interactive tools fraudulent vendor

Heck, I'm NOT a professional website developer and I figured it out!

Normally I would ignore this thread, but my experiences with Interactive Tools has been so much better than ANY of my other software vendors I have to put in my 2 cents should a potential customer read this rant.

I run a small real estate team in Missouri and understanding HTML just enough that I created my own website.

In 2004 I needed a cheap but functional program to make displaying listings online easier and via a Google search I found Interactive Tools' Realty Listings Manager. I called and spoke to their sales people and they were very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful without trying to push me into a sale. I became a customer.

A couple years later when I wanted to migrate to a website management program, a Google search came up with Article Manager. Because my experiences with iTools had been positive (sales and tech support both), I purchased it.

Now, not being a "real" website developer I spent a lot of time on the phone/forum and still consider it the best support I've ever gotten from a software supplier. I even hired them to do a 1.x to 2.0 upgrade and when it didn't go according to plan, they put in a lot of extra time for free, and did an excellent job at keeping me updated on their work.

Article Manager did everything it was advertised to do but not what I really wanted it to do so back in 2007 I started working with Joomla. I'm sure it's a great product but I never got anywhere with it.

In 2008 I got frustrated with Joomla and started to look for a "for pay" CMS solution that was easier to learn and had support. iTools had just released cmsBuilder. I probably called their sales line to ask questions about it a dozen times over a 3 month period and was never pressured into a sale. Some of those calls probably lasted 30 minutes or more too.

I finally decided to try the 10 day trial. It didn't install properly. Their sales person got tech support to fix the installation and extended the trial period. At the time there was special volume pricing available running through March 30 and I was planning on rolling out multiple site. My sales person offered to honor the special pricing after it expired so I would have time to evaluate the demo and not feel rushed into a sale.

I purchased 5 licenses (because it was made clear that it was one license per site!)

Since then, my secondary websites designed in cmsBuilder have rolled out and subsequently been taken off line for redesign and my primary website has never been finished. Every few months I find time to pick up where I left off and get a little more work done on it. As a result, I spend a lot of time on this forum trying to remember how things were done.

The only downside I can come up with against iTools as a 6 year customer is that telephone tech support ceased to be free a few years ago (I'm thinking with the cmsBuilder product) and I've had to use the forum for tech support more than calling in. Although I wish that hadn't of happened, I do understand the need to control expenses and I still find iTools support quicker at responding than most of my other vendors that just make you wait on hold for an hour.

I also love the fact that upgrades are on the honor system because it's allowed me to keep the software up-to-date on a site in development over a 2 year period without having added expenses before it goes live. None of my other vendors offer me that.

And as far as the overall purchase price of cmsBuilder, it's significantly cheaper than most of the for pay products out there and easier to deal with than the free products.

Sid (6 year customer of 3 different iTools products).

Website: http://www.stlagent.com