Thoughts on TrulyOffice

[mynameGeoff]

Hi!

 

TrulyOffice has reached out asking if we're interested in partnering on sponsorship. They're an alternative to Microsoft's Office suite and Google Workspace.

https://trulyoffice.com/

 

The main appeal to TrulyOffice is that you have the choice between a subscription every month or a lifetime license, both cheaper than its competitors. As well, they're touting bank level customer data protection + GDPR compliance for enhanced data privacy.

 

If anyone has experience with TrulyOffice, I would appreciate your insight

 

Thanks,

Geoff

 

*Please note that our team does our own research and testing around vetting sponsor products and services. However, we've found that soliciting feedback from the community can sometimes add something new to the conversation that we weren't aware of*

[jaslion]

Keep confusing it for WPS office.

 

They are very very small right now and I can't help but shake the feeling when using this (know about this from another IT admin who saw it on socials in the EU trying it as an openoffice alternative) that I am just using WPS office but like a clone?

 

I haven't really noticed anything wrong with it in a vm. Just another office suite with less functions than well ms office. Doesn't seem to be doing anything bad on the network so unsure.

 

I'd say maybe? For sure deploy it for a bit in a vm and maybe have a writer use it to see if something is up with it? But so far it feels like a functional wps clone with a more ms office look.

[manikyath]

i'd prefer just about any office alternative that doesnt have any red flags as a sponsor over an MS office sponsorship.

 

unfortunately.. there are some red flags;

- this is a VERY new business... like the LLC is filed 3 months ago new...

- their address, as listed on their website... is literally *the* origin of hiding your business in delaware...

- it might be my browser, but out of the few links in the footer, following buttons just return you to the top of the page; about us, contact sales, FAQ, help center, and all four of the products. in other words... the only button there that works is the "privacy policy".

- the privacy policy.. again.. is last changed 3 months ago, adding more weight to the LLC filing.

 

sooo.. my take on it is sort of a "not yet" kind of deal? you know.. just give them a year or so to prove they will actually support this product.

[ImNiightt]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i'd prefer just about any office alternative that doesnt have any red flags as a sponsor over an MS office sponsorship.

 

unfortunately.. there are some red flags;

- this is a VERY new business... like the LLC is filed 3 months ago new...

- their address, as listed on their website... is literally *the* origin of hiding your business in delaware...

- it might be my browser, but out of the few links in the footer, following buttons just return you to the top of the page; about us, contact sales, FAQ, help center, and all four of the products. in other words... the only button there that works is the "privacy policy".

- the privacy policy.. again.. is last changed 3 months ago, adding more weight to the LLC filing.

 

sooo.. my take on it is sort of a "not yet" kind of deal? you know.. just give them a year or so to prove they will actually support this product.

Not just your browser, mine too.

 

I'm extremely skeptical of "bank level security" without more substance. This could mean literally anything.

 

Plus, what's up with the prices? Nothing but $XX.XX's in regards to their plans. Everything I'm seeing screams like it's been put together last minute or in a hurry without much attention to detail, and for a company saying it's buy once and use forever, this doesn't give me confidence in the future of the company beyond a couple months.

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, ImNiightt said:

 

I'm extremely skeptical of "bank level security" without more substance. This could mean literally anything.

i didnt want to address this, because honestly just sticking HTTPS on your site could be considered "bank level security" seeing how "nothing special" bank apps usually are these days.

it's basicly "aircraft grade aluminium" all over again...

 

6 minutes ago, ImNiightt said:

 

Plus, what's up with the prices? Nothing but $XX.XX's in regards to their plans. Everything I'm seeing screams like it's been put together last minute or in a hurry without much attention to detail, and for a company saying it's buy once and use forever, this doesn't give me confidence in the future of the company beyond a couple months.

it does have the vibe of a cashgrab, it could be because they're a startup and they're still working on going places.. but even if that's the case, i dont feel like they're the right thing to go for.

 

because of this i went back to look at the product pages.. and holy heck did this just get worse...

