Vela | AI, optimization & more
by Vela · launched
View in Shopify App Store ↗Reviews (237)
**UPDATE after Vela’s public response:** Vela’s response proves my point: instead of addressing the problem, Vela blames the user and publicly calls my review “blatant lies.” Vela claims my listing count changed pricing tiers. That is simply not true. My shop has always stayed around 2,200 listings, below the 2,500 threshold, and my monthly price remained $23.95. If my listing count never crossed into a new pricing tier and my price never changed, what exactly was Vela repeatedly asking me to reconfirm or upgrade? I even reconfirmed the same $23.95 plan, but Vela kept asking me again and I still could not access the platform. If the app repeatedly asks me to select or confirm a plan again and still won’t let me in, of course I would believe my subscription was no longer active. Instead, Vela kept charging me and now blames me for “failing to confirm.” That is Vela’s subscription-flow problem, not user error. When I finally discovered the continued charges, my subscription was already paid through August 11. Yet on August 9, I still had no access. Justin refused to fix the access issue and simply repeated “no refund” while offering one free week. If I cannot access the platform, even 100 free weeks are useless. I have screenshots showing the inactive/inaccessible status, billing records, and screenshots of Shopify Support confirming that I was unable to access Vela during a paid period and advising me to open a formal case. Vela can call me a liar, but it still has not answered one simple question: Why was I charged for a service I could not access, while being repeatedly asked to confirm a price that never changed? **Original review below.** I have used Vela for many years. Unfortunately, my experience with Justin from customer service/developer has often been frustrating. Whenever there is a problem with the app, I feel that he tends to blame the user first instead of considering whether there may be an issue with the app or its design. If you read some of the other poor reviews here, you will see that other users have complained about similar experiences. I tolerated this for years, including the repeated price increases, but recently I had a much more serious billing issue. I was continuously charged $23.95/month for Vela Lite, but repeatedly could not access my Shopify store and was shown a message telling me to select an “UPGRADE” plan again “to retain access.” I did not want to upgrade, so I stopped using Vela. Since I could no longer access my store, I naturally believed my subscription was no longer active. Yesterday, I checked my billing and was shocked to discover that I had actually continued to be charged for almost six months. Justin claimed this happened because my listing count changed pricing tiers, which required me to confirm a new price. However, my store had around 2,200 listings and remained within the same 1,000–2,500 listing tier that I was already paying $23.95 for. So I still do not understand what price change required an upgrade. More importantly, whether I confirmed an upgrade or not does not explain why I could not access the service while Vela continued charging me every month. My latest billing period was paid through August 11, yet on August 9 I still could not access my store. Justin refused to refund the months I was charged and did not clearly address these contradictions or restore my access. How is it reasonable to continuously charge a customer for a subscription while they cannot access the service they are paying for? I believe there is a serious problem with the way Vela handles subscription access and billing. What concerns me most is that if I had not noticed the charges myself, it appears the billing would have simply continued. This experience made me feel extremely misled, and I think other Shopify sellers should be aware of it and carefully check their Vela billing.
Developer reply ·
We typically do not reply publicly to negative reviews as we're confident that the far greater number of positive reviews speaks for itself; however, in this case, it's necessary to correct such blatant lies and personal attacks. As the user states, she has been a longtime Vela user, and for the entirety of that time, pricing has been based on the total number of listings per shop. Subscriptions have been, and continue to be, month-to-month and can be upgraded, downgraded, or canceled at any time. Shopify handles billing directly and requires that if the total number of listings in a user's shop changes by an amount that would increase or decrease the current subscription price, the user must confirm the new price. This is what occurred in this instance, yet the user failed to confirm or cancel, and instead demanded a refund for several past months during which time she did have access to the platform. We explained that we are not able to offer a refund for the past months, but we did offer free access to all features for an entire week, for her Shopify and Etsy shops. Unfortunately, she chose to post a misleading review.
THIS APP *USED* TO BE GOOD....many many many years ago.... Then the glitches started...then the duplicates started...then the DISAPPEARING OF LISTINGS. That's when I stopped using it...WEEKS of work down the drain. Contacted customer service, "YOU WILL NOT BE CHARGED AGAIN" and here I am 4 months later discovering that they have been charging my shopify account all along. 0 STARS.
Price almost doubled for no reason at all - who asked for all this AI garbage? Why does the "Lite" plan have limited profiles whereas the top level plan which matches the Lite pricing did not have this limitation?
