Not Free

Hi There, I’m sorry you were disappointed that it’s not free, but we do offer 14 days of free trial, without asking for a credit card..
You’ll see the boost in sales and leads in the first few days.
I hope you’ll consider using it, and come back to edit your review.
[ Signature moderated ]

You don’t seem to understand my objection. Let me be clear….

YOU ARE VIOLATING THE www.ads-software.com TERMS OF SERVICE. It is NOT allowable to provide trial-ware on the WordPress repository.

You can read the guidelines (which I’m sure you already have and simply chose to ignore) here – https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/about/guidelines/

It is item number five in the list and it is very, very clear.

To be sure it isn’t missed for other possible users of your plugin, here is the exact rule –

“5. Trialware is not allowed in the repository. It’s perfectly fine to attempt to upsell the user on other products and features, but a) not in an annoying manner and b) not by disabling functionality after some time period. Similarly, you cannot “cripple” functionality in the plugin and then ask for payment or provide a code to unlock the functionality. All code hosted by www.ads-software.com servers must be free and fully-functional. If you want to sell advanced features for a plugin (such as a “pro” version), then you must sell and serve that code from your own site, we will not host it on our servers.”

Get it? Your plugin is not allowed here. Remove it or I am sure WordPress will remove it for you.

@vd11

Hi! I’m Otto. I work on the plugins repository and with the plugins review team. I wrote that rule. ??

While we do not allow trialware in the repository, this has a very specific meaning which does not apply to all cases of time-limited services.

Specifically, we do allow plugins that act as interfaces to external services, even when those services are not free. The easiest example would be to imagine a service which let you upload and host video files. Now, hosting video isn’t exactly cheap, there are bandwidth and space requirements. So such a service might be a paid service only (YouTube notwithstanding). A plugin which displayed videos from that paid service would be acceptable for the repository, even if the service had no free-tier whatsoever.

Now, if that video hosting service was to change to offer a free time-limited trial, then that doesn’t suddenly make the plugin trialware, in our view. The plugin is still free and still interfaces with the same service.

Some plugins just depend on external services to do their job. Plugins exist to send things to Facebook, and the plugin is pretty useless when Facebook isn’t there. Doesn’t mean that we should disallow the plugin in the repository.

We specifically limit the use of the “trialware” rule to cases where the “trial” in question is built into the plugin, not into some service that the plugin interfaces with. If the plugin contains code to disable itself after some time, or has some form of “code” to unlock functionality in the plugin, then that is not allowed. A time trial for a service that the plugin uses, on the other hand, is acceptable.

@storeya: Note that service oriented plugins should make it perfectly clear that they depend on some external service, or they end up with reviews like these. People don’t like “bait-and-switch”, and when they install a plugin only to find out that they now have to sign up on some other site to use it, then that’s a bad user experience. Perhaps you should update the description of the plugin to make sure people know they need an account with your service before they install the plugin.

Hi Otto,
Thank you very much for the clarification. Might want to stick a footnote onto that rule :). I understand that these things change and evolve over time to suit the most current needs. I also see where you would make this exception.

I still take issue with this plugin author not being transparent or clear about the fact this is a service you must subscribe to through their site. You did address this to them though and I hope they take action on it.

And, on a side note, I don’t see where this plugin provides anything that can’t be done for free. Not exactly sure why it’s worth $120.00 a year bare minimum……. Oh well ??

Thanks again Otto!

P.S. @ Storeya – I will happily update my review once you have made your description MUCH more clear and transparent. Thanks.

BTW, @ storeya – Since I was technically wrong about your violation of the TOS, I deeply apologize for my snarkiness in my 2nd reply.

@ Vortex11, I accept your apology, and welcome your feedback:-)

We’ve updated the description text as follow:
We offer 14 days of free trial, without asking for a credit card (affordable monthly fee starts at $9.99). You will also be asked to open a Free StoreYa account. We’re positive that you’ll see the boost in sales and leads in the first few days of using this plugin.

I would highly appreciate it if you could update your review.
Thanks!