and one more paramount thing…

Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes.

And in software integration and web development patience is essential.

With that understanding great things can be achieved.

I came across this review site today, doing some research. I ended up reading this whole comment thread and thought I should really leave my review.

I’d like to chip in for QU and PAP because I use PAP and QUs service has been great.

I’d also like to comment on Peter’s review site and his extremely knowledgable and very fair assessments to support each and every person’s posts. I’ve never come across such an excellent and valuable review site. Many review sites today are spammy junk with fake reviews just to make a sale.

Firstly it is only fair to say PAP is a superior piece of software. And it works well. That is a fact. It’s very comprehensive, mature code and very well supported.

It would also be fair to say that QU have a very high volume of support requests (which means they’re busy, which is a good thing) and getting attended to can take some time. (Hence the common complaint from people) Nevertheless, they do endeavour to look after you and work with you to complete your service requirement. We did have to wait some time till we could get our work seen to properly, but it was worth the wait, and as they clearly explained, they were inundated with support requests and they were experiencing some delays. So we were kept in the loop.

I know that with a script like this you can’t simply hire a bunch of extra people to fill the busy demand and put them on a support desk. They need to be trained up and completely understand the ins and outs of the script to be able to offer quality support. Some people who have commented negatively don’t seem to be very experienced with software or web development or else they’d have understood this. QU’s support technicians really understand what they’re doing and they have very intricate knowledge of the script. We worked with a very high level coder from QU’s support. We were most impressed.

I’ve had an “Ultimate” (Full integration) license for PAP since 2009. Back then I was looking for a highly versatile Affiliate management script that we could customise to the hilt to get it to integrate with a contact importer and work on a number of complex levels, and PAP was the ONLY script on the market that could handle our requirements.

Given what we wanted to achieve, QU delivered OUTSTANDING service in installing and customising the script to our requirements together with our Head Developer. I was so impressed with QU and how far they went out of their way to make sure we had what we needed, that I wrote a shining testimonial on their website.

For the work they did I’d have had to pay a developer 2-3 times the cost of the script to make it work the way we required. The price of the script together with the fact they provide complete installation and customisation built into the price made the purchase a no brainer.

I’m not a techie or a developer. In fact until we built this particular site we used PAP on, I’d never worked on a piece of software before. I’m an Art Director and I fell into web design as an evolution in my career journey. This project taught me an enormous amount about web and software development. It is with this understanding and respect for quality software developers that I am motivated to write this post. Why? Because QU are quality software developers and in my experience, they are not easy to come by. I guess one is right to be sceptical these days.

Nevertheless, the crux of my review is really a comment that I hope is helpful for your average joe website owner/ internet marketer who is not a techie and has no idea about software integration. In a nutshell if you expect to use software as sophisticated as PAP, you need to have a developer or technical team if you want to meet your high expectations to make it all work smoothly. It’s not all plug n play when it comes to software integration.

It is fair to add, as far as customer service, yes ok, QU can afford to improve their communications. But then again, what company doesn’t? I think Victor has already demonstrated his commitment in his earlier posts. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement.

But I think it’s short sighted and selfish to expect a company to do a song and dance around your needs if you can’t back up your requirements with the same level of commitment. I’ve been a service provider in the Creative industry for over 17 years. And there’s a saying in our industry. The creative is as good as the brief. That is to say if your client brief isn’t thorough how can you expect the outcome of the job to address your needs?

Clients/customers always expect service providers and merchants to deliver over and above. Rightly so. Nevertheless the responsibility goes both ways. You give as good as you get.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. I hope this is of use to people who read this review.

PAP is great. I highly recommend it. QU’s service is excellent I highly recommend them. Just be sure to know what you need and have a good technical grasp of the requirement before you embark on this journey so you have realistic expectations.

All the best.

I think we may be misunderstanding each other. I feel the issue is about some work that needs to be done to integrate the product with yours. It doesn’t mean changing their product at all.

Integration is a grey area since it’s the glue that holds two or more products together.

I’m not trying to defend to the hilt, but if I were in your shoes I’d consider either hiring QU to do the integration (maybe ask for some discount if you feel it is strategic re opening the market) or getting your programmer/webmaster to do it. Maybe first get an estimate from your programmer re effort required, and then pick the cheaper option.

I’ll suggest to them to update their requirements page, as I agree it could be more clear up front. This would reduce surprises.

I would like to reply to the comments you have made about my review of PAP4.

