Most of us understand the need to respond in some way to all the negative postings. And I'm sure the Boonex team is working hard to resolve issues that are generating such negative comments. Thank you.

You mention 'free' and 'we do not force you to download our products' as part of your response to comments. Perspective, as we know, is important. Free is never free. Total cost of ownership is not the price of the software loaded onto a server somewhere. Rather one must consider direct costs see more such as support to keep an enterprise level site up and running at all times, the cost of the host site willing to support the application(s) and then the indirect costs which have the most impact for me:

*Inability to recruit paying members - One can only estimate the $ loss based on how many people never join. 1k people, 5k, 10k?

*Likelyhood of losing existing customers who help fund your income through membership dues and/or pay per click ads you have posted.

*Advertising spend used to drive customers to your site to recruit them and/or use pay per click ads.

*And for me, I was to use my site as a main source of income and since it is not generating any revenue. If I consider I could have been working for someone collecting income, I count that as cost of ownership using the SmartPro package - a significant amount.

I think I have a great opportunity make great money based on a social community site. So much so that back in July '07 I hired a programmer to help build it using .NET. After 6 months we were still not code complete and I paid him a lot of money. In Jan I happened upon the sales verbiage of Dolphin and after reviewing, thought that most of the features I wanted via my .NET version was already built and I simply needed to tweak things here and there.

As a result, I canned the .NET project and cut my losses and purchased the SmartPro pack. The 6.0 version loaded and things seemed to be going good although there were custom changes that were extensive and was advised to hold out for 6.1 which would address many of the custom requests I had. I really couldn't wait because I needed a working site yet I had too because 6.0 didn't fit the business model I need in place to sell spots on my site.

So here it is deep into May and I still do not have a working site. I have been living off of my advertising budget to promote my site and almost through that, meaning I will have to try and get a full time job to pay for my house, car and food on the table.

With all the comments I read now, I suppose it was foolish of me to invest time (waiting) and money into this type of model. I wanted a site that would scale out with 5k to 10k current members at any given time, recruiting new ones to replace those lost through attrition.

Again, thank you for the hard work you and the entire Boonex team is doing. That is not what is in question. The passion around the negative comments posted all over comes from the direct impact these issues caused or are creating for people who look for a business level application that is beyond just a bunch of code bits.

One parting note, think about as busy as you are and all the things you need to get done, your computers keep going down. Not just one, but several have power supply problems or something that keeps them down for several days at a time until they are up and running. How does that impact your work? It's a similiar experience to a business who has a site that is not working properly. And not working properly includes ad links (we don't want customers to see they can start their own social networking site - it devalues our own site, or having records completely disappear after an upgrade). Speaking of which, now I question if I should build my site on 6.1 because when 6.2 comes out, I'll have problems that could border on disastoruous.

Having said all of this, I do think you have the basis of a great software application and perhaps it's just timing for me that I am introduced to it in times of growing pains. I appreciate again the work the team has done. But as in life, it doesn't take many negative things to really tarnish an otherwise good reputation.

Right or wrong, I'm going to put in a little more time with this product. Now I'm worried about how to promote it locally as I had originally planned even when/if I get it working like I want it too.

Haha, I'm pretty laid back but I do need some money. I'll be there to praise when things are working - promise. :)

I would like to see a list of websites based on Dolphin beyond small ones that may have 10 or 50 or even less than 1k members. I was told it will scale to over 1k easily and more. Can you provide some large sites using Boonex technology? Would enjoy seeing how others are using it on a larger scale.

-G