I thought I would go ahead and post my own personal opinion on the Zenminer after three days of trying to get it running.

While the software seems to have a nice web interface and the ability to view miner status remotely would be cool, I have to say that I am not a big fan.

Here are the three not insignificant issues I have with the product.

   1. Lack of documentation.  There is no "official" setup guide that I have yet been able to easily find.  Lots of people have put up their own on the forums or other places and Eric at Zenminers seems to be a decent guy who tries really hard to help but waiting a day for an email response on how to setup, configure and troubleshoot an installation is ineffective and frustrating.  Also, the information posted in anecdotal guides is often misleading.  As an example, I have seen several threads where it was claimed that the Zenminer supported both Fury's and Gridseeds on the same miner.  This quote from Eric in an email disavows that; "Please unplug the Gridseed as it is not supported yet. Once it is supported, you'll still only be able to use one type of device per controller."

   2. No "real support system" in place.  Again, Eric seems nice and answers emails and posts in forums but one guy trying to plug holes in a dike in such an informal manner is not a support system.  My own experience is that there is about an 8-12 hour delay between emails and after two days of working with him directly on getting my miner running, I would still not be mining if I did not have another rPi that I am just running cgminer on.  They could fix this by getting a ticketing system in place and letting users post their issues via their website.  With ticketing they would be able to correlate common problems and resolve them or update their non-existent documentation to better educate their users.  This would be much more effective than running one poor guy into the ground.

   3. Lack of transparency.  Zenminer needs to put on their website their terms and conditions for using the software and clearly state what they are getting out of this as well as a customer privacy statement.   Also, they need to give their users root access to their devices.  Obfuscating this leaves room for doubt as to what is going on behind the scenes.  Is my device which is sitting behind my firewall, but which they clearly have remote access to secure? Can they siphon off my mining?  What other access do they get that I am not aware of because they have not posted their terms and conditions and/or provided clear documentation?  I also would like to see more about the company, who the principles are other than Eric,  how many customers they are supporting, and what other mining related activities they are involved in.   Leaving us to fill in the blanks only leads to wild speculation that ultimately isn't good for their image.

At this juncture I would say that the product is "alpha" at best and I will probably not be using it until it, and the company mature and I am certain I won't get "Goxed".