@mtgpuzzles Thank you for your feedback.
It’s optional paying us to get Free SSL Certificates using our plugin.
This free plugin provides free SSL Certificates (minus automation). The free version has no automation for domain verification and SSL installation. Free users can follow the installation tab for the written and video documentation and manually do these tasks to get free SSL certificates from their WordPress dashboard. The premium version does everything with complete automation. This fact is mentioned in the plugin description. We have written FREE PLUGIN FEATURES and PREMIUM PLUGIN FEATURES transparently.
We announced the pro version on November 3, 2020.?We explained the difficulties of spending hundreds of hours developing the plugin and then spending time providing support without any monetary return.?Since then, for 1 year and 8 months, we notified our users with admin notice with a link to this blog post:?https://freessl.tech/blog/auto-install-free-ssl-needs-your-help-to-survive/?
According to the announcement, we offered our previous users (users before releasing the premium version on June 29, 2022) 6 months of the premium license for unlimited websites, free of cost (June 29, 2022, to December 31, 2022 ). We then provided a 30% discount till January 31, 2023, to purchase the premium version.
The benefits of the Free version are that users still get
Let’s Encrypt? SSL Certificate is FREE. But they provide it through their API. If you are not a programmer, you need to study and practice programming for years to be able to use the API of Let’s Encrypt? to generate the first Free SSL Certificate for your WordPress website.
Here is where this plugin comes into play. This WordPress plugin provides a hassle-free way to obtain the Let’s Encrypt? free SSL certificate for your website. You don’t need programming or coding experience.
However, the users need to spend some time using this plugin to generate & install the SSL certificate and repeat this for every renewal (every 2-3 months). The premium version does this for the users automatically and saves users’ time.?Time is money for many people.?Now it’s the users’ choice which version they use.
Regarding the plugin’s pricing, many popular web hosting companies charge $100 or more for one year SSL certificate. We know users used to purchase products they found cheaper.
