tropilio Posted April 11, 2023 Share Posted April 11, 2023 Hi everyone, I would like to publicly share my negative experience with the Affinity V2 suite, so as to alert potential new buyers and let people know the poor attention I was given by the Serif refund service. I bought the Affinity suite about 2 months ago, encouraged by the offer of 120 euros instead of 200. After a first month of fairly sporadic use, during which I got on relatively well with the suite's applications, I started using them more intensively, trying to switch completely from the Adobe suite to the Affinity suite. Unfortunately, however, the more I use the 3 softwares, the more I encounter problems with stability (freezes at least once a day) and speed (after a few hours of use, Affinity Publisher becomes incredibly slow and laggy, sometimes taking several seconds before a simple operation such as selecting an object takes effect), not to mention the numerous bugs I encounter every day. Sometimes, when I encountered a bug, I took the time to write a post on this forum, hoping that some moderator would notice it and report the problem to the development team, such as: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182300-lasso-node-selection-not-working/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/183955-incorrect-rendering-of-cmu-serif-font/ Recently, I came across a bug related to importing and exporting documents from Publisher that really surprised me and made me strongly doubt the overall quality of the Affinity suite, and I again spent half an hour reporting it on the forum: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/184149-serious-importexport-bugs-in-affinity-publisher/ I had hoped to have found a good alternative to the (very expensive) Adobe suite, but unfortunately there are still too many problems and I cannot work with these programmes reliably. Therefore, I am forced (reluctantly) to renew my subscription to Adobe. Given the number of problems I have encountered, I have contacted the Serif refund service, expressing my wish to cancel the purchase and request a refund. Even a partial refund would have been fine with me. I would like to point out that I am not asking for a refund for a simple 'dissatisfaction' with Affinity products (in which case I realise that I would only be covered by the buyer's guarantee for the first 14 days after purchase), but for the fact that I just can't use these products for work, there are too many bugs! Importing vector files does not work well and exporting to pdf is a Russian roulette. How can I make presentations with software like this? It's like I bought a mobile phone that sends text messages but doesn't make phone calls: I can't use it, I can't work with it, it's too unreliable. I sent a long e-mail explaining the situation, and Serif's refund service simply replied: Quote All purchases come with a 14 day money back guarantee which has since expired. We are no longer able to provide a refund for this order. Apologies for any inconvenience. What can I say. I thought I had found the antidote to Adobe, but instead I realised to my cost that not only is Serif's software nowhere near good enough to replace Adobe's for professional use, but that the Serif team itself pays almost no attention to its customers. If you are thinking of buying these products, beware. Beniamino 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AffinityMakesMeWonder Posted April 11, 2023 Share Posted April 11, 2023 There’s a 14-day limit in the refund process, so, why should you be an exception? You could have downloaded the 30-days free trial in the first place… Who said that you could replace Adobe CC with Affinity V2? Download the 2.10 beta and retry using the Affinity Suite, that’s my advice… Quote Happy amateur that playing around with the Affinity Suite - really love typograhics, photographing, colors & forms, AND, Synthesizers! Macbook Pro 16” M1 2021, iPad Pro 12.9” M1 2021, iPad Pro 10.5” A10X 2017, iMac 27” 5K/i7 late 2015… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tropilio Posted April 11, 2023 Author Share Posted April 11, 2023 54 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said: There’s a 14-day limit in the refund process, so, why should you be an exception? You could have downloaded the 30-days free trial in the first place… Who said that you could replace Adobe CC with Affinity V2? Download the 2.10 beta and retry using the Affinity Suite, that’s my advice… Because the product I bought does not do the things it is advertised for, it has 'manufacturing defects'. These flaws, or bugs, are too important and do not allow me to make professional use of this software. Yes, I could have downloaded the free trial, but as I said, I was persuaded by the discount, so I bought it straight away. Well... what would be the point of keeping both Adobe CC and Affinity installed, since they are two suites of software that aim to achieve the same thing: to do raster/vector graphics work? Have the problems I've listed (particularly those related to import/export in Adobe Publisher) been resolved in 2.10? