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Leaving MFL after 12 years (1 Viewer)

wilked

wilked

Footballguy
We've used MFL forever in my main league.  We loved its flexibility, ability to customize, and as time went on we loved the 'history' that we could access via team records, etc.  Things we didn't like were that the interface was clunky / outdated, message board clunky, these sorts of things.

12 years later the interface is largely unchanged, still very clunky.  We are an auction league and tried to run an auction via MFL this year (typically we did ESPN for the auction piece).  Their auction ability is listed as 'beta' (embarrassing for a FFL company after 15+ years).  Unsurprisingly it didn't work at all so we had to pivot quickly to ESPN.  Anyway, that is probably the straw that broke the camel's back, as one of their staunchest defenders enough is enough for me.

Anyone else come to this conclusion?  As far as I can tell these guys haven't 'innovated' / invested any money in the company in 10 years. 

Curious to hear about others' experience

 
MFL is great for dynasty leagues.  But agree for Auction leagues there are much better hosting sites.

 
The only reason to use MFL for redraft is if your league has extremely quirky scoring rules.  Sadly, it's still the best dynasty option.  And the minute a comparable product is available, I'm jumping ship.

 
I'm probably out after this year.  Dealing with way too many complaints.  "Data-ish" interface.  You are right it hasn't been updated and it shows.  The interface looks like a website from 12 years ago.  People have been spoiled by "bling-bling" sites like NFL.com.  As a commish, I absolutely love the site.  But the owner complaints are valid.

It may mean my custom scoring rules will have to change.  Worth it at this point to me to not have to deal with the complaints.

Used CBS the last two years and MFL the year before (no complaints about MFL that season).  CBS is just way too much @ $190 for a season.

P.S.  On the flip side, look at the updates to Footballguys and how they have blown up in their face.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  However you have to appeal to the masses to stay in tune with the changing landscape of FFB.

 
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wilked said:
Anyone else come to this conclusion?  As far as I can tell these guys haven't 'innovated' / invested any money in the company in 10 years. 

Curious to hear about others' experience
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Yep. Quit playing there about 3 years ago. Just hate their interface. Yahoo is clean, simple and can check emails at same time. If both were free, I'd go with Yahoo. 

They aren't AntSports yet......but w/o improvements I see them going that way down the road. 

 
I use RTS as a commissioner and a as a player on their site. It's not perfect, but they give you all sorts of options such as auctions, keepers, IDP, etc... fees are 135$ for the commissioner leagues, although I think there is a cheaper option of 85$ ... I think. 

I have never used MFL myself, so I can't directly compare the 2. 

 
I am in the same boat. Really dislike MFL, after 15 years of use. Reliability and customer service are much worse - beyond the antiquated interface. I will seriously look into ESPN for doing customized rules.

 
I don't know if it's just my leagues,  but the dynasty leagues I am in always look like we started it last year.   Past champions only shows the winner from the previous year and you can't go back and look at transactions or other things easily from prior years. 

 
I'm on MFL, Yahoo, RT Sports, and have used CBS in the past. None of them are perfect. They all have their pluses and minuses. I guess it depends on what you value. You can say that most have not sunk any more money into their sites. I was just having that discussion with league members on Sunday.

RT Sports looked nice, although they screwed with the look this year. The website will make random changes throughout the week (e.g. changes our Victory Points calculation in week 4) with no advance warning and will change how it awards scoring from time to time. Stat changes can be only partial, sometimes adjusted two weeks later.

MFL just looks awful, but I appreciate all the things you can do on it. The draft app is terrible.

CBS is expensive and wasn't reliable in the past. Not sure about these days.

Yahoo is not very customizable, but looks ok and has some bonus things to it (e.g. bad draft reviews and advice, but advance projections).

I just don't see a perfect alternative at this point.

 
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We tried doing a live auction on their site as well, and it kept messing up, so we also had to quickly pivot to ESPN to get it done.   Never again. 

I agree that their interface is not great, and it's surprising how little they've upgraded it. 

 
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Well, MFL is no ANTSports, that's for sure......

I agree though, they were state of the art when I started there in '06 and they haven't done too much to liven things up but there are many companies who partner with MFL to design different league pages.  I'm in 4 or 5 that are very nice but it does cost a bit up front.  My thinking though is, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.  It's a cash cow for them and it is fairly stable when it needs to be.  Yahoo, CBS, and the rest definitely are not as user friendly as MFL IMHO.  I for one, have no plans of moving to another site.

 
Also, one of the biggest complaints I have is the MFL app.  It's horrible, clunky, and is missing a ton of information and features.  I am trying to get owners to use the website, but they want their apps...

 
OU#1 said:
Also, one of the biggest complaints I have is the MFL app.  It's horrible, clunky, and is missing a ton of information and features.  I am trying to get owners to use the website, but they want their apps...
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Mfl platinum is a third party app and it's pretty good imo.

 
We've been using CBS since 2000, and I honestly don't have many complaints. They've become very flexible over the years with customization, and we've been able to fit it with our league rules. Yeah the cost is higher than one would like, but we're all in the 35-40 yrs old range, make comfortable enough living to afford it.

