Totally Bogus Promotion

Hello CaptainsLog,

It really hurts us to hear your words but with that tone I’m sure I won’t be the one to change them. However, I must defend my team and my company.

Firstly, Screenshots are pictures of the product. You would be the one lying if you said that there is one single screenshot that states any of the features above is free. But why trust my word, trust the internets’: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-share-buttons-analytics-by-getsocial/screenshots/

Secondly, if you cared enough to read the Plugin’s description you’d see there is a clear statement that there are some paid features and a clear relation of which features are free, and which are paid.

Quoting:

Free Apps & Paid Apps:
Most of our apps are free (and we intent it to keep it that way) but we do have some paid features as well. Our Pro Plan gives you access to all paid features and costs $9/month or $90/year. Join hundreds of other paid users.

List of Free Apps:
Horizontal Sharing Bar
Native Sharing Bar
Floating Sharing Bar
Address Bar Tracking
Conversion Tracking
Welcome Bar
Custom Facebook Shares
Google Analytics Integration

List of Paid Apps:
Mobile Web Sharing Bar
Image Sharing
Big Total Shares Horizontal
Big Total Shares Floating
Subscribe Bar
Price Alert

—

I’m sorry if you are expecting everything that can drive value to your blog, website or business to be free but in order to provide quality engineering and super fast/quality support we do need to make ourselves a living.

Building, managing and growing a WordPress Plugin is tough. We need to be highly scored in the repository (to get people to download our product), we need to keep ahead of the competition (by building new features and guaranteeing stability on the existing ones) and we need to make sure that thousands of sites that rely on us have a free(mium) and quality service.

For those hundreds who are willing to pay for extra volume or features we even need to take more care of.

It’s with comments like yours that life on WordPress gets harder. It’s with comments like yours that everyone loses a bit on the way. But hey, that’s how life works, but if your expecting everything for free I wouldn’t expect you to understand.

Take care,
John, CEO.

What you should do, John, is take the screenshots of the PRO features OFF of the WordPress site. That would show integrity.

Otherwise, people, like me, spend time and effort downloading something that you are posing as free features, only to find they are pro features. That is a waste of my time, is deceptive, a scummy marketing practice, and against the WP Terms of Service.

I expect what is here on WP.org to be represented with integrity and honestly. That is what I expect. I gladly pay for what I use on my sites and I gladly support developers, designers, writers, SEO’ers and anyone else that offers value and wants to charge me for it.

The fact that you don’t know that what you’ve done is wrong or you are pretending that you don’t know shows that you are either stupid or a just scummy marketer. I doubt you are stupid, so I think it is the later.

Take the Yoast plugin for SEO as an example. You don’t see screenshots of pro-features pretending to be free: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-seo/screenshots/. He plays by the WP ethical rules.

Or WordPress.com. You don’t see them up-selling here.

You. Though, don’t play by the community rules. And then you come off thinking that you are justified somehow by skirting the rules and deceiving people.

A second options, which actually isn’t even an option here on www.ads-software.com is to put a big PRO sticker across all of the PRO features in your screenshots published here on WrodPress:

– Mobile Share is PRO
– