Untrustworthy/Overpriced/Buggy/Bad Support

I loved Day One Classic (still do, and will continue to use it until the company stops its support—which will probably be sooner rather than later) and was pleased to hear the the update contained some long-clamored for features (multiple photo entry and more than one journal). But this “upgrade” is terrible. There is not a single thing that is truly an improvment over the original or worth the steep price.

My primary issue, like most reviewers, is the loss of Dropbox/iCloud sync. I’m sorry, DayOne, but you have not sufficiently earned the trust of your users to ask them to entust their thoughts to your own system. Everyday this becomes a more glaring flaw, as DayOne’s inabilty to resolve user problems (or lack of interest in doing so) becomes more and more clear. I’ve been watching for any indication that the company is rethinking this. From what I can tell—after two months of a buggy rollout and angry users—they’re just ignoring it, and pointing to completley unsubstantiated claims that the majority of their users had problems with the old system and love the new one. NOT a way to gain or retain customer trust.

I also have a real problem with the steep pricetag. I don’t mind paying for quality and the original app was a very fine product. But what exactly are users paying $29+ for? The ability to have multiple journals and add more than one photo? The price is made even more offensive by the fact that so many DayOne users use the app across mutiple devices, and have to pay for each and every one. Let me repeat, I do not mind paying for a product, and I’ll pay well for a quality one, but this is just a rip off.

Like others, I have also experienced a lot of bugs in the new version (I have since abandoned it entirely). The syncing is weird, when it works, and entries go missing with alarming regularity.

This leads me to my last point, DayOne’s ineffective, and possibly thoroughly indifferent, user support. A few weeks after I upgraded, two very lengthy entries just disappeared from my journal. As per the online FAQ, I waited two days to see if the journal had synced and the entries were backed up somewhere. Nope. I emailed user support, which promises to respond within a couple business days. Nearly two weeks later, I finally heard something. The tech guy was very polite, but his advice consisted in walking me through the steps I’d already followed from the FAQ. Still no results. FInally he told me to backup everything (had already done so) and delete the journal. Already thoroughly leery of this process, I moved everything to PDFs before doing so. I was right to do so. EVERYTHING disappeared.

My conclusions from all of this: At best, DayOne 2.0 is not ready for prime time and Bloom is clearly entirely out of its depth. The long user support wait time, which others have commented on as well, and the basic advice given, suggest to me that Bloom didn’t at all anticipate this, and for whatever reason, released the new version before it was thorougly tested and ready. To do all of this (or rather, not do it), and simultaneously ask users to trust their servers? That’s a joke, right?

LadyClio324 about Day One