 
BigBlue_RI said:
We've been using CBS since 2000, and I honestly don't have many complaints. They've become very flexible over the years with customization, and we've been able to fit it with our league rules. Yeah the cost is higher than one would like, but we're all in the 35-40 yrs old range, make comfortable enough living to afford it.
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Until they handle blind bidding followed by a free for all period, I'm never switching there.

 
shadyridr said:
Mfl platinum is a third party app and it's pretty good imo.
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That is kind of sad though that a third party has to do something for them to have a decent app.  Any reputable site nowadays should have an app that can do pretty much everything (and I am still someone who does almost all of his FF on the computer). 

 
We will need to vet the other sites.  Offhand I think people are leaning ESPN but I haven't really used the other sites much.  I don't think cost will be the primary factor ($250 entry so the fees are a small percentage)

 
The only conclusion I can come up with is they just don't give a #### about improving the site.  They will wait until the people start leaving in enough numbers to react, although by then it might be too late

 
My IDP dynasties have moved to FleaFlicker. Never tried auction on FleaFlicker. I still have 3 redrafts on MFL, for now.

 
Ghost Rider said:
That is kind of sad though that a third party has to do something for them to have a decent app.  Any reputable site nowadays should have an app that can do pretty much everything (and I am still someone who does almost all of his FF on the computer). 
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Get what you pay for. CBS is more than twice the cost

 
Genester said:
Reliability and customer service are much worse - beyond the antiquated interface.
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I disagree with the customer service, but perhaps I've just been lucky in that regard. At least I have never experienced poor customer service from them.

I completely agree on the whole auction complaint. It's a site dedicated to a hard-core audience and isn't cheap so it's reasonable to expect a better auction experience than they offer.

Somewhere in between on reliability. They are down from time to time but they aren't one of the billion dollar media companies running leagues. They also are expected to be up more hours than any other FFL hosting site because they start MFL 10's shortly after the Super Bowl. It's tough to expect any site to never be down given that time interval. I will admit I'm a draft-and-go guy so if there are outages during the season I am not affected as much as the average customer.

 
There seem to be a few reports that I can get on MFL that I can’t seem to find on Yahoo or ESPN.

Points allowed by position is an example of one.

Now I’m new to ESPN so maybe I just don’t know how to use it.

I’m in leagues on ESPN, Yahoo and MFL and I like MFL the best

 
Not only is the out-of-the-box interface awful, but as a web designer, their framework is beyond ancient. I've spent a TON of hours building a modern material-design skin for our league site, and it's painful. 

 
BoltBacker said:
I disagree with the customer service, but perhaps I've just been lucky in that regard. At least I have never experienced poor customer service from them.
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About a year or two ago, they seem to have had some personnel turnover or tried to save costs on responding to customers. Their default response became to "RTFM", regardless whether you did so or not. So, I had a complex problem, which I documented in painstaking detail for them, took the time to simplify and make it understandable, and I got back "look in our FAQ section and see if the answer is there". It wasn't. Happened to me 3 times - until I finally called them on it. I've started putting "please don't tell me to read the FAQ section - I have done so and the answer isn't their" into my support tickets. We average 1-2 per year, so it's not like it's the end of the world. But, poor customer service combined with the ancient interface, lackluster auction setup, and now availability issues are all causing us to reevaluate. Hope this helps.

 
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wilked said:
We've used MFL forever in my main league.  We loved its flexibility, ability to customize, and as time went on we loved the 'history' that we could access via team records, etc.  Things we didn't like were that the interface was clunky / outdated, message board clunky, these sorts of things.
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Our league is in MFL.com about the same time as you, 12 years. 1993 was our first season (USA Today + Lotus 1-2-3). 2000 was our first web-based system, CBS Sportsline. It was OK and FREE for the first 2 years. After paying for the same (crappy, and previously free) site we switched to MFL.com in 2005 and it was like kids at Christmas time.

I don't disagree that it appears dated, and if you don't have somebody offering graphic enhancement and taking full advantage of the customization, it might be quite awful.

Our league is a pretty simple redraft bunch, all original members. I float the question out there periodically about making a change if guys aren't happy, but zero support for this idea every time. My guess is we've been doing this so long that we remember what we came from and simply are not aware of where we could be... but we know where we would be without MFL.com

I have to ask since this comes up here in the Pool annually... and to borrow from my manager, "DON'T COME TO ME WITH PROBLEMS UNLESS YOU HAVE A SOLUTION"... we hear the same "clunky, outdated, terrible" comments, but I rarely hear details on what this means and what the better options are?

I am by no means married to MFL.com, but 12 years, very few (count them one 1 hand) issues in that time, good price... where is the Promised Land?

 
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My 2c is that they are still in business thanks to the low cost draftmaster leagues. There's enough peer pressure on cost, features, apps, etc. that they should be continually rolling out revisions and that is far from the reality. Hard to be loyal to a brand that does NGAF.    

 
Re: MFL auctions, the fact that it's still Beta is curious, and us embarrassing given it's one of the most popular hosting sites,  especially for the more hard core crowd. 

That said,  I've found that if you set the timer a little longer than usual and remind everyone to refresh frequently, the auctions actually run pretty smoothly. The extra effort is somewhat annoying,  but at least for me, not a deal breaker by any means. 

 
Dezbelief said:
My IDP dynasties have moved to FleaFlicker. Never tried auction on FleaFlicker. I still have 3 redrafts on MFL, for now.
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I hate fleaflicker even more. If I wasn't in dynasty and idp I'd  never play on either again.

 
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