The New Softr Is Worrisome

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1

I just checked out the new softr update. And I have to say as a Business user that spends over 3k a year on softr I’m slightly worried.

I totally hope it’s just me and that I either don’t know how to use it/find things but the new version seems a dumbed down version of the legacy.

The first thing that hit me is the sign up & account settings tabs
I can’t seem to find a way how to make the sign up contain exactly what fields I want as for account settings seems I’m stuck with 1 type for all users.

I have different types of users that need different types of Sign Ups forms and different types of editing of their details.

Then when it comes to header bar I can’t pick the color I want for text, bar itself and other things. I seem to be able to toggle just between 3 patterns (based on overall style)

That’s just what I could find within a short time. I really hope someone just tells me how bad I’m at softr cause if this is the direction softr is going it makes any platform that dosen’t have 1 single type of users impossible. Which would force me to seek other more viable solutions.

In this format I don’t see the utility beyond using it for a blog. Even If you have a simple shop you need 2 types of users 1 costumer 2 manager. And that’s as basic as it gets.

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Thanks for the review Armando. I am in the same boat, except much longer with Softr. The biggest critisicm on the internet is about the lack of customization. So I don’t see how reducing the number of sign up fields and navigation styling options addresses this sentiment.

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I understand your concern.

What you’re describing isn’t just a first impression — it’s an accurate reflection of the current state of things.

Softr has significantly reduced customization and flexibility in both the sign-in/up workflow and the navigation system. This seems to be part of internal objectives or a shift in direction, though unfortunately, these changes haven’t been clearly communicated to users.

I totally get your frustration.

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Biggest Frustration is that I just dropped over 3k for a yearly subscription renewal last month and then we get this.

Not only that but I honestly want their product to succeed and moving myself away is not in my best interest, I spent over a year doing design here.

But their product manager or whomever took that decision is way off, the difference in esthetics is minimal to non existent, maybe some under the hood improvements but the legacy options were great. Cutting them off equals cutting valuable business plan or enterprise customers.

A customer that needs only 1 type of user, for a blog or something similar won’t need to pay the higher plans and frankly there are cheaper or free solutions for such simple platforms. The idea of no code niche is specifically for customers that need/want to create something above basic without coding to much or at all. As a business owner I’m almost shocked that someone had this “idea” and even put it on the table with a straight face.

If they wanted to improve their product they could have easily go towards push notifications (used in almost every type of build) and for styling more options such as either custom code support for styling directly per buttons or let’s say gradients. I can give like 5 important features from the top of my head that everyone would have loved and translated in more customers and dumbing down/restricting your customers isn’t one of them.

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Might be the time to jump boat, not that this cannot be steered in the right way but if a product manager was able to convince everyone and this was their idea then I’m just worried about the whole thing. Anyone can see this is a bad direction from a mile away, at least if you want customers that pay business plans and above.

I get that free users with a blog or something small might be okay with this but the moment you want to build anything you can’t have 1 user group only. That’s ridiculous

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Hey @armandonikol,

Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback — it helps us build a better product!

I hear you on the sign-up being too limiting right now. I can suggest some workarounds to help with collecting more info at signup and onboarding for different user types if you’d like?
Otherwise, we’re actually building a more official “onboarding block” that will make this process a lot easier and more flexible, and it should be released this quarter.

For your other note re. the account settings block, you can add additional user fields now (in case you didn’t know this)? Let me know if there is any confusion there.

For the limited nav bar colors, you can alter this using custom code if you’d looking for a more stylized / custom look. Just let me know if you’d like that code and I can respond with it.

Again, I appreciate you sharing all this, and I’ll pass your feedback along to the team so we can keep improving.

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Hey @Jjenglert and @artur. This is why I suggested extra sign up fields in the first place. Pretty reasonable, considering they were on legacy sign-up blocks already.

