Updated HyperOffice review.
I recently discovered that I made at least one major and critical mistake in my review of HyperOffice. It turns out that the sales rep did not drop the ball as I stated. The transition to support was done completely by email and I failed to keep on top of my email for that. Let’s just say that was definitely an "egg on my face" oversight on my part. Man, I don’t like egg on my face. LOL
I did some further research and found out some other things about HyperOffice I got wrong. While I pride myself on doing thorough research, as I’ve mentioned in the past I’m human and I do get things wrong from time to time.
One of the other big things I didn’t know that is important to me personally is that HyperOffice is now Mac Compatible! It’s nice to see a company paying attention to the growing Mac marketshare.
I’m going to see if I can at least get some sort of list of current features/benefits or some sort of press-release from HyperOffice to put up while I work on updating my review as I need to doublecheck a lot of the facts I had been gathering.
Stay tuned. 
We have just started to use hyperoffice again. Hyperoffice now has a self-publishing feature that needs to be marketed to the public because it is really quite amazing. I was able to competely revamp our hyperoffice menu and really make it easy to use.
This self publishing feature gives the user a freedom to get rid of all the menu buttons in hyperoffice which makes the interface confusing to the non techies. Using my background in bulletin boards, I was able to create an aol like feel. Sorry but it is a private network so cant be viewed privately.
I hear you Michael. I really screwed up my initial review because apparently HyperOffice came out with a lot of great new features I wasn’t aware of over the past months.
The problem is I had started ignoring all their emails and not logging in at all.
The fact that HyperOffice’s HyperDrive is now Mac Compatible is no small matter either as a lot of people are migrating to the Mac from the PC.
Plus I’ve been learning a bit about their IPhone integration which is going to be incredibly useful as a significantly less expensive alternative (not to mention easier-to-manage) to Microsoft Exchange.
But the thing that has me really excited and likely looking at HyperOffice seriously once again is the completely new interface that they’ve been working on that I believe will be launched close to the end of the year.
Wow. I’m glad I found this blog. The other reviews I stumbled on were so old.
I had no idea that HyperOffice was even really in the game any more.
We were looking at WebOffice. Can anyone tell me how HyperOffice might
compare to WebOffice?
The interface is much nicer making it appear that Hyperoffice is more advanced, but the databases features of Webex Workspace are far superior in both function, integration and convenience. It is too bad that Webex stopped developing Workspaces or they would be the “Google” of the WebOffice game. Hyperoffice is likely destined to be the “Excite” or “Lycos”.
Andrew, sorry it’s been so long since you posted. I know someone who’s used Web Office. I’ll see if they’re still using it.
But from I understand HyperOffice is going to be coming out with an interface that blows the current one out of the water and I’m betting a lot of the other collaboration tools’ interfaces out of the water as well.
One thing to keep in mind about a company that’s been a pioneer in an industry as HyperOffice has is that there’s often a cultural mindset within the company that continues to drive innovative and useful developments.
You can read about some of the major influencers in web development that have come out of the HyperOffice company at Wikipedia here.
Wait a minute . . .
HyperOffice is not Mac compatible. Try to write an email and there is no way to change a font, underline, etc. without having to sync with Outlook. Oh, and by the way, it does not Sync with Entourage.
Do your homework!
Watch out fot the auto renewal. I was told that whatever portion of the service in months that I did not use after paying annualy would be refunded. Not so.
Don’t know much about Weboffice, but I paid Hyperoffice in full for a five user license for a year, and then discovered later that day that my web server already came with a full office suite. Being that this was on a Friday I called them first thing the following Monday and now 7 weeks later after a big run around and a lot of doging they are refusing to give me a refund. I made a simple mistake, but these guys apparently couldn’t care less. BAD BUSINESS.
BEWARE
I had a terrible time with HyperOffice. When I signed in the beginning of ’08, I paid for a year in advance to get the “discount”. Then, this year, they again billed me for a year in advance.
I cancelled the service right after the 1 year timeframe (before the charge hit my bill, but after they had processed it). I tried to get them to give me a refund (minus one month’s fee), but they wouldn’t even talk to me. I’ve now filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau, but I haven’t heard from them yet.
In theory, the product is excellent. For me, the ability to pull my old e-mail in and link them to the individual clients was the main hook. The interface is much easier than with the other products that I investigated.
