Great potential held back by workflow-breaking bugs
Hello everyone,
I’ve been testing FluentCart Free on a $7 DigitalOcean VPS, and honestly, I’m impressed. Everything runs fast, smooth, and without hiccups. Even the database structure looks clean and well-organized. If the developer keeps polishing things and maybe takes a little inspiration from Shopify’s approach to dynamic meta fields and important shopify functions, like ordertracking etc. FluentCart could grow into a genuinely efficient and appealing open-source alternative to Shopify.
Now for the part that’s a bit less cheerful.
I’m preparing two new shops: one to slowly migrate away from Shopify, and another brand-new one. I also planned to bring a few friends onto FluentCart so I could justify purchasing the larger LTD plan and eventually migrate their WooCommerce and Shopify sites. But that plan hit a wall because of a few persistent bugs.
The biggest problem right now: product images disconnect whenever a product is re-saved. It’s been reported multiple times on this forum, it’s highly frustrating, and it still isn’t patched. We’re almost a month past release, and for something that’s officially out of Beta, this kind of workflow-breaking issue shouldn’t linger.
I understand the team prefers releasing larger updates that bundle new features and multiple fixes at once. That’s perfectly fine for normal development cycles.
But small hotfixes for critical bugs would go a long way. Users actively working with FluentCart need stability right now, not weeks later. Slow patches discourage people who want to adopt the platform or promote it to others, which ultimately hurts both current users and the Fluent team itself.
So here’s my question to the community: how do you all feel about the current patch policy? Is the slower hotfix approach workable for you, or does it get in the way?
To the developer: you’ve built something genuinely promising. The structure is solid, the performance is great, and the potential is huge. A bit more responsiveness on the patching side would make the whole experience shine even brighter. Looking forward to seeing where you take FluentCart next.
Thanks for the feedback. The issue is already fixed in the dev branch and we will have a major release early next week.
Yeah, I'd definitely prefer smaller bugfix and patch releases in between as soon as those bugs have been identified and fixed. They did it for a coupon related issue.
F. C. +1. Took far! to long. This should had a hotfix.
Very well stated. Some of these workflow-crippling issues are also potential stop errors. I know I've put off publicly launching products because I can't be confident the user experience won't have issues that will reflect negatively on me. When you're talking about a tool that helps people sell things, you're also building a tool that has a direct impact on the shop owner's reputation and their relationship with current, and potential, customers. Small issues have broad consequences.
Also, when users report issues, it would be great to not have the response be along the lines of, "you did it wrong," which I've personally seen at least once in my own comments threads, and a few times with other posts. There's a certain tone that could be construed as playful at best, or smarmy and condescending at worst. Either way, it may not be the best approach for support staff to take.
I think FluentCart, and especially FluentCRM, are excellent ideas that could be life-changing for many WordPress-using small businesses. I look forward to being able to actively promote these, and WP Manage Ninja as a company, to my community.
I would much rather see stop-errors plugged with little updates every few days than to have to wait weeks for them to be bundled with feature improvements. Let's get this thing to the stage where the most basic things simply work... then start adding bells and whistles.