RUDE AGENT JUSTIN SHOUTING AT ME IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS APP IS TRASH AND HE CAN'T SOLVE MY ISSUE. FIRE HIM! NEXT APP....
Thought this was a great tool at first. Used it for my Etsy shop and Shopify store, but the price change aspect of it deserves 0 stars. Despite ensuring I selected every single product in my stores, it failed to change the prices across every single product, leaving me with some products increased and others not. The most frustrating part was having no way of knowing which items it had missed - this resulted in me making losses on some orders as the prices were now not high enough to cope with the Black Friday offers I gave out (thinking I had increased all of my prices!!). When I reached out to Vela customer services they were useless and didn't even bother to reply to my latest email, so I simply deleted the app and now pricing across thousands of products is a complete mess... Vela - if your system can't cope with the volume of products a store like mine has, you need to make this clear. My pricing is now a shambles and I have to manually amend pricing as and when I spot it.
They used to be free. Then they started charging $10/month which was worth it (even with a Shopify store and Etsy - so I had to pay double). Now they are raising their prices again. I'd have to pay $45+ a month to use this app. 100% NOT worth it.
Developer reply ·
To clarify a few points raised in this user's review, it is true that we recently introduced a new pricing model, https://getvela.com/pricing. The new model sets pricing based on the number of listings per shop as It is simply more expensive, in terms of both time and resources, for us to support larger shops, and thus, we have updated our pricing model to reflect this reality. This is our first price increase since our initial launch two years ago, and we did so, along with releasing a ton of new features now available to all users. I have no doubt that if you compare the price of Vela for the functionality provided, it's incredibly fair, and we have a lot more to come. Finally, we provided a lifetime discount to all existing users (including this user), so her price would actually be $16, not $45.
BEWARE!!! I have been using this app for a long time now with several different shops on both Shopify and Etsy! STOP --> Before you use this app, the company just rolled out a "major update" on November 1st and their update tanked all the limited features that did work before and created major problems in functionality #1 it will act like and show that you are creating new "unpublished" items, they if you go to publish them to your Shopify draft listings (not even active), it will delete the listing(s) you created. That means if you were creating a group of listings from their "create new" button, it will look like they are being created and show that an item was being created and then when you go to publish it will delete all the items from your shop, entirely! You cannot publish from create new to either publish or draft and it will delete all your item(s) not recoverable. This means if you did 10 items, added photos, video, description, etc. This update will delete all your work if you try to publish the item. #2 The new AI features do not work and will permanently delete other information within an item listing. #3 There was no improvement to the photo editing tools despite what they claim and the background removal tool no longer works for many items. #4 You cannot use many of the "new" features they added in bulk editing. You will still have to go in and manually update the items one by one even when you have selected a group of items to edit in "bulk" #4 The shop "refresh" shop button will delete or unpublish items already published in your shop. #5 The "refresh" shop button eats up your daily allowed item creation, publishing, or editing, even if you don't add, change, or do anything to any item. They require you to refresh (sync) your shop frequently to use their app and they show a timer of when you last refreshed it. It does not automatically sync with the current inventory in your shop unless you hit the refresh button. #6 They will lock down your shop when you reach a number count. For example, if you have 100 items in your shop and you hit the refresh button 10 times throughout the day, you cannot list a single new item that day as you will have hit your "1000" item a day creation/listing/update they've now imposed and didn't exist before Nov 1st! Refreshing your shop isn't creating a new listing. #7 They are offering a promotional discount right now with their update for one month free, in their emails to existing customers they said they would give one month free for those already paying for their premium upgraded subscription. Upon contacting their customer service they are refusing to honor that advertisement sent in their emails. #8 They are using the free month of premium features to auto-enroll non-upgraded linked shops into upgraded paying premium subscription services with autopay without authorization into a subscription and you have to contact them to request to be unsubscribed and have those shop(s) removed from premium subscriptions to not get charge first of December which also means you do not get the free month of premium as they are advertising. Bottomline: Proceed with caution, the limited usable features it offers can be found from other apps.
Developer reply ·
I'll let the 340+ 5-star reviews we've received speak for the product and our dedication to supporting users and not attempt to address each of the misleading statements and blatant lies in this review. Unfortunately, Shopify's review response policy prohibits us from posting external correspondence. However, if we could, you would see that this user is completely unhinged and likely psychotic. She reached out via chat and, in response to our efforts to assist, posted 100+ ALL CAPS threatening and explicit messages. I'm sure that everyone here has encountered similarly outrageous customers from time to time and can relate to the disappointment felt when reading such a deranged review. While it's sad that anyone behaves this way, it's an inevitable part of running a business.
