Corel Reviews 306

I purchased Paintshop Pro and several subsequent upgrades. I recently had to replace my computer, but Corel's horrific website only had download links for trial programs. Registered programs who as the serial number, but no download links are available.

I contacted "customer service" and they informed me that my more recent registered products were somehow "trial serial numbers" that I SOMEHOW managed to register.

Corel's trials do NOT provide a serial number and the website is very specific about not allowing you to enter your own products-they get automatically linked after purchase.

I am now stuck with losing out on several years worth of PURCHASED products. DO NOT use this company. They are a bunch of frauds.

Used to love the products but I wanted to upgrade to the 2023 Paintshop Pro and I asked the customer support, if the new version will work with my older plug-ins. They said that I'd have to buy the program in order to find out- very condescending & they also weren't any help when the plugins actually didn't work with the new version. I started several customer support conversations & they were completely worthless. The only thing they did well was refund my payment for the program.

Pathetic little scammers just out to screw as much as possible out of unsuspecting customers.
I bought videostudio ultimate x10 a couple of years ago, mainly just to stitch photos into a video.
I recently bought another camera that shoots video in .mov format - which the program is supposed to handle but it doesn't, it just tells me the vide format is wrong.
So I called their customer service who basically told me that unless I buy the latest version I get no help whatsoever.
I've been through this pathetic little cycle several time over the past 10 or 15 years with this company and I'm absolutely sick to death of them, they can shove their product and their company, I'll never buy anything from them again and would strongly advise anyone who wants to edit videos to use a real company instead.

Bought Pinnacle Studio 26 from Amazon Sarl. No sign of a key. Explained the situation several times to Corel. They keep say look for software library under Orders, doesn't exist and then keep asking for proof of purchase when I have already provided it. Utterly incompetent and useless.

Absolutely demeaning support team.

Takes months to get one ticket done and their track is to just respond with gibberish. Never follow through the real need and nor take any effort to understand the problem.

What an unprofessional company!
I purchased an additional tool (animation) for my Pinnacle Studio, and received a payment confirmation from Corel.
This was on 14.2.23. Until today (1.3.23) I have still not received the purchased/paid product, instead I received unprofessional/unclear replies from the customer service (actually, the word service is wrong as there is no service with Corel) to my several
e-mails asking whereabout my product and how/when same will be delivered to me.
Finally, I decided to ask for a money refund.
However, this seems to be another never ending story with far too much and complicated admin work involved.
Today I am stuck with a debit on my credit card, but no product recived!
In my world this is called "unjustified enrichment”!!

Bought wordperfect 2 days ago, having java script error, have triede reinstalling java, browsers, turning off norton 360, multiple calls to corel indian support, no help, no supervisor available, no technicians available, waiting on an email. this is the worst tech support i have ever encountered, bar none.\

I paid to upgrade from
Pinnacle 22 to 26. Only to later learn that the effects had water marks in them this rendered all
My existing effects useless I subsequently learnt that the new blue effects were not bundled with the upgrade. I have since early December tried to explain the situation Corel but they don’t seem to understand that I have paid £79 and been left with a system that is useless to me I have asked for a refund but been told that I have exceeded the 30 day period Their complaints team are not responding to my many e mails. This company I has no complaints procedure and are the worst I have ever encountered

Brought product now being constantly bombarded with ads on YouTube etc. IRRITATING AS HELL.

Corel has the potential to be a leading designing program, but all the crashes I run into prevents this. Any file I create that has bitmaps and the use of perspective with 4 or more pages, forget about it. The program wont respond and shuts down. I have been a graphics designers for 13 years and I have been attempting to give Corel a fair go, and its disproving itself. I work for a major sign company and they have implemented the use of the Corel Suite, I however, continue to use photoshop and AI because of all the crashes in Corel. In an 8 hour day I probably spend 2 hours waiting for a file to load opening or changes, saving edits. Its quite annoying as most projects are time sensitive. Please fix this, as I said before, this program has the potential to lead the sign industry.

This company has no clue how to provide even basic customer service. You call their # and you do get connected to a rep and if you are lucky you might even be able to understand what they are saying. Unfortunately the rep cannot really do anything except refer your problem to the tech people who will only communicate by email which is a total pain and it takes FOREVER. I bought a new program Coreldraw Essentials 2021 from Staples but can't download it because it says the code I have is not valid -??? and then I am told they could have helped if I had bought it from them instead of Staples - what???? I am SO FRUSTRATED with this whole business. Strongly suggest you avoid using their products and havin a chance of keeping your sanity and avoiding an ulcer!

I have been using Coreldraw since 1993 and have spent a small fortune on various subscriptions and licenses right through until Coreldraw 2022. The support, licensing of products, inability to download products seems deliberately intended to force the customer to keep buying new licenses. Very happy with the product, but an absolute disgrace as a company to deal with. It's very easy to pay them money though!

