issues and we will do what we can to cure those issues which I think we have demonstrated over and over against since our inception. We had a few bugs in a MASSIVE release that was once Windows only but is now Linux.  The issues affected a handful of customers but those customers who had worked with us during the BETA or tested our production release and / or waited for a fix they reported are having fantastic experiences.

We are truly here to help and we would love for our customers to interact with us in the most proactive way possible so we can prevent issues and instead of cure issues!