1. Surely as a customer I can have high expectations of any goods or service I procure? And also expect businesses to do that little bit extra to secure my sale and hard earned dollars.

Why are you going on about the amount of $ and time I am willing to put into my affiliate program, I have spent many hours looking and comparing different affiliate programs (even to the stage of actually setting up test affiliates users and sales campaigns / banners (on demo sites) and incorporating them into my site to test if they would work). At no time did I mention the amount of money I was willing to spent on affiliate software, this is not a relevant point.

What do you mean when you say “Let me remind you that starting an affiliate program doesn’t mean you go out and buy some affiliate software and expect money to pour in.” what relevance does that have to my issues with QU / PAP4?

2. It would be a lot clearer if QU displayed Full Integration information on their sales pages.

3. Of course I read the requirements page. It states “Post Affiliate Pro will run on any web hosting that supports PHP 5 and MySQL” and then goes on to list the versions they support.

In actual fact my server is running both php and mysql BUT PAP4 will not run with my application. The issue is you can’t run both php and asp in the same script / webpage. The above statement made by QU is misleading and actually not true.

No where does it say the PAP4 will not run on a site using asp, which in my case is true.

As I said if the code was java script there would be no issue, I don’t know if this is possible?

Can you explain to me why you would have a windows hosting account and just run php? You have a windows server to run asp or aspx, you can also run php in a windows environment. You can’t run php / asp on the same page, this is my issue.

4. If my needing to integrate PAP4 into my asp site and PAP4 / QU is unwilling to assist me in achieving this, well guess what…?

“The issue is that your challenge is integration due to you needing ASP. It is not a question of them trying to “to change their product rather than an outsider”. Their product doesn’t need changing. It’s you who needs to integrate it with your setup, which is quite unique and apparently not commonly requested. in the market.”

If that is the attitude of QU, they do not deserve my money. But as you state you do not work for QU (although you do defend them to the hilt and your reviews are becoming very biased), so perhaps QU should comment on the development of their product to work with asp?

If it only takes a few minutes to rewrite the code into asp, why doesn’t QU do it? As I said it would enhance their product and make it available to more people, which would lead to more sales.

Aren’t QU there for their customers? One of whom could be ME! If QU don’t listen to their customers (or for that matter potential customers) they will have none left, very soon.

5. It can’t be that uncommon for people to want to integrate PAP4 into asp sites (you state you have had to do it). Many of my competitors also use asp or aspx. There are also many asp affiliate software packages available in the market.

I have been caught out before making changes to other peoples / companies software. Some minor change / enhancement turns out to be a nightmare. As the developer of PAP4 QU knows their product inside out, they know the consequence of any changes made to their code, they also know what other changes (if any) have to be made after the initial change and so on.

If an ‘outsider’ makes changes I would have to spend many hours using the program to ensure it is working as it should – i.e. they have not made a mistake with the changes they have made. They have made all the changes needed.

Don’t get me wrong, PAP4 is one of the better affiliate software packages available. I don’t want to have all the associated issues of changing QU’s code, whereas if they developed their product to cater for the asp market (even if it is a small segment) I would be purchasing PAP4.

As I said earlier we are in very hard economic times, money is extremely tight for many consumers. I understand as a business owner that I have to cater to my customers, I am willing to value add to any service or product my consumers purchase, it is basic good business sense. My revenue is actually increasing, many of my competitors have ceased business or down-sized. This is an excellent time for businesses to expand and grow their business, you just have to think smart, advertise & develop your products & services and treat your customers as the lifeline of your business – go that extra mile.

1 – in general you seem to be expecting a little too much of a software vendor. It happens quite often that merchants starting affiliate programs realize they need a platform or software, but don’t invest the little extra to make it actually work with their setup, let alone spend even more $ and time on recruiting and managing the affiliates. You seem to have fallen in this category. Let me remind you that starting an affiliate program doesn’t mean you go out and buy some affiliate software and expect money to pour in. This is a mission critical or at least sales critical venture and should be treated as such. So why don’t you get your webmaster or a freelance ASP programmer to make it all work? I checked with QU and based on the # enquiries they get for ASP integration there is not a sufficient market for them to invest time in this integration.

2 – you say there is no information about the full integration option. If you go here to their main PAP page and then click Services you will see the Full integration option link right there. I suggest you hire them to do it as it may seem to be a small task but it would probably cost you more to get someone else to do it, since they would spend time trying to learn the API and get their head around just what is PAP etc. Some vendors don’t even offer integration services, so be glad this is even an option for you.

