We are couch fest films a shorts film festival that happens in strangers' houses. As we were continuing to grow we were at a point to consider withoutabox. I went back and forth on the decision. The reviews seemed good and I figured that I would give it a go for one year and make a informed decision from there.
Man, I don't know how they are in business. It has been a horrible experience. That we didn't receive even close to the percent of submissions that I thought we would receive isn't even the problem.
Oh, god. The site is clunky and slow and the interface is so so so so bad. It feels so 1998. It is far from intuitive.
As a filmmaker I know that other filmmakers would throw a hissy fit if they saw the online viewer they force us to use. It has terrible compression, doesn't resize for the the variety of film ratios they accept, takes forever to buffer and then skips. If a filmmaker knew that I was trying to watch their film that was skipping and was squeezed into the wrong viewing box they would egg the HQ of withoutabox.
What else? They have so many hoops to jump through to do the most basic tasks. It is so unintuitive. I dread thursday as that is the day that I set aside to manage the account. Basic tasks take 10 times longer than they should. Using the site they have pop up windows that either pop up for no real reason or pop up with the wrong movie information. This is a gross and basic flaw.
What else? Their fees? Oh, god. They take such a huge percent chunk of the submission fee and then basically ask for a free banner ad on your website to direct traffic to their bank accounts. Insane.
What else?
There are like 7 steps just to watch and rate a movie. Pointless! It's so poorly designed I dread this process.
There are too many pages I have to drill down to see the basic information that I need. Frustrating.
Many times the site just flat out doesn't work. Links are broken, page load but are missing key elements, videos crash. I know what you are thinking...oh, he's using an old tandy PC trying use mosaic browser to view the site. Wrong. I am using chrome and firefox on multiple computers...all with the same problem. Oh, it must be my internet connection. Wrong again. I have used multiple internet connects with the same problems while other sites run just fine.
It is clear to me that they don't use the site themselves. If they did they would shut it down immediately and start over. It is so clunky, inefficient, broken, outdated, and problematic. Sadly as there is no real competition there is no incentive to fix the glaring problems.
I doubt I will use this site next year and wish others would stop using them too. Next year I will accept submissions directly and have filmmakers send a private link of their film on vimeo (on vimeo it will look perfect) as I have done in the past.
And, dear god, I hope they don't this read this review (unless they see this as free marketing feedback and fix their site). It is shocking to read that other festivals that have been banned from using withoutabox for making a comments about the festival industry that withoutabox didn't like. The gall of them.
http://www.badlit.com/?p=2135
Oh, god, please someone compete with them..it would be so easy to do it as they suck so so so bad.
craig