forum deletions

Like in all totalitarian regimes, when censoring at the first stage does not help, they move it up a notch and make the regime even more strict. As if THAT would help. In the past we have seen that user's posts got deleted when the contents were venting to much criticism, and one step further, whole threads were deleted. That many users had put their best efforts in writing thoughtful posts in that thread did not seem to bother anyone at Alpha's. They just want to be "right", they want to believe in their own delusions, and they want to SELL. Criticism they see as a personal Attack on the company, rather than for what it actually IS: a huge Chance to improve!

The height of censorship on that forum seemed to be the banning of members. Very loyal members who had used their product for DECADES where simply banned from the forum just for having opposite opinions. As if "freedom of speech" does not matter much to Alpha Software.... but for those who thought the banning of members was the maximum: think again!
Alpha Software forum admins now seem to not only ban accounts, they also ban on IP address now! Which means, that EVERY single user from the same IP address gets automatically denied access to their forum! Now, how rude is that? Suppose you are working within a large company where someone else logs-in and posts some criticism... next day you couldn't log in anymore because everyone connecting from that IP got denied access? How dumb.... Who decides on such ridiculous measures there? Get him fired!!

Besides that this behavior shows how little customer orientated they really are at Alpha Software, it also shows they don't seem to know how their customers earn their daily bread... would they REALLY think that denying access on IP stops professional software developers from getting access nonetheless ? Dumb again. Of course it doesn't.
No matter what steps totalitarian regimes take, there will always be a way around it. In the end, nothing is solved, nothing is gained. Much is lost.

Not taking advantage of the immense possibilities of WCD with only a few minor changes does simply not make sense. In some form, it is equal to betrayal of the old, loyal customers who want nothing but desktop. Those get forgotten now. Alpha seems to pursue other types of customers, targeting other market sections and in the process does nothing for the desktop user. The new self proclaimed "flagship product" v12 does offers almost nothing extra for the desktop user if compared to v11. It seems, that the desktop of Alpha Five got stuck in the windows 3.1 design and slowly is losing every inch of usability in a modern customer environment. Alpha just seems to let the desktop bleed to death and it's users with it.

The fact that v11 remains available proves to be nothing more than salve on the wound. Look at the updates that have been published for v12 from the moment it was released, and look at how many updates are released for v11 from the moment v12 was launched. Strange, not? Especially if you go from the statement that v11 would be maintained until far in the future, as stated by Alpha Software themselves. In reality, I don't see any updates for v11. The focus is completely on v12. Which is strange in MANY ways.

Looking at the forum figures, and making some calculations from that, it seems that the numbers of sales for the v12 product are only roughly a third of comparable sales of v11 in its days. The number of posts for what includes a completely new section (mobile) are extremely low. That shouldn't be the case. Since there is a completely new section in v12, one would expect people to ask more questions in comparison with v11 where no new section was introduced compared to v10. In reality however, much less questions are asked. And that in a situation where there is not even good documentation for v12 available. It's misty and non-functional Wiki ends with version v11. So, how are all of those hordes of new Alpha customers coming from the corporate environment coping with the questions this new product section naturally throws up? The answer can only be, that there are no hordes of new Alpha customers! The results in sale seem to be dramatically bad and the attempt to score large numbers of new customers from the corporate environment obviously failed. Which bad results sort of fits with the companies management quality level: BAD.

That resulted in the e-mail we all got last week: "You MUST update Alpha Anywhere before in the next 3 days or else it will stop working". Say again?

So developers who had distributed their applications with their customers had to approach everyone of them in a hurry to get them updated within 3 days, or otherwise their apps would simply stop working, if you had to believe their e-mail. So what if you were on a well deserved vacation? Too bad for your customers..... hooray Alpha Software !!
Several customers reacted on the forum, and besides those who got instantly banned for reacting angry (rightfully so!), others "came to the rescue" and told how "completely normal" it was that people had to update within 3 days. Of course, that argument is complete rubbish. Since the need for updating was not some screw-up from Microsoft or another huge provider, but it is believed that this was completely self-inflicted. Thoughts are, that in an attempt to maximize profits Alpha had simply built-in a timebomb in it's software that would prevent the customer from using its products after the subscription expired. However, in a later stage and after much protests from existing customers, Alpha turned back on that policy and decided that you could still use the product after expiration of the subscription, but you could just not update anymore. However, it seemed they forgot about the time-bomb with all consequences. That, of course, is definitely NOT a normal problem for which they are not to blame! They were VERY MUCH to blame for that, and they simply failed in their quality control which in the end resulted in the customers getting stuck with the sour consequences.

