Sage Live is Dead

It looks like Sages new web-based accounting application has lived out its short life via this blog.

First we announced its existence (which they then confirmed to Accounting Web), then pointed out it was crap anyway (which other more independent people then  agreed with), then we pointed out serious security concerns with it.

Russ McRee got in touch to say the security issues were worse than I’d reported. Russ has some heavy weight credentials behind him and the professionalism that comes with the huge amount of experience he has in this field. So he’s been in touch with Sage to try to get them to address the issues we’ve both uncovered.

They finally got back to him in the past 24 hours. This evening Sage sent out an email saying:

Sage Live is in open Beta, which means that it is still being tested, and it’s a real first for us so we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers.

This may mean that, from time to time, we have to make changes to the site in response to your valuable feedback. Where required, this may mean that we have to take the site down for a while so we can work on it, and this is what has happened on this occasion.

You don’t take a SaaS product offline for an extended period just to apply a couple of updates. So it looks like they’re taking the security concerns seriously.

And good on them. It’s the right thing to do. I was concerned they’d be more worried about losing face than losing customer data and just bury their head in the sand.

By taking it offline to address the issues they are not just conceding that they cocked up, but they’re showing they’re not willing to jeopardise their clients data.

It looks like Sage Live is dead for now. I hope that when it comes back, it’ll be a better product than it was in its first incarnation.

UPDATE: Sage have confirmed to Accountancy Age that it was indeed taken offline due to security issues.