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tropilio Posted April 11, 2023 Author Share Posted April 11, 2023 6 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said: It is fair to point out bugs and defects as you have done. In two of the cases you listed, Serif said they would log the issues with their developers (which I take to mean record it as a bug and/or check what the issue is). The third issue (with the CMU font) was described as a font problem rather than a problem with Affinity. At the same time no large program is bug free. Hence Microsoft so-called Patch Tuesday. We also see it regularly on updated open source software, minor or major bug fixes (let alone improvements). For the SVG problem there does indeed to be a problem with Affinity's parser as the file opens correctly in other programs. Whenever encountering these sorts of problems I would look at feasible workarounds. If I open the file in Inkscape and export it again to SVG the text is still broken in AD. If I export it to PDF the file opens and renders correctly in AD. Working round problems in one program using another program is by no means unusual. Everyone who uses anti-virus software on Windows is working round gaping security flaws that exist in Windows or other Windows apps. Macs have their own problems, which I can attest to. Yes, they will log the problems with their developers, but in the meantime I have to pay my subscription to Adobe because I am struggling to get professional results with the Affinity suite. It may take weeks to solve these problems, perhaps months or even years, and in the meantime I've spent 120€ for nothing. Besides, the PDF export problem seems to be a known bug, as this other user points out as a major problem with Affinity Publisher in this post: I am just very disappointed by my experience with the Affinity suite, and not by small details, but by the presence of fundamental problems, such as lags, crashes and basic import/export problems, and I wonder how people manage to work with this softwares. (BTW The CMU font problem is only partially a font problem, the double quotes are still rendered incorrectly in Publisher) DGee and Beniamino 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debraspicher Posted April 11, 2023 Share Posted April 11, 2023 I'm so sorry to hear this is your experience. I have not had some of these issues but I've had others, especially bugs and issue(s) with in-program presentation. Like you, I worry about polish and long-standing bugs. You are not the first to complain about slow down on the forum. I'm doing more linked files than anything right now while I work in another program and use Affinity for continuous export for a layout. However, I do often run the Affinity apps side-by-side for various things and so far I haven't had a build up of lag in the suite. I have had spontaneous crashes though and the most we can do is turn on crash logs so that Serif gets to see them on their end... I did a quick check on your post history, but I suppose I could've missed. Have you tried the beta? It's understandable if you don't have the time to check there, but thought I would ask. Another question: Can you leave the programs (either retail or beta) open and idle without increasing lag or does it require you continue to work in them to create the issue(s)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tropilio Posted April 12, 2023 Author Share Posted April 12, 2023 Hi @debraspicher, thanks for your reply. No, I haven't tried the beta yet, as I said I went back to Adobe because I need to get some work done and can't lose any more time at the moment. I'll try leaving the programs open at idle and see if that results in lag build-up. debraspicher 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beniamino Posted April 12, 2023 Share Posted April 12, 2023 Hi, about the lag issues of Affinity Publisher, I've got lots of files on my Mac (on Win is the same) that can recreate the lag (on each system: 16 or 32Bg of Ram, 100 or 250Bg of free space on the SSD, each kind of GPU and CPU and OS). I think the problem is related to the heavy use of Data Merge. In one project, I've about 70 Excel files linked. And both on V1 and on V2, if I start the automatic update of all the linked files, the app will crash. I have to do that individually, by hand, waiting 30 to 60 seconds for each. It's a mess and a big loss of time. On another project, I have about 70 different pages imported from an external .afpub file. Both projects will start eating CPU time and SSD space only if I leave them open in Affinity Publisher. And if I try to work on them, the app start to lag in 10 minutes. So that I have to quit and lunch the app again. This happens both in V1 and in V2. tropilio 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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