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Usability Dynamics has a rating of 3 stars from 3 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Usability Dynamics ranks 28th among Website Builder sites.
A previous developer purchased Denali for one specific feature - slideshow for their properties. I have since taken over the development and this is a very poorly documented product. I've muddled my way through things and now it suddenly stopped functioning yesterday. I submitted a request for help in the forum and now I can't even access our account. I have no way to contact anyone and their "technical support" option on the 800 number just says to use the forum. In the meantime I have a very unhappy client.
A previous developer purchased Denali for one specific feature - slideshow for their properties. I have since taken over the development and this is a very poorly documented product. I've muddled my way through things and now it suddenly stopped functioning yesterday. I submitted a request for help in the forum and now I can't even access our account. I have no way to contact anyone and their "technical support" option on the 800 number just says to use the forum. In the meantime I have a very unhappy client.
UsabilityDynamics.com, known for Wordpress Plugins such as WP-Property, WP-Invoice, WP-CRM and now The Denali Wordpress Theme.
I would probably recommend their plugins (if they worked consistently and fantastic customer service was available).
UsabilityDynamics, also offer further web services along with their product portfolio.
Now, my experience started with these guys when I first come across their plugin WP-Property and The Denali Theme. Which seemed fantastic value for money at the time, I payed just over 100 USD to UsabilityDynamics for The Denali Theme and licenses.
The Denali Theme, is ideal for estate agencies, property developers and so on. I wanted to make a few customisations to The Denali Theme, to adapt it to my companies colour scheme. I managed to get hold of the PSD after many emails back and forward, so I could make the changes in Photoshop before asking a web developer to apply these changes. The changes involved, colour scheme, font type and a few of the theme's user interface elements - which are very small modifications to make.
Meaning, many specialised Wordpress or even Web Development Agencies would not take such a small project on. Obviously, because there is not much in it for them in relation to the money - understandable...
It's why such websites like, Tweaky.com (Fantastic) and PeoplePerHour.com do quite well in this line of work. Tweaky, refers to the changes as 'Tweaks'.
Unfortunately, wasn't to come across such great websites until after my experience with UsabilityDynamics.com. So, I had my changes finished in a PSD (Photoshop Data File), I decided to write a message to UsabilityDynamics to see how much they would charge for my small modifications. They replied reasonably quick and provided me with the first quotation of 1,020.00 USD! Although, this was apparently a discount... As it should of been 1,200.00 USD...
After some negotiating by email, a lovely staff member reduced it down to 900.00 USD - How Kind...
If you have a reasonable amount of knowledge in this area, you are probably thinking surely this person is not going to accept.
Well, unfortunately I did. I wanted the work done to my site and I guessed surely the company that built this product would do the best job...
After a couple of weeks, I was sent the final outcome. For 900.00 USD! UsabilityDynamics had only made the changes to basically the Default Page (Home Page), half of the site was blue which I wanted the rest remained from the old colour scheme. UsabilityDynamics answer to this was:
"When it comes to making a PSD a skin the rule is simple: What you give us in the image file is what you get. We won't add compatibility for elements that do not appear."
Ah, of course. I forgot... Photoshop is very well know for building websites and adding all the elements in one simple programe...
So what this kind member of staff is saying, UsabilityDynamics over charge their customers and provide extremely bad customer service. For 900.00 USD, I payed for something a Secondary School Student could of done for about 20 USD.
Well actually, I found Tweaky.com a few weeks later from a recommendation and they completed the work for 120 USD (they started from the original files)...
Funny enough, a few weeks later. UsabilityDynamics, published an update for WP-Property and The Denali Theme which crashed everyone's sites which where using these products...
My experience, with these guys went on for a few months. It's hard to write everything in this review. The point is, I would not recommend UsabilityDynamics and jugging from there forum I'm probably not the only one. They will simply rip you off... Even to the stage where I would call it a scam. There are better companies and developers out there! Avoid UD at all expensive costs...
NOTE: PayPal do not cover service claims, unfortunately... The point is, it shouldn't of taken 26.5 hours... You never stated in the quote this time estimate, you quoted me a flat fee. You overcharged, regarding the end result you provided. It's very simple, I hope your future clients will not make the same mistake.
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Just wanted to provide some information from the perspective of the company. At the end of the day, even though we provided the services, won the PayPal claim, and had no legal requirement to do so - I still refunded him 30% of his original costs.
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Here is the last e-mail that I sent to Tom, that got no response.
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Tom,
I saw today that the PayPal claim you submitted was decided in our favor due to the fact that buyer protection doesn't cover intangible items. I wanted to include the text that I sent to PayPal, as I'm not sure if you were able to review what I submitted with regards to the issues that you were having with UD. Please review it if you haven't had a chance.
In the end, you still have all of the code delivered to you, and you can continue to use it. This is also the crux of the issue: you asked us for development work and then decided to find another provider - this is absolutely acceptable, of course, except the fact that we had already spent valuable man hours to deliver what we did. Yes, I admit that the issues you pointed out were valid, however, those were most likely oversights by the developer - not intentional shortcuts - which we would have taken care of at no additional cost to you. However, it appears we are past that point now.
Still, I would like to follow through on the offer of a 30% refund, even though at this point there is no legal reason why I would be required to do so. I'm sending the refund now. I encourage you to use what we built and continue with the other provider that you found, and I wish you the best of luck.
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Here was the response I sent on PayPal:
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Tom, I apologize that you've felt the need to take this route to request a refund. We feel that the services that were rendered were adequate to the amount of money that was paid. You requested a custom color theme, which you provided via PSD - the items that you pointed out that weren't complete weren't even in the PSD. Also, we gave you 15 days to point out items that weren't completed to satisfaction that we would fix at no additional charge. Instead of using this opportunity, you came back after 20 days disparaging our work and requesting this refund - with no room for negotiation. We spent 26.5 hours on this project, and charged you for 9. We put together a custom child theme with over 850 lines of custom code and style changes. This equates to roughly 100 lines of code per hour charged - which is not a bad rate at all. Also, we even developed functionality that was outside of the color scheme change. In the end, you contracted us to provide you with some custom work. We have time reports and the code that was delivered is in version control - meaning that there are detailed resources that we can use to prove our claim. I'm willing of offer a 30% refund of $300. However, the $800 refund is simply not acceptable, as we will have worked for less than $4 an hour. Considering that we typically charge $100 an hour, what we're offering is significantly less than what we normally charge. In the end, the majority of the work was done to spec (excepting the issues you pointed out, that we never had a chance to remedy) and the code was delivered as promised. You've already stated in e-mails that you've found another contractor that was willing to do it cheaper - but the fact is we already spent the time and completed the work - and that is something that can't be disputed. If 30% is not acceptable, then we'll have to let PayPal settle the issue.