Unexpectedly installed (along with AIO SEO) when I installed WP SMTP

Hi @eaec,

I must straightaway apologize for the confusion here and thank you for sharing your feedback.

I would like to take a second to share with you exactly what has happened, as I believe it’s very important that you know exactly what is happening on your website.

Whenever you run the WP Mail SMTP setup wizard, the third step (labeled “Which email features do you want to enable?”) gives you a number of options to enable or disable. If you keep the Smart Contact Form and WordPress SEO Toolkit options enabled, as mentioned in the last highlighted item in the screenshot above, the WPForms and AIOSEO plugins will be installed (for free).

Kindly note that you do have the option to disable these and skip the installation of those plugins as we understand that you may have other options enabled that you would prefer to use over these, however, we simply aim to provide an ecosystem of great tools that work together to help to take your website to the next level, and we apologize if this was too intrusive.

In case it helps, you may uninstall these plugins by going to Plugins > All Plugins and disabling then deleting each from the list.

Thank you, once more, for your feedback, and we do hope you have a great one.

Thank you for the explanation. I also believe that it’s important to be fully informed about what’s happening with an environment as sensitive to software interrelationships as WordPress can be. That is why I was surprised to see these plugins added to my site. The end of a mildly complicated and unfamiliar setup process is not a responsible place to insert an easily overlooked and enabled by default installation dialog. I will change my review to 3 stars now that I see that there was an actual mechanism at play here, but this does not feel like what a responsible developer does to promote their plugins and I would have been more inclined to try them based on the performance of the SMTP plug-in rather than finding them installed as part of a setup wizard. This is the only time I can remember plug-in installing other plugins like this in the 5 years that have been using wordpress and it feels somewhat irresponsible to me.

Hi @eaec,

Thank you so much for your understanding, and for your additional thoughts on this. We definitely see things from your perspective, and we take none of it for granted.

With that in mind, I was wondering, based on your usage, if you had any specific thoughts on how we could improve this wizard. We’ve been discussing the workflow internally, and I think a user’s outlook would be very valuable to any improvements that we could make here.

Thank you in advance!

Thanks Tajay – I had a potential security issue earlier in the week before this incident so my hypervigilance about unauthorized activity on my site has likely impacted my reaction to this issue so I apologize for my tone.

I think something as simple as a dedicated prompt page at the end of the setup process promoting these 2 additional plugins, or providing the option to learn more about them by email if not install them right then, would be far more effective than slipstreaming them into the setup wizard for the SMTP plugin. I had a positive experience with the core product, but did not even try the other plugins as I wasn’t aware they had even come from that setup process until I found and removed them and traced back their origin.

Hi @eaec!
No worries! The security of your website is paramount and I don’t blame you for being more vigilant. If I was in your situation I think I would do the same.

Also, thank you so much for your suggestion. It definitely sounds like a good option and I’ll be sure to share it with the team so that they can consider the best ways to implement it.

It means a lot that you took the time to share a different way to do this, a customer’s opinion is always so valuable, and it’s the best way for us to know how to provide the best experience for you.

Again, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience and frustration. If you have any other questions or thoughts, be sure to let us know.

Have a great one!

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Tajay Quest. Reason: Enabling [Notify me of follow-up replies via email]