Mar 26 2008
ForumsFirst
ForumsFirst offered a quite generous trial I thought so I took that, their forum looked pretty active as well which I took as a good initial sign.
Price.
Well they range from $13.00 (34 cents per post) up to $600.00 (28 cents per post), so the larger the package the better. The range of package sizes was also appealing for forum and blog commenting
Score 6/10
Communication.
Excellent, I ordered my package and within two hours I had a confirmation mail, with instructions as to how to login to a ‘client panel’. I raised a bogus query in-case the reply was automated and again within a few minutes I had my reply. When my trial finished I also received a closure email
Score 9/10
Quality.
The quality was good and I’m pretty sure the folk who worked on my site were native English speakers, all the threads and replies we as promised a minimum of 25 words. A couple were much longer
Score 8/10
Numbers of Staff.
Hard to tell when ordering a trial package, but judging by how active the forum is and the scale of the packages and the number of registered that can be supplied there must be quite a few
Score 7/10
Discount.
On completion the admin did offer an additional 5% free threads and posts on any subsequent job.
Score 6/10
Project tracking.
Very good, you receive your own login to a secure area, from there you can see who is working on your job and how many have been completed. You can also leave comments for the job as a whole or for individual posters
Score 9/10
Karma.
I quite liked the site layout, it has an older feel to it and gives a pretty good feeling it seemed more of a website than an out of the box Joomla style site, its responsive and there is the content you would expect, FAQ, About, Pricing etc
Score 7/10
Overall I have rated the service at 52/70 or 74.2%
I used forumsfirst after finding them on sitepoint. First class service my job went as I hoped it would. Since them I have used them three or four more times and my forum is now growing organically.