To whom it may concern at Envato.
My recent experience here and the clever way trying to obtain a refund for yet another half baked theme is made incredibly difficult if not impossible has me questioning whether I should author a recommendation on our site to avoid Envato at all costs. The issue is authors bundling in third party items and having them (a) not updated in the current download; (b) not including updates for the theme within the “support” period that is supposedly provided here; and/or © forcing customers to wait for updates to third party components at the time when a theme release is made.
Once I purchased a theme here that included Revslider. The client’s website which I installed the theme was hacked mercilessly. Like all wordpress themes and plugins and core, if you don’t update it quickly, you will get hacked.
I’m sick of hearing from author’s about Envato’s “policy” that once you download you’ve bought it and they can’t/won’t refund money. And I’m sick of trying to find my way through Envato’s new system how to get our money back for which I haven’t heard a response back from the author now for a week after I warned him that this rubbish about not updating third party bundled plugins with the first download was absolutely ridiculous and a vulnerability from download.
At this point I’m ready to recommend not just to clients but to the followers that I have (and I have done this for a long time) that purchasing themes here is a liability. You’re buying at you’re own risk. There is no requirement that themes are up to date or kept reasonably up to date. As a result I can no longer associate Envato with quality and , more appropriately, I’m associate Envato with a significant likelihood of attractive front end with a poor performing or vulnerable product that is best avoided entirely.
