I’ve been using Patreon as a creator for almost 3 years now and I love it, however I’ve been having huge issues with the “Notifications” section since day 1, and despite the best efforts of the Patreon Support team these are not resolved (and can’t be resolved without a system overhaul it seems).
There are several issues at play:
Notifications are grouped in a weird way instead of being displayed chronologically. This makes no sense to me. If someone pledges at 14:30 and someone else makes a comment at 14:45 and someone else puts a like at 15:00, then those things should be displayed in that order. Instead notifications are grouped in an awkward way that simply makes no sense to me, especially seeing how every other app uses a chronological display.
Notifications on deleted pledges are not always being shown. Sometimes they are being shown on the browser app, sometimes they are only being shown on the app, and sometimes they are not being shown at all. I was told by Patreon Support that using the Relationship Manager is the best way to keep track of who deleted their pledges, but after experimenting with it it turns out that that’s not the best way either because there are exceptions to that too.
Notifications on total supporters and total amount of money is not accurate. This came to me as a surprise, but I was informed by Patreon Support that the information on total supporters and total amount of money on the page is not actually accurate, but is just an approximation. Once again this baffles me, and I don’t understand why accurate information can’t be shown, because according the Patreon Support these numbers cannot be trusted (I was using them to track deleted pledges).
Like I said before, I really love Patreon, it has allowed me to do things as a creator that I could’ve never imagined, so it pains me that one of it’s most crucial features to keep up to speed with your project is so broken.
The notifications page could definitely use some more love. The out of order/random grouping and time delay have just left me to ignore it. I get emails for pledges and comments, so I just work through that instead.
I’m using a combination of desktop app, mobile app, e-mails and zapier to make sure I catch everything, and even then I’ve already had issues with zapier for deleted pledges.
Yes, notifications are kind of a mess. Besides the various issues mentioned above, I find them frequently buggy, with various weird errors that make them even more unusable.
Oh, but they’ve been aware of this for almost two years now. I’ve personally provided detailed feedback when I was asked. Unfortunately the person who collected it apparently no longer works for Patreon. :-/
Another problem I find is that I don’t get notifications on that page if someone has left me a message/post on my community tab. Thankfully it comes through as an email… but shouldn’t I be able to see that purely by visiting the website? What if my emails go down or I don’t have access to them for a few days.
Agreed, as grateful as I am to Patreon there are some notification issues that’ve made it a bit more difficult to keep track of my numbers/earnings. Here’re a couple other things I’ve noticed; this is only my estimation at what’s actually happening so if anyone knows if I’m wrong on any of these please let me know:
-Sometimes I’ll get an email of a new patron but no site notification. It seems that if someone is charged at the beginning of the month, leaves, but then decides to come back within that same month then they are not charged again, I don’t get any new funds, but getting the email notification makes me think I got a brand new person and am left confused when my earnings didn’t go up.
-As stated before, deleted pledges only SOMETIMES show up as notifications. I get the little bubble on my avatar meaning I got a notification, but the notification itself isn’t always there. Again, makes things confusing.
-There’s no notification for people whose pledges were declined and then fixed. The only way I can keep track of this is to see the numbers go up on my page and manually check the patron manager tab to see if the number of declines is less.
-I’ll get a notification, but no email, when a patron signs up but their pledge is immediately declined. Again, it’s just confusing to have the notifications and emails not line up with one another. I’d probably prefer to not get a notification at all unless their payment goes through.
-If a patron leaves one month then comes back at a later month then I’ll get a new patron notification, but no email. This has confused me before and I had to manually check their name in relationship manager to see that they were a previous patron.
Basically not having email and site notifications line up with eachother is very frustrating and requires you to manually check your patrons to find out where they came from. It’s not the biggest issue, but it is very inconvenient considering my career relies on keeping track of these numbers and knowing where they’re coming from.