3 – Re support of ASP. It is very clear from their requirements page that they support Windows servers as long as PHP5 is supported. You say “they should make it clear that you need to run php code” – did you not read their requirements page? It’s pretty clear they state this. It seems you didn’t research the requirements and total costs involved before hitting the “buy” button, and you’re blaming these surprise additional costs on the vendor. I will make a note to let QU know that they could set the expectations better re total costs to start an affiliate program, but that information is quite widely available already.

4 – The issue is that your challenge is integration due to you needing ASP. It is not a question of them trying to “to change their product rather than an outsider”. Their product doesn’t need changing. It’s you who needs to integrate it with your setup, which is quite unique and apparently not commonly requested. in the market.

5 – I can say that when I used PAP to setup a lead generation affiliate programme, we needed to integrate it with our site that runs ASP, and our programmer had no major issues with the integration. It was probably more complex than what you need, because we needed to hard code the referring affiliate with each lead, so that when the lead sold, the affiliate got the credit even if it is 6 months later. Sure it took some time and QU did support him in answering his questions. But now it all works fine and we are focusing on signing up more happy affiliates and money is starting to flow in, but not pouring yet

So you have 2 choices – hire someone who does integration with your ASP e-commerce product, or pay QU to integrate PAP to your ASP pages. Either way it should be considered part of your investment in starting an affiliate program.

I am hosting my domain on a windows server and running an application using asp.

I contacted QU customer support about one piece of code, for the integration of PAP4 with PayPal cart, that is written in php and do they have this code in asp (as you can’t run asp and php code in the same page). QU response from Michal Bebjak “To write similar code as our PHP code is a matter of couple minutes for skilled ASP developer. It is all just forwarding the IPN request to another script. I believe that this can be most quickly done by people who have done your IPN integration script. If they are not able to do it, we can develop that code but you will need to buy also Full Integration option.” So for PAP4 to work on a windows server running asp I either have to find a programmer to rewrite the code into asp or buy the PAP4 “Full Integration option” which I don’t even know what it is as it’s not listed in the QU website.

QU is somewhat misleading saying there product will run on any server – they should make it clear that you need to run php code which you can’t do if you are using asp or aspx. I don’t know why you would host your domain on a windows server and only run php? You wouldn’t. You use a windows server to run asp or aspx, which is not compatible with PAP4.

In these challenging economic times it is very disappointing to see this poor level of customer service, QU obviously do not want business, because if as Michael states it would only take a few minutes to write the code in asp why don’t they rewrite it and offer PAP4 to users running asp or aspx – this would increase QU’s potential customer base. I was intending to purchase a product from QU this has nothing to do with the company I purchased my asp application from. Could QU possibly also write java script to replace the php code?

My experiences have taught when changing an existing script / software package, get the original company who developed the product to do the work, they understand their product and are fully aware (or should be) of consequences of any changes made. It is quicker and easier for them to change their product rather than an outsider who does not know the finer details of the code.

I would not recommend PAP4 to users how are running on a windows server using asp or aspx.

Btw believe it or not some affiliate s/w vendors don’t have affiliate programs, but that’s another story

It may be that you were under the impression that setting up an affiliate program was a matter of paying some money for s/w and pushing a few install/setup clicks.

This is pretty tricky technology and has to handle so many server o/s varieties etc. I doubt we’ll ever see a platform (unless hosted) that is going to work out of the box all the time. Even with chat, phone, and email support, if the expectations aren’t correct you’ll never be happy no matter how hard they try.

I strongly suggest anyone setting up an aff. management system have a programmer or the vendor install and set it up, to avoid any technical hassles.

I think the vendors may need to review their marketing material and checkout process to ensure that the expectations are properly set.

From what I read, your requests for support were extremely general and gave no information for them to identify (e.g. recreate the problem) the issue, diagnose, and help you with remedies.

Also, it sounds like you expected them to solve problems that were out of their control – e.g. expecting QU to somehow speed up internet DNS change propagation. If you are installing something mission critical such as an affiliate management system, do not expect this to happen overnight and do not expect that any vendor has some special way to speed up the internet for you.

As for chat response your post is highly exaggerated. The records show you had a response under 5 minutes, which is almost unheard of high quality response time, considering that once a chat is established the solution can be reached extremely quickly vs email or unweildy phone communication.

I am not saying your feedback is unwarranted, but based on what I’ve heard, I feel your expectations do not match the information you provided to QU to help you solve the problems and that QU did everything they could to help you in a timely manner with better support than most other vendors you may find.