This will have to occur after sign up, adding extra onboarding steps for users. These flows add another step to onboarding which is unnecessary when extra fields at sign up capture user credentials that can send them to the appropriate page immediately based on their pre-defined user group.

This seems like an oversight, especially for builders who consider native navigation styling a legacy feature. This shouldn’t take a custom code, so please add background, link, and button color/size options back to navigation styling.

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Originally I made at my platform the sign up to be a job application form, on confirmation the user was pre Approved user, then he would receive a succes mail and once he was in all he had to do with 1 button download a working contract, then reupload it signed which switched him to role of full crew with full rights.

I basically streamlined whole recruitment/hr process making it literally 1 signup and 2 buttons for a user to be in the app with full rights. It’s a total hit from what feedback I got.

Yet the new blocks try to force you to make a million steps when the idea is to make it more simple especially when people nowadays have significantly shorter attention spawns.

I really wanna meet the “product manager” from softr, he can be glad he dosen’t work at my company :joy:

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Hi @ArmandoNikol, thanks for the feedback we will be adding steps to signup to improve the onboarding flow… If someone would be building the flow you described there are still options like starting from Form first and then creating user via automation or the other way around create a user with simple form then navigate to onboarding form… the later one is the most common approach… we are still going to improve those flows and we know that for certain scenarios we still have work to do here

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That’s exactly what we are doing, what @artur suggested. That is we are not even using the sign-up block, but using a form with a hook up to automation that creates the Softr user. This gives us all the flexibility we need.

With that said, I am worried that the users are reporting limited customization capabilities. I’ve seen the same trend with newer blocks missing styling options that older blocks had and the whole styling design system being dumbified. If Softr is taking the route of less customization (which it didn’t have that many customizations to begin with) than I am, too, worried about the product direction. More customizations, please, not less. :slight_smile:

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Glad to hear you found a solution, @bbelo—and your feedback around customization is noted.

@ArmandoNikol, we hear your concerns and appreciate the passion you bring. That said, threatening our team over product decisions isn’t acceptable. This platform serves over 700,000 builders, and we make decisions with the broader community in mind. We’re always open to constructive feedback, but ask that it be shared respectfully.

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@bbelo now we are trying hard to follow UX best practices so that you and others as builders don’t have to figure out… we go and check 10+ most common design systems, 100s of apps in different contexts… and pick what’s common. In some places we take out flexibility but also add what’s very common… always happy to discuss though specific examples and see if we need to improve

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Thanks, @artur
That’s another thing that I’d to compliment Softr on, wherever the platform lacks customizations out of the box, Softr support, @Jjenglert, @artur, et al, have been very helpful in finding a custom code solution to make things work. Sometimes it’s a bit of a longer road, but rarely have I found myself left in the cold with a missing feature. So, we as a community of users should take a moment to appreciate that.

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Nobody threatened anyone, I am not sure were you got that one from. I am genuinely curious what was the logic behind the product development that’s what I meant. Because from my perspective it makes very little sense.

As a company, while you are obviously servicing everyone the goal is to increase revenue aka get paid plans. Someone that pays for the plan needs either more options or more traffic to put it in very simple terms. Simplifying the options to the point you limit to 1 active user type by settings/ sign up and forcing the customer to find work arounds is exactly against the whole selling point of a no code builder.

Not to speak of the logic. If you leave the option in, the ones that don’t need it won’t leave or object. If you take it away the ones that need it don’t have it.

Initially I was frustrated but now I’m more towards being amused in the sense that I see it as a gross mistake in overall product development.

That’s all, there were no threats but more like a joke, if my product manager came with an idea that is straight up against the selling point of my product I would probably gift him an empty box. :grimacing:

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@artur, these workarounds can’t take advantage of Softr’s new sign-up authentication which was the biggest improvement this year. Had a feeling migration wouldn’t be frictionless.

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I suppose the expectation was that the minimum level of existing functionality, even beyond the nuance of adding custom fields and form options is that the customizations for UI elements would also be available.