Besides that, even the update itself was a horror. More than one version needed to be launched to get it right. I wonder which professional developer can put his customers up with a product created with a platform that shows this behavior on a regular basis. The whole policy factory at Alpha Software moves around like a drunken sailor. The one moment they have THIS policy, the next moment they have THAT policy. And let's not even start on their prices for which you can find a different "offer" in your mailbox almost every week!

WCD could have saved the day for the old Alpha Five desktop users. It could easily have stretched the usability of their desktop section with another decade. They chose not to, for reasons only the Alpha Lords may know. Maybe they want to force the old desktop users to lay off their old desktop coat, and go for the new v12 flagship product? I don't know. Something must be triggering this strange, and if you look at it from the viewpoint of the customer, illogical behavior.

One should really think about the question whether it is advisable to sell solutions to commercial customers that embed Alpha Five software and policies. If you look at companies such as OutSystems, you will find a complete opposite attitude towards criticism. They tend to listen, and ask questions. They even plan meetings and speak to you in person about the points you have. Trying to make their product even better for their customers. OutSystems clearly understood very well what chances a constructive approach can deliver to itself and its customers. Alpha Software didn't.

Having suffered the recent experiences with Alpha Software's update policies (you MUST update within 3 days or else....) one can only advise to those who decide to keep exposing their customers to Alpha's weird behavior to make a complete system snapshot (not just a backup !!!) of the development and production environments AT ALL TIMES before updating or upgrading, and save that snapshot for a very long term! Since the recent experiences learned us you simply can expect almost everything from Alpha Software. They could easily embed some code in tomorrow's update that would turn your complete business upside down. They've done it before: Ooops... sorry... timebomb.....please update immediately.... Who is to say they won't do it again?

Yeah, Alpha Software says they won't do it again, and this would be a one-time event. But hey, trust is a thing you can only lose once. Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Alpha managed to sent it home in a racing car. It won't be back anytime soon with a lot of customers. Several customers have publicly announced on the Alpha forum, that they are over and done with Alpha Five. Who would blame them? 

The question exposed by these events is, whether v12 (or "Alpha Anywhere" as they call it) is such a good decision to go for anyway. Alpha is fumbling around at the policies surrounding that product way too much. The whole subscription thing they started on was already an early warning: "Alpha Anywhere will only be available on subscription" they said after the launch. Well.... that proved to be rubbish. You can now buy it against a one-off fee as well. What about those who purchased the subscription before that? Bad luck.... Alpha Anywhere seems to be the sales playground of Alpha Software nowadays where the key subject is no longer "how can we facilitate our customers best" but instead "how can we maximize our profits". V11 does not seem to have that interest. But then again, v11 does not seem to have ANY interest at all anymore from Alpha Software. So what to choose? I would say: look around. There are way better products where companies value their customers and are straight and honest in communications. In a search for competing products as one can read on the IADN forum several very good competing products have been found that make you forget about Alpha Five very easily.

Some former Alpha Five users have left to Instant Developer (I believe the most of them) and some have left to OutSystems, or other products. There is much quality out there. 

I could not agree more. It's so sad that so many are thrown away by Alpha, both long time customers and relatively new ones. Had they done as Marcel stated, they would not have sales problems. Maybe they have a top secret reason for going the current direction but there certainly isn't a logical common sense one. I know I will not try to sell any programs with Alpha, no matter the version. Why? Simple. I DO NOT TRUST THEM! I do respectfully disagree with Marcel about trust running away on a horse. I would say, at least for me, they took a modern mode of transportation. A rocket to far, far outer space and unless there is a major change of Alpha's ways, it will never be seen again. Hey Marcel, maybe they have a bad robot, programed for the 'darker side'. LOL

Well, obviously Alpha uses the services of marketing agencies that provide all kinds of scripts which they actually use.
Alpha seems to use SendGrid (sendgrid.com/email-marketing) and SendGrid describes their services as follows:


It's obvious that a bunch of data is collected from the moment you receive that e-mail. That, however, is not uncommon. In fact, it is the standard thing to do.
Almost all applications that send newsletters will do that, like for instance MailChimp which I used a lot in the past years. 
With those applications, you can exactly see who opened the e-mail, and who did not. Who clicked something, and who did not. And if someone clicked something, what it was and how long he looked there.
Stuff like that. Typically, the sender would also get information of the collective: how many sent, how many opened, how many bounced, these kind of data.