The shift to a paid model feels more like a greedy strategy to squeeze money out of users than a decision to improve the product. The quality of service doesn’t justify the exorbitant price they’re charging. Furthermore, the lack of transparency in communication about this change is unacceptable. We’ve been left in the dark and feel abandoned by a company we once trusted.

Instead of enhancing the user experience, this move seems more focused on lining the pockets of the company behind Jetpack. I feel betrayed and frustrated by this decision, and I’m seeking out more ethical and affordable alternatives to improve my WordPress site. I wouldn’t recommend Jetpack to anyone in its current state unless they’re willing to shell out money for a service that used to be free and reliable.

Just like how Themeisle have acted without any transparency with recent update that FUBARed my site footer. I appreciated trialing the Neve theme for a WP landing site for my portfolio – it is a basic but neat theme… just what I needed at the time. (From memory I donated $ for use of the free theme.)

My focus was more on setting up my LMS and secure hosting of my AWESOME collation of eLearning and multimedia productions. So AWESOME, that I keep get drawn away from freelancing – by securing more substantial contracts. Anyway, after finishing recent project, I returned focus to portfolio update and install, config and testing new Moodle 4.0 – which is FANTASTIC.

I have client engagements lined up for the week ahead and thought I should add a post or two my WP site. It had been a couple of months, so I checked on recommended updates and diligently went ahead with most of them – including updating the Neve theme.

THANKS SO MUCH – for providing NO heads up that the theme update would revert footer copyright/Powered by WP back to default in the Neve theme. I rolled back to previous version, the edit functionality has been removed – essentially FORCING subscription onto most WP newbies. Sure, I can edit php &/or mess around with css to work around it. OR, if you were TRANSPARENT and – I would have signed up for a business plan today.

THANK YOU for encouraging me to ditch the WP landing site and instead invest the time to maximise the new features and ability to customise the front-end look and UX of Moodle 4.0. It is going to cost me a couple of hours today – but hey, better being lazy and propping up Themeisle I believe.

Lucky I didn’t have auto-update enabled, elsewise my site would not achieving compliance best practice after content was revised by your update. When I utilise WP for my operations or for client projects, I am methodical to keep the sites lean, & avoid any/all ‘tweaks’ where possible. Increasingly so for security considerations in the current/emerging environment. I liked the look, feel and robust nature of your theme – unfortunately, I cannot trust your business model.

“I’ve been observing my brain trying to build narratives backward, looking for past decisions that brought me to this point. I must have done something smart, something that helped, right?

Not really, not in this case. Mostly, it’s just luck.”

Good luck with that @ionutn – maybe go back to some reflection and transparency reports. There are more positive means to generate sustainable growth – far brighter GNU futures

“This community that we have, that we’re building, that does so much, has to grow. We can’t compete with Apple, we can’t compete with Google, directly, in the field of resources. What we can eventually do is head count and heart count. We can compete on the ground of ideology because ours is better.”

— Edward Snowden, NSA whisteblower, speaking at LibrePlanet 2016.

Accessed fsf.org, 2022.08.28 05:05 UTC +10 BNE

The support is also superb and my one small problem which had me beat was fixed in no time. Karina on the support team, logged into my site and that was it.

I like companies that can follow up a great plugin with a great support service

I can’t mark any higher, especially considering the price.

Malky