However, my e-mail really dragged when I started using the HyperOffice. Then when I got a new computer with Vista, I started having more issues. My e-mail started locking up. When I called the support guys at HyperOffice, I was told that it wasn’t there product that was causing the problem. But, now that I no longer have the HyperOffice installed, my e-mail works great.
I will never again sign up for any product of this type without checking for customer reviews. I was stressed when I signed up for this because I had just partnered with another real estate agent. I wanted her to have access to my e-mail archive while I was out-of-town. Hyperoffice seemed like the perfect answer. Unfortunately, my partner never really used it, so in effect, we wasted the first year’s fee as well.
Hyperoffice is a total scam. The company misrepresented their price & product to our business last year. It has been a nightmare to deal with this business!
Susan,
I’ve been using the free version of ClockingIt.com and it’s been perfect for what I do.
I started using WebOffice back in 2005, when it was Intranets.com (before being purchased by cysco and then Webex) because of its online relational database tool.
After reading Database Design for Mere Mortals®: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design during a vacation trip to Greece, I returned to build databases to track all aspects of three small businesses I manage in healthcare and real estate sectors. The WebOffice database tool is top-notch, easy and has saved us $$$$ in IT investment and operation costs.
Hi,
I am Pankaj, and I represent HyperOffice, and would like to address some of Susan’s complaints.
Dear Susan,
In our terms of service, it is clearly stated in bold (in fact that’s the only part that is bolded)(http://www.hyperoffice.com/terms-of-use/), that there would be an automatic renewal in case the contract is not terminated. This is standard practice in the industry, and has been put in place because it would be tremendously ineffective for us to keep track of every account, considering the huge number of accounts we have to manage.
As far as the email issue is concerned, out product and plugins have been extensively tested over the close to 10 years we have gradually built it out. I realize it is natural for you to assume that the slowness of your email may have been caused by a new service you have subscribed for, but this is not a problem which has been encountered by thousands and thousands of others HyperOffice users, using the same system as you. Otherwise, it is only for our benefit that all bugs be repaired, as we earn business not by making a one time sale, but keeping our customers happy on an ongoing basis. We pride ourselves at the quality of our service, and rather than just our product, we consider the complete service/product package to be our strength.
Pankaj
I was not surprised to see the HyperOffice rep pop up here, and especially respond to customer criticism with quoting the HyperOffice bible. That’s how the system works. They hype the product and tell you it has every feature you are looking for. If you don’t see the feature, ‘after our training you will understand’. Everything is a ploy to pull you along. Yes the auto renew is a scary feature (which nobody tells you about when you buy it, but of course it’s there, buried in the terms section).
In short, I signed up for HyperBase, the HyperOffice database. It didn’t work. Bugs popped up everywhere. Customer service just quoted the user manual. After a few days, I canceled my account (I didn’t get any email confirmation of the cancellation, so I made sure to write to the billing department to get the proof and avoid the auto renew).
Only when I canceled did I start getting attention.
First response: We saw you encountered some bugs, don’t worry because next week we have an upgraded version available that will address all these issues.
Really? How convenient. No thank you, I don’t want to be strung along any further. I needed a database solution. During the entire review process prior to purchase I was presented and explained that this had all the features that I needed and worked like I expected. Was I assuming too much that it shouldn’t be buggy.
I quickly found an alternative that works great. It doesn’t have auto-renewal issues, has a full operational trial version, allows you to pay by the month (not a min. 1 year account), and has a great forum and Twitter access for support.
Avoid the headache and losses I went through, and skip HyperOffice.
Martin,
I did not respond to the post from the HyperOffice representative. It’s just total BS, and not worthy of my time.
I would never have posted my comments, which I guess might be helpful for folks who consider this product in the future, if the Hyperoffice folks had just not charged me for a year in advance. Or, if they had been more response regarding this charge.
I would have just walked away and chalked this up to a poor purchase decision on my part. I’ve made them before and will likely make them again. In this case, I did do a LOT of research before I chose HyperOffice, so the whole experience was very costly in terms of my time.
I’m still searching for the right product. Did you find something else that works well for you?
Hi Susan,
I would never have expected you to respond to the rep.
I agree with everything you say. I also would not be posting comments here, if the Hyperoffice people had just accepted that their product didn’t work, even though I gave it a fair chance, and just refunded my money (or even most of my money) when I canceled the account (which I did within a week).