The app worked fine for what we were using it for. As we learned more and wanted to streamline our processes, we found a quicker and more efficient way to do so. When contacting support on the best way to remove the profiles we had attached to products, we were told to create a blank profile and it would override all the other profiles. We were not told this would 0 out all the inventory, change all the prices to 0, and remove all the SKUs and UPCS input for every product. Now, we have to spend days catching up and correcting all the issues to our whole online store.
When we did our shopify inventory, over 700 Etsy listings were removed that we paid to activate etc. When I reached out for support, he questioned me about them even existing. Very Very rude customer "support" - do not use them. Edited to add in response: As stated in my review about your company, it was the way you treated me. If I could upload photos of the way you've spoken to me, accused me of making up our listing, bragged about your subscribers etc, I would. The bottom line is you treat people terribly Justin. You are very rude, short, cocky and talk down to people. I reached out for help and instead I received insults, accusations and smart aleck responses. That is my complaint with your company.
Developer reply ·
As one of Vela's creators, I feel it is important to address the concern expressed in this review to ensure that others understand that Vela was not responsible for "removing" any listings from the user's shop. In this case, the user had connected their Etsy and Shopify shops to a single Vela account. They originally published 700+ listings on Etsy in July but did not set them to auto-renew. Per Etsy's terms, new listings remain active for four months and, unless renewed, are automatically moved to expired. This is why the listings were removed from both Vela and Etsy.
Unreliable app. They force us to pay even though I installed the app when it was completely free. I've been using hundreds of apps so far but none of them treats their early customers this way :( My client (the store owner) feels disappointed at me as I told them the app is free to use.
This app is the worst. I used to like it but it has caused me many problems. I went to update all my footers recently and the app added all my 382 items into ALL OF MY Collections so that I have to meticulously spend hours and merchandise everything. They never have responded when I try to write in, and ok when it was FREE but now they want you to pay. Thanks for making me pay to spend hours of my life fixing problems you created. In a nutshell: if you make a bulk edit watchou t that it will screw everything up. This has happened several time to me.
J'utilisais de temps en temps (une fois tous les 6 mois) cette application qui était gratuite, pour modifier les descriptions de mes articles. Maintenant qu'elle est payante, il faut débourser $5 /mois pour l'utiliser même si on s'en sert rarement donc je l'ai désinstallée. Les personnes derrière cette applications se fichent clairement de la tête des gens. Je ne recommande pas. Faîtes plutôt un export de vos articles sur shopify et éditez-les sous excel puis faîtes un import.
Quite disappointed with the turn of events - from freebie to greedy. Sure, charge something for your service, but now I'm supposed to pay for every connected store when I use the app every now and then? Will look out for something else and move as soon as possible. Would be fine with a $10/month for all shops but not for each and every single shop that might need some bulk edit at some point.
The app ruined my shop, the support was really harassing me and threatened me. "Justin" was not helpful and even violent. I have copied our chat. I am scared to leave my shop connected.
removed all the tags from my shop, the support were not helping and just made it worse :( I use it in my Etsy shops but I think it is not a good app for shopify.
This is the WORST app I have EVER come across! Why Shopify would allow apps of this poor calibre on their platform is beyond my understanding! This app removed ALL product images and and when using this app for bulk pricing edits, it messed my entire store! It has taken me over TWO Months to try and get my prices corrected and to recover over 8000+ Products! MY SUGGESTION TO ANYONE WANTING TO USE THIS APP IS STAY FAR AWAY!! ALL THIS APP IS GOOD FOR IS TO CREATE WEEKS OF EXTRA WORK AND BACKTRACKING ON YOUR STORE'S PRODUCTS!! I WILL ALSO BE PASSING THIS EXPERIENCE ON TO SHOPIFY AND REQUEST THAT THEY REMOVE THIS APP FROM THEIR PLATFORM AS THIS IS NOT WHAT MERCHANTS NEED!
It might be a decent app is you could see what you were doing. Why on earth they choose to make the text a pale, pale grey is beyond me. It takes me just as long trying to see the tiny, pale grey text s it does to just edit in Shopify. Horrible design decision.
Deleted all prices and just made more work than it would have taken to edit each item individually
BEWARE!!!! I installed the app to change the prices on about 150 tees at one time. It did that, BUT it took away some of my color swatches and variants information. Now I have to spend time fixing a problem that wasn't even there to begin with, so it defeats the purpose of the app anyway (to save time).