I am locked out of my Painter 2023 as it freezes at the sign in window and tells me "Your account is missing information. Please contact Corel customer support to resolve this issue. Called customer support and was told that my issue would be escalated to a support technician and they would email or call within 2 to 3 hours. It has now been over 30 hours and no contact from Corel. I have called several times and get the same response, "we are so sorry for your inconvenience and I will guarantee that a technical advisor will call you back in 1 hour. Needless to say no one calls back and I can't use the program I paid for. Corel customer support is totally useless and can't handle even the most minor of issues. It looks it's time for a class action lawsuit.

If I could give no stars I would. Customer support via chat, phone call, technical support ticket is next to useless. It's like being on a merry-go-round that doesn't come to a stop. Technician sends me an email to add details to assist, but the email address isn't maintained any more. Phone help Uk 0800 0232433 gets you through to a help line but comes up on my phone as 'cooker repair service', but it does get you through to a Corel representative - just not a person with any technical knowledge. He promised a technician would call me and that's when I got the email that I can't reply to. This is like trying to see a doctor and being fobbed off with the practice nurse (if you're lucky) by the receptionist who isn't medically trained. Corel your Painter products are good (expensive but good), but having bought a high-end PC with the flagship Nvidia graphics card in it (PNY Quadro RTX A6000 48GB), then to find your programmes don't recognise it is to say the least very, very disappointing, but I'm not alone on that. There are scores of people saying the same thing on Forums and interestingly enough very little help from Corel Technicians. BUCK YOUR IDEAS UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Though I can’t speak for PC owners, who I believe get a much better shake of the deal than Mac OS users…

I’ve had Corel Painter versions from 13 up to 21, but I can’t go any further with these incremental updates, given that things like GPU acceleration is still not implemented properly for the majority of Macs.

If you have a modern Mac (don’t know about M1 onwards) with any kind of Radeon card, forget getting any GPU enhancement, regardless of how good the card is.

Honestly, even Krita (a FREE alternative) offers better brush performance for commercial art than Painter.

Bought Corel Painter 19 back when it was current. I recently reinstalled it because i have time to get back into drawing but it keeps having pop-up ads for the new version WHEN I'M NOT EVEN USING THE SOFTWARE, it minimizes other programs constantly. Its behaving like a more like a virus.

Where do I start? I've never encountered such disorganization and ignorance. The customer service is beyond atrocious to the point where I cannot recommend Corel ANYTHING to ANYONE- I truly feel like I would be doing someone a severe disservice if I did. They have an absolute terrible activation and licensing system- apparently they need 'specialists' to reset activation codes- then they close the chat window- it just happened to me. I was told by a csr that the 'team' was working on it? I replied asking why it takes a team of people to reset activation codes and they closed the chat window. Well, I'm done with this company and i'm gonna let everyone I know how I feel about it-social media is a great thing isn't it? #customerservicematters

I'm new to video editing and after learning the basics on OpenShot decided to shell out a few bucks and upgrade to Video Studio. What a mistake. I chose Corel because I had used Draw in the past for graphic design work and was satisfied. Video Studio has been a nightmare. It freezes up for no reason, crashes constantly and takes 3-5 seconds just to clip a video segment. Even for someone that barely knows what they are doing, I know that this program is garbage. I'm removing it today and buying something else.

I raised a problem back in Aug 2021 and the problem is still not fixed.
A horrific experience in trying to get support.
Rude and straight out lying by level 1 support. They would not turn up for remote support sessions and when they did started uninstalling programs from by laptop. When challenged they cancelled the uninstall resulting in a corrupted registry and then a I had to do a rebuild. The tickets were just closed repeatedly with no communication.
Level 2 support eventually acknowledged the problem and passed it to the dev team.
I was informed that the problem was to be fixed in the next major release Videostudio 2022 so I upgraded only to find it wasn't.
My original tickets were then marked as expired so I had to raise a new one in April 2022.
Since then I have had many many support chat sessions and also called the support line numerous times.
The response is always the same. Someone will be in contact with your shortly but of course there are no emails or phone calls.
Over one year of total frustration.
An experience I would not wish on anybody.
20 Nov 22 UPDATE
Had a chat session to enquire about the acknowledged outstanding bug and was told all the tickets related to the problem had been closed and not to raise any more and that the development team were working on a fix. I would be informed when it was resolved.
When I enquired how action was been taken to resolve the problem when there was no open ticket I was told to wait for an email reslonse and the technician terminated the chat session.
15 months of this frustration as the original ticket was raised in Aug 2021.
Just a continuing nightmare.

Don't do it. I have used it in lew of adobe for as long as i can remember as a pro photog. and the greedy corporation. You have updated and took out the VERY TOOLS I use as an effort to get me to upgrade. NEVER AGAIN>>>> Here is what I have to say to that, why would i upgrade? I already bought it and it WAS working fine. Forget you! I am so disappointed in your sick greed! You should be happy with the customers you have. Let me use what I paid for. You will never get my money again, unless you fix what I have.