 

quoting the "overview" bulletpoints between their products;

 

- business subscription

Quote

Price: 5.99/pm
License type: Subscription license 
Apps Include: Truly Word, Truly Sheet, Truly Slides, Mail, Cloud Drive (100 GB)
All updates and upgrades included free of charge during your subscription

- family subscription

Quote

Price: 3.99/pm
Licensed for 5 family users 
Apps Include: Sheets, Word, Slides, Cloud Storage 100GB
Operating Systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux.
All updates and upgrades included free of charge during your subscription
License type: Subscription license (monthly or yearly)

- personal subscription

Quote

Price: 2.99/pm
Apps Include: Word, Sheets, Slides.
Operating Systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux.
All updates and upgrades included free of charge during your subscription

- student lifetime

Quote

Price: 34.99
Apps Include: Word, Sheets, Slides.
Operating Systems: Windows, macOS,  Linux
All updates and upgrades included free of charge during your subscription

- professional lifetime

Quote

Price: $99.99
Apps Include: Word, Sheetss, Slides, Mail, PDF, Cloud Storage (100 GB storage)
Operating Systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux
All updates and upgrades included free of charge during your subscription

- business lifetime

Quote

Price: $64.99
Apps Included: Word, Sheets, Slides, Mail, PDF, Cloud Drive (100 GB storage)
Operating System: Windows, macOS, and Linux.

 

we're gonna boldly ignore the "sheetss" typo in pro lifetime..

then there's the incoherent mess of a product stack..

in subscription there's business, family, and personal.

in lifetime there's business, professional, and student.

these are two completely different lineups.. and that's ingoringwhat they claim is in the package.

 

- for the lifetime pro and business, they claim 100GB of cloud storage, lifetime? lifetime of who?

- the formatting hugely differs between different versions.

- if we have to go by what's stated, business lifetime does not include updates.

- business subscription is the only one that has "truly" branding on the application names.

- student and pro lifetime have upgrades included "during your subsctription".

 

i could keep going.. but i'm gonna borrow this meme from another thread...

 

[jaslion]

31 minutes ago, manikyath said:

- it might be my browser, but out of the few links in the footer, following buttons just return you to the top of the page; about us, contact sales, FAQ, help center, and all four of the products. in other words... the only button there that works is the "privacy policy".

Yeah noticed that too when testing seems to not have been fixed and well not really any way to really have good communication on this.

 

The llc good catch. This seems very very rushed and gives me more and more this is some clone of existing software vibes that was rebranded.

 

Indeed I'd do as you say put em on the backburner and see if they still exist.

[Spotty]

58 minutes ago, mynameGeoff said:

As well, they're touting bank level customer data protection + GDPR compliance for enhanced data privacy.

What exactly does this mean? It sounds like when companies say "Military grade encryption" when referring to AES-256.

 

28 minutes ago, manikyath said:

- it might be my browser, but out of the few links in the footer, following buttons just return you to the top of the page; about us, contact sales, FAQ, help center, and all four of the products. in other words... the only button there that works is the "privacy policy".

Yep, same thing here. All the links are just /# which will take you to the top of the page. What's funny is their Cookie Preferences link does the same thing which I don't think is very GDPR compliant like they claimed.

Even their social links don't work. I've seen scam websites that are more functional.

 

I'd rather (and do) use LibreOffice as a Office alternative and avoid the subscription completely.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

What exactly does this mean? It sounds like when companies say "Military grade encryption" when referring to AES-256.

yes. that is exactly what they mean.

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Yep, same thing here. All the links are just /# which will take you to the top of the page. What's funny is their Cookie Preferences link does the same thing which I don't think is very GDPR compliant like they claimed.

Even their social links don't work. I've seen scam websites that are more functional.

the more i dig into this.. the more i've seen scam companies form a more competent business frontend than what this "thing" is... it really is an onion of layers where every next layer is better than the last..

[Zalosath]

Looks like the free download button on the front page doesn't even work.

 

Had a quick look through the page source too and found this:

<iframe data-product="web_widget" title="No content" role="presentation" tabindex="-1" allow="microphone *" aria-hidden="true" src="about:blank" style="width: 0px; height: 0px; border: 0px; position: absolute; top: -9999px;"></iframe>

I'm no expert but I'm not convinced that the website should in any circumstance be trying to use my microphone which I believe is what it's trying to do here.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Zalosath said:

Looks like the free download button on the front page doesn't even work.

i didnt even try this.. so i went back to try, even went ctrl-shift-n on this one.. and boy is it the gift that keeps on giving...

 

incognito tab gave me this brilliant popup that i must've missed the first time around

 

DO THEY EVEN *HAVE* A PRODUCT?

- first 1000 signups deal?