Also, in the context of the Auth Flow migrations, the migration tool was asking me to remove the old authentication blocks from pages but yet Softr created new pages. I suppose a better migration feature would have been to map a new authentication page to a prior page. My auth setup was out of the box so it should have been a no-brainer.

It was a poor migration experience to 1. have to delete objects no longer supported and keep blank pages; and then 2. to have to go delete or rename those pages before going and updating the new auth page names and /URL settings throughout my application. I’d have rather you stepped me through each auth page, asking how to map them after taking a best guess, and then pulling names and urls from old auth pages for me to confirm/edit and then just delete the old pages for me.

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Hey @Jjenglert

Thanks for your replies to everyones concerns but I hope you wont mind me adding my voice to these concerens which are, certainly in my case, very real.

I have experienced all the issues raised in all these posts. I have raised many of them with your support team whom, I think, got a bit fed up with me banging on about them. But there are so many more extremely basic fundementals that no longer work when new features or blocks are released. The feeling I get is they are rolled out quickly and largely untested in the real world.

Just one example, the new table block that was released had so many issues to start with it was virtually unseable. The pageination functions simply did not work and for weeks I was unable to show data. They did finally fix it and those options are good, but it find it unbelievable that it was released the first time the way it was - and even more unbelievable it took nearly a month of me spending many hours talking to your support team explaining the problem.

By way of other examples on the new Table block - you cannot position column data left/centre/right. With currency data my table looks a complete mess with nothing aligning up easily to the users eye. Sizing of the columns is limited. The smallest column size still leaves a large blank ‘waste of space’ when the data within is small. Text size - now only small medium large. This is is not enough when you have tables where I am trying to squeeze in a lot of columns.

All these features were staples on the old style table block. The new table block has some good additions, but at a cost of the old ones being left out. Worst still - if I upgrade my app to the new version, I can then no longer even add an old style blocks if those older features are imprative (although I am told there may be some quirky workaround for that but I am still not sure what that is)

New Style Calender blocks - colours are no longer suported. I was told this would be “introduced” by the end of the week (when raised a month ago) but I still dont think they are. Anyway, I have gone back to my old calender blocks now.

And as for the term “no code”. hmmmm :thinking: At the start of using Softr I would have agreed with that mostly. Then as time has gone on I would rephrase that to “a bit of code” and now with these new release not working well it is emphatically “A lot of code just to make it work”. Not a great look Softr.

I could go on…

I like Soft and its concept and very much want it to work like all your other users here. But at 3k a year this needs to get a lot better and a lot faster. I suggest you forget the Full Stack ambition for the time being and get the basics right first. I have a suspician that give the track record of everything even if the full stack is released (it’s already moved on 3 months over its first promised date I was given) it is going to be so buggy or limited people will be reluctant to use it, at least at first. Certianly that will be the case for me.

BTW, your support team are really good and none of this is a knock at them. They can only work with what they have, but increasingly lately their answers have been " that feature was dropped as a decision".

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You’re not the only one! I DO NOT like the new version.
I cannot customize the sigin/sign-out forms the way I use to…

I cannot customize the fonts or color background in specific blocks anymore…

I cannot add a custom logos or images to certain blocks (e.g sign-in form) The logo is universal and doesn’t apply to my use-cases…

I cannot change fonts/colors as easily as before…
I’m doing more custom code for a ‘no-code’ platform.

You’re not alone - it’s not worrisome… it’s TROUBLING!

AHA

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@Vera_the_cat sorry to hear you had trouble with tables.
Our approach is to release early and iterate and for the same reason we kept the old table there long enough so that both could be used… It takes time to tune all the features based on user feedback and trial and error…
We are hearing your requests and we are doing our best to implement them as long as they fit into broader decision scopes… Some improvements will continuously be released…

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@alimhali can you share a bit more context about multiple logos and multiple fonts use case ?

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