I too would have just walked away like you. I also did a months of research and was in touch with Hyperoffice many times to confirm the feature set, and functionality. I understand and empathize to your experience.
After HyperOffice, I found another online database system which met our needs perfectly. It was very intuitive to use, and I had the database up and running while still on the TRIAL VERSION! The terms were just $40/month, pay as you go, and you can cancel ANYTIME. They have a great forum and are active on Twitter for support. This service is called Caspio (www.caspio.com).
Good luck with your search, and believe me, I really understand your experience.
Just spent 5 hours of my work life taking everything off of Hyper Office, must of it trying to navigate around the bulky system because it would not let me directly download my files from the virtual hard drive. It is slow, non responsive and throws random files in the folders that will mess up trying to download them.
I have nothing good to say at this point about Hyper Office.
To express my concern I have even put all my stuff on Microsoft Live because I am sick of wanna be little companies that over promise and cannot deliver at all. On top of that my sales rep told me the email campaign was able to be linked to hyper office – wrong – it is overpriced and bulky and does not work to save your life.
Save yourself the over the top fee’s and the lack of product development and find another option – this is a HUGE waste of time and money.
I can’t calculate the time I wasted with HyperOffice. It totally bogged down my computer. I was kept trying to stick with it because the concept is great. But, my e-mail crashed so many times. I have a big database… lots of contacts and e-mails. I went with this product because it allows you to link old e-mails to clients. The other products that I looked at didn’t have a good way to do this. I probably spent 30-40 hours getting the Hyperoffice up to speed in the beginning. I plugged along with it for about a year before I gave up.
You just have to love reviews. I want to thank all of the reviewers above. After reading, I will keep looking for a product that will fit my business needs.
Thanks to all of you for your comments. I’m sorry some of you lost money, but you have just saved me, as a small business, lots of money and lots of time. I’ll keep looking.
Ditto on the previous posters. Thank you for sharing and saving me time as well.
Wow, I had a close call. I was talking to one of the “partner/owners” at hyperoffice, and his representations and explanation just didn’t “smell” right. Thank goodness I didn’t sign up. I think they are full of it over there.
@Mike Regan: Here is something most people might find interesting as well:
This site: Online Document Sharing Reviews reaches the “verdict” that HyperOffice is great if you are a:
At first I thought it was an independent, third party review, until I checked the whois information and found this:
“Registration Service Provided By: application corporation
Contact:
Visit: http://www.hyperoffice.com
Domain name: onlinedocumentsharingreviews.com
Administrative Contact:
application corporation
farzin arsanjani ()
+1.3012550018
Fax:
6101 Executive Blvd.
Suite 115
Rockville, MD 20852
US”
…which is the actual address of HyperOffice:
“Corporate Headquarters
6101 Executive Blvd. #115
Rockville, Maryland 20852
USA”
Traditionally the FTC has required this type of “review” to be labeled as an Advertorial.
Now, keep that in mind when you read a page like this: HyperOffice Adds Full Document Search Capability where the blog states:
“This new feature gives HyperOffice the distinction of being the only suite in its arena to offer full document search capabilities for no additional charges, and as part of their basic offering. Competitors like WebOffice and CentralDesktop offer this feature only as part of their more expensive “enterprise” offerings.
In addition, they have added a new version of their intranet and extranet site publisher. And boy was i blown away!! It is a simple drag and drop ajax based publisher tool, and all you need to do is drop and drop elements (text boxes, collaboration modules, images, HTML code, other code etc etc etc) wherever you like on a page and press publish. Having done considerable research on online web page designers and publishers, i found this tool to be the easiest and most flexible tool I have seen, outdoing even full fledged website designers.”
Once again, referring to the review site I mentioned above where HyperOffice isn’t transparently disclosing that they are the owner of the review site, they may want to make special note of this recent FTC case:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/technology/27ftc.html
Hello! Any updates about weboffice or hyperoffice???? I just found them on the web and they both look amazing.. but now I have doubts about trying them after all I read here.. =S
I want and NEED to chime in on this discussion about HyperOffice and HyperCampaign. We also were totally scammed by them. We signed up for a year service in November 2009, and yes, there was that fine print that you would be charged yearly, period. Well, they promised us that within the next three months our HyperCampaign would be fully integrated with HyperOffice. Wrong! Never happened. So when September rolled around, they mailed us an invoice, saying to pay it by November 15th. We knew we didn’t want their service anymore, so we moved all our data off there and were prepared to chalk it up to a bad experience. Like others have said, it happens.
