We’re Ending Our Technical Support Offerings

We're Ending Technical Support Subscriptions

As the years go by, businesses need to adapt to a changing market.

Customers want different things in 2018 than they did a few years ago.

In 2012, our business was 90% live training. One of our teachers flew to a city and stood in front of a room full of students. We then tried to mentor the students with ongoing support after the class.

In 2018, our business is 90% online training.

The market has changed. Here at OSTraining, our customers no longer want us to fly to their location when they can learn the same material by watching videos or reading books.

So in 2018, we’re going to focus exclusively on online training. This means live training will be restricted to special events such as DrupalCon. It also means that we’re no longer going to offer the ongoing support that grew out of the live training.

This decision has been in the works for some time. Back in 2016, we stopped selling support here at OSTraining. In the middle of 2017, we no longer had any team members dedicated to technical support.

Why are we ending technical support?

We started providing support when we just covered Joomla. Nowadays, we find we just can’t effectively deal with the smorgasbord of questions that come in:

  • “How do I fix a bug in this Drupal 6 module with three installs?”
  • “Why is my WordPress site not working correctly with this Envato theme that the developers have abandoned?”
  • “How do I upgrade my custom CSS from Bootstrap 2 to Bootstrap 4?”
  • “How do I solve this CSS problem in a Joomla extension hidden behind a corporate firewall?”

Those are all good questions that people need solutions to. However, the questions have been growing increasingly complex over the years.

Also, as we expanded more deeply into Magento, PHP, Bootstrap, Podcasting and other topics, it was too much to expect our team to provide accurate answers on all those issues.

What does this mean for OSTraining users?

For the vast majority of OSTraining users, this will have no impact at all.

But, a few long-time users are still on subscription plans that also offer ongoing support. There will be an impact for members on the “Support” and “Pro” plans.

If you have a Support subscription, please contact us to talk about moving to a different subscription.

Thanks for your understanding on this. The training business has changed, and we need to change with it. We have an ambitious roadmap for creating great training in 2018. Completing that roadmap successfully requires us to focus on the 90% of our business that is growing.

Author

  • Steve Burge

    Steve is the founder of OSTraining. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Sarasota in the USA. Steve's work straddles the line between teaching and web development.

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pixelperfectcreative
6 years ago

This is terrible news. While I understand the reasons why, this site was an incredible resource for support issues. It is the reason I bought a lifetime membership.

emilylu
6 years ago

I agree with Thad, it is sad that you guys are ending the support for all and I wish there is a different way such as limit the # of tickets people can submit per week or what type of questions that people can ask or get support on. That will cut down a lot of questions and make things more manageable for your support team.

I also bought the lifetime plan and didn’t think the support plan can end so suddenly….
Have you guys consider other options rather ending the support for all? Thanks.

jimheil
6 years ago

Understood. Still a great deal!

jimheil
6 years ago
Reply to  James Heil

Sorry I bugged you guys so much for the last problem I had. The issue didn’t get resolved and I am starting my site all over again. I do appreciate the effort though. The site needed a rebuild anyway.

anotart
5 years ago

Just saw this and am very sorry to hear it.  It was great having your team available when I just couldn’t find an answer anywhere else.  They always were able to help.  I can certainly understand how the changes over time have made this more difficult.  I honestly wondered how you could offer a lifetime membership and am glad I enrolled when I did.  I hope that some variation on this is a possibility…

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