Version 6.3 was released. No upgrade path is offered for recently purchased versions of the B2B version, and they do not yet have a B2B version.

More importantly, they are now charging on a yearly subscription instead of a lifetime fee. And they are charging $99 for the version that used to be free. A huge percentage of their most ardent defenders will be dropping off the CRE map.

The bug reports are starting to flood in as well. Obvious things. This makes one wonder how well they tested it before greed got the better of them and they decided to release it in the paid version.

We’ve noticed other changes lately also, which speak ill of the company.

1. They put a merchant account signup into the install process. They made it look like part of the install process, with just a very tiny “skip this” link at the bottom. I don’t have a problem with them monetizing things, but this is deceptive. If you fill it out, it doesn’t help you anyway, it just results in a sales call a month or so later.

2. They now sell templates from the inside of the design area in the system. The company that sells them is obscured, it uses an affiliate link and a generic URL, with private registration. It also offers an “exclusive license” with no reports on who else has purchased the template first – so the word “exclusive” is misleading and dishonest.

Add that to lackadasical development, and you come up with a picture of a company that I want to do business with less and less.

Up to this point, we have used and recommended CRE because of the available Open Source carts, it is the simplest to configure, and the most sustainable. It isn’t by any means close to what is really needed, but at least it can be maintained without costing the businses owner a fortune in custom file alterations each time an upgrade has to be done (can you say “Cube Cart”), and without something as clunky as Zen cart’s unintuitive setup and template overrides (which still have to be hand edited if an update includes any of those files).

Sad to see something with some potential go this way.

Note: The opinions expressed in this post are the perceptions of the writer, and should not be interpreted or quoted as fact without corroborrating evidence.