However, then November 23, 2010 hit, and lo and behold our card was automatically charged! So why did they bill, no mention on the bill that if you don’t pay this bill you will be charged anyway? I immediately called the company, had to leave message after message, and finally got an e-mail response saying, sorry, no go.
We are a small nonprofit…and I consider this a blatant theft of our donor money. So I repeatedly called and tried to speak to someone ‘higher up.’ No go.
Also, they charged us on November 23, but the HyperCampaign says it runs through November 29th. So I did a screen capture, making SURE I cancelled by the end date, and still no go.
Then I reported it as a fraudulent charge on our card. They won because they pulled out the paper I’d signed in 2009 giving them the right to charge us ad infinitum unless we exclusively cancel through their site.
I am thoroughly disgusted. I too would have chalked it up to a company that needs to put it’s money where it’s mouth is in terms of service if they hadn’t treated us so badly and refused to return our money. I will trumpet the BEWARE OF HYPERCAMPAIGN AND HYPEROFFICE warning far and wide. To employ such poor business practices in the age of the internet is a very bad business move.
I wonder if anyone is interested in some kind of class action suite against them or something? Really poor behavior on their part.
We have only been using HyperOffice for about a month and have had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS, most of them fairly major; and we keep hearing that it is “just a fluke”. BS.
Are there any good comments about HyperOffice? We are looking for references. How does this product compare to Microsoft Office 365?
Thanks
Hi Bob,
Don’t touch HyperOffice. You will regret it. Define what your needs are (database or customer management). HyperOffice is a lot of hype, with a lot of small print in their terms. In the end you will not achieve what you are looking for.
Martin
What can you tell me about http://www.zoho.com/creator/ is it good??? And what other customer menagemnt or ERP online (free) would you recommed??? Thanks
I LOVE my HyperOffice. Our studio has used them for 6 years. I am amazed that so many people BITCH about them… Yes, if you don’t cancel your account, they bill you. Hellooooo!?! Does your AT&T or Verizon do otherwise? If you don’t know how to run a business, don’t BITCH about HyperOffice.
It is great, from email to documents, contacts and their cool Publisher, man, can’t complain about the price either. And, WE ARE ALL ON MAC Computers and iPhones too. No problems there either! The speed could be improved when I’m not in North America, but hey, I’m not complaining!
As an ex-hyperoffice employee I have to admit that the whole product itself truly sucks. Hypershare is a program developed by Iranians (in Iran) who don’t really understand how Americans use Outlook. Their web apps are full of bugs and it’s impossible for the developer team to fix them all (hyperoffice is a very small company about 25 -30 people). Their cold-fusion web servers were constantly hang (if too many people were using the service at same time), and the support techs were instructed to lie to the customers when the web servers were rebooted.
“Your session expire has nothing to do with our end, please check your network; did you enable the meta refresh in your IE ?? It’s the cause of your session expire…”
Hyper Campaign and Hyper meeting are re-branded 3rd party service, Hyperoffice didn’t develop any of them, therefore it’s really hard for customers to get real support when they are not working.
PS. The last post was written by the wife of one of Hyperoffice’s executives, of course she loves HyperOffice, it pays all her bills.
Do NOT purchase HyperOffice for a Mac Environment!
Quite simply, Hyperoffice does not function in a Mac environment. Don’t be enticed by their endless promises. We spent almost a year and a half of a three year contract (prepaid in full to get a discounted rate) attempting to get the promised functionalities working. Many if not most were never achieved. In retrospect, we are now out several thousand dollars together with the value of countless hours lost in frustration attempting to run an efficient business utilizing this “efficiency” tool. Support personnel were well intentioned, but clearly could not follow through on promises made by the sales side. All efforts at reaching a reasonable resolution to get some of our money back were met with a stunning and total silence. DO NOT BUY HYPEROFFICE!
Thanks for that update, Joe.
I really thought they would change…apparently not. I think they have so much competition now that they are in a losing battle for the long term based on the feedback I’m seeing here.