I used to really dig Beaver Builder. I feel squarely into the camp of "I can do it myself but my people I build for want an easy way to do things without touching HTML."

Wasn't a hard sell to show them the two minutes it takes to, say, put two images side by side.

It started out great, and then there were a couple weird bugs that were related to things like false positives for security; modsec hiccups on shared hosting when trying to add a video. No biggie, couldn't find any info on it but it was early days and they explained the issue great. After more people ran into it, though, it lingered for a really long time.

Then, weird stuff would happen, even on clean installs. Page editor wouldn't load, people would be locked out of access based on user roles when either nothing was prohibited or the setting was accurate and shouldn't have allowed for it. Paid support would be three and five days between, and when you'd get an answer, it would be something that almost sounded like it willfully ignored or misunderstood what you said (it wasn't the case but it came across like that), maybe wrote a sentence or two, and then off to the races again to hurry up and wait. Then, there's the collection of evidence, logs, sharing username/password (or making one), reproducing the problem, and on 60% of occasions, just...dropping the thread. Leaving it be. Not responding to further inquiries.

I remember when it seemed like every couple months or every month even there would be updates, amazing great new features (I think it's still that way) and I was so impressed by getting to keep the same thing for the same money you paid except it just improved while you had a subscription. Everyone there believes in the product and everyone there seems to work really hard.

So I peeked a few weeks ago, to see where they were at. Must be leaps and bounds, there were even big rewrites and the second major version was a huge improvement over the first, which was not bad at all.

Instead, I saw teasing at stuff that other page builders were doing when they first came out a few years ago. I saw theme building for one site offered at a higher price than unlimitedsite/dev/pro licenses for other builders. Then, the capper, someone was a bit of a prat in the comments of a blog article and a "bot" scolded the person on their behalf. Not a human being going, "Hey, sorry you had a bad experience, but that was uncalled for, we're just trying to help, please refrain for that so we can have a civil discussion and get you some help/answers/solve things." No, like a cartoon mascot, hiding behind a veil, a post about hurt feelings, like a kid raised on the internet who didn't learn about human social interaction or basic life experience.

Really rubbed me the wrong way. Almost creeped me out.

Beaver Builder is the reason I know flexbox. Beaver Builder hit the ground running, right out of the gate, offering a means for a dev and mod community. I am 95% they have all English as a first language support, at least in terms of written language. They are good and talented people, and the whole point of this is showing that they're open to change and accomodating. But it feels...lost...lagging behind. Stagnant is the wrong word but...in need of an injection of life? I hope they can turn things around because we all benefit from the competition. Perhaps this visibility and endorsement will give them the means to do that.