- coming soon?

- join the waitlist?

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

A different company founded by the same guy is sued by Microsoft for copyright infringement (Case 2:22-cv-01113). 

Reading through it, I guess they bought some form of volume licences, split it up and sold it as standalone licence to consumer. Not a lawyer and read the court documents yourself.

Them, TrulyOffice, naming it Word isn't establishing trust. The founder has already to deal with a Microsoft lawsuit that also includes trademark violations so I would have liked to see a unique name and not just another potential trademark violation.

 

[Spotty]

I refuse to believe that a company founded a few months ago has managed to develop an office suite that rivals Microsoft Office and Google Workspace with only a couple of employees - most of whom are in marketing, sales, or customer support according to linkedin profiles. Something is missing...

Spoiler

 

Almost all of the backlinks for trulyoffice.com come from fake news websites and are articles TrulyOffice have written about themselves advertising their website and trying to boost their SEO. (Shoutout one of the other sponsors you were considering ahref for their backlink checker tools). There's websites listed there that they're using to post fake articles that I recognise as sites that are blocked on the forum because of how frequently they're used by spammers to advertise scam websites.

 

Reading the reviews for trulyoffice on review websites I'm fairly certain they're all fake reviews.

 

This company is super sketchy. Way too many red flags. I strongly recommend you avoid dealing with them.

I appreciate you guys asking the community for feedback about potential sponsors, but I feel companies like this should really be filtered out before it reaches the ask the community stage.

[Needfuldoer]

40 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I refuse to believe that a company founded a few months ago has managed to develop an office suite that rivals Microsoft Office and Google Workspace with only a couple of employees

It doesn't take that many people to find every instance of "OnlyOffice" and replace it with "TrulyOffice".

 

(Not saying they definitely just rebranded OnlyOffice, but given the timeframe they must have rebranded something.)

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

All of these links on the bottom just bring you to the top of the page. 

 

 

Prices are missing on the main page.

 

Slogan is "Never Pay for an Office Subscription Again", then tries to sell you subscriptions. 

 

 

 

Screw BBB, we have "No Spyware", "Verified Quality FinancesOnline.com", "100% clean Download", and "Good Software". All very convincing badges.

 

The whole thing screams lazy and classic scam. 

 

8 hours ago, mynameGeoff said:

*Please note that our team does our own research and testing around vetting sponsor products and services. However, we've found that soliciting feedback from the community can sometimes add something new to the conversation that we weren't aware of*

If your community members were able to pick up this many red flags in a matter of minutes, perhaps a review of processes is in order. Just the whole premise of the business does not make sense, it contradicts itself. They're promising people the idea of not being tied to subscriptions (such as Office 365 and G-Suite), by selling them subscriptions to their product. In this particular instance, it feels like the community was made the first line of defense. 

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

If your community members were able to pick up this many red flags in a matter of minutes, perhaps a review of processes is in order.

you know.. i didnt want to be that guy, but having slept on it.. this is something that did stick with me...

 

it took us an hour to find literal piles of red flags... i commend LMG for turning to the community very early in the review process.. but this one is probably an example of what should have been weeded out before even starting the review process.

 

i dont want to point any fingers at LMG for this one, but i think it's a good example going forward to test the internal processes to catch the shady stuff much sooner.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 hours ago, manikyath said:

you know.. i didnt want to be that guy, but having slept on it.. this is something that did stick with me...

 

it took us an hour to find literal piles of red flags... i commend LMG for turning to the community very early in the review process.. but this one is probably an example of what should have been weeded out before even starting the review process.

 

i dont want to point any fingers at LMG for this one, but i think it's a good example going forward to test the internal processes to catch the shady stuff much sooner.

I praise the idea of turning to the community for input. The community certainly will have more insight when it comes to more obscure companies.
 

However, this step should not be one of the first ones. Companies that are questionable and low effort to the point I doubt they can even uphold their end of the sponsorship bargain, should’ve been flagged and if necessary sent to the reject bin at initial evaluation. 
 

Perhaps this was an honest mistake. But nonetheless it’s a wake up call that peer reviews should not be

picking up stuff like this. They have shown they are much better than that.

[Other James]

Hey all,

 

Thanks for the feedback. We do have an order we do our checks in, and it looks like things were done out of order on this one.

 

I'm going to lock this one now because I think the consensus is more than clear.

 

Much appreciated.