Give admin access for support by plugin developer ?

I would not do that.

If a plugin or theme developer who’s code is hosted on www.ads-software.com asked to be able to log into a user’s site and that’s found then they’re informed to cut it out. If they keep doing that then they risk getting their code removed from the www.ads-software.com repo.

Users of free software are not customers.

In your case, you are a customer of a plugin not on this site. It is different but I suggest you tell them this: you do not hand over the keys to your house when someone is supposed to fix a window.

You bought a plugin. It’s an accessory to your site. It may be a very important plugin to your site but they are literally asking for the keys to your house. This has gone amazingly bad in the past.

I suggest you install this plugin.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/

It can provide them and you a lot of information about your site without giving them the ability to log into your site. It also lets you disable plugins and your theme without anyone else being effected. So you can trouble shoot and while you are people can still visit your site as they normally do.

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your reply and confirming my suspicion. I’m not going to give them access, even if it means I won’t be able to use the plugin anymore. I bought a one year licence and I have used the plugin for 10 months now, so no real harm done.
They also proposed to take over my screen with remote access but they would charge me for that.
Problem is that I have not found an alternative yet, hope I’ll find another plugin that does the trick.
Thanks for your help !

Is the developer asking for a WordPress admin account, or some other server admin account?

Depending on where the plugin is hosted (such as the WordPress plugin repository), you might be able to find an older version; there are numerous pages that go through the various ways you can do this.

An opinion: as a developer, if a version of a plugin stops working and it appears like it might be a bug, I don’t treat it as a support case but as a QA case. This comes with a different set of responsibilities for both parties: for the issue reporter, the primary responsibility is to provide enough information to reproduce the issue (but to weed out irrelevant information). If you can do this, the developer should then be able to implement a fix in the next version. In these cases, the developer never needs to touch anything on your server, which is what makes a case more of a support issue. Also, debugging generally requires having more control over a server than you’d get with just a WP admin account (though server access can be helpful in figuring out how to recreate the issue). As for how this applies to you, you can see if the developer is open to this route.

Another option (if the developer is only requesting a fee for screen sharing and not to work on your server) is to set up a new site so that you can safely give them access. In particular, set up just enough to recreate the issue (this is also a way to fulfill an issue reporter’s primary responsibility) and don’t put anything on the site that could be used to compromise another site (e.g. don’t reuse passwords from other sites).

Thanks Outis for sharing your point of view.
The developer is asking for a WP admin account. I understand what you mean but my problem is that I’m not a developer and that I don’t have enough knowledge to shield information that might be abused by developers with wrong intentions.
I might even not be aware that something fishy was going on because I’m only an amateur.
It is also my opinion that if a developer wants to debug his plugin and needs help from the “host” he should not charge anything for that.
If however the problem with the plugin is caused by wrong doing of the host that is something else.
In my case, since nothing has changed to the server, or to WP, no updates at all except updating the plugin, I think it is safe to say : it worked before the update, it should work after the update. If the plugin doesn’t work anymore, I would like the old version back that did work, instead of having “to trust a stranger to my house” to help him fix his plugin and even having to pay for it.
To end positive : I have found another solution, so I don’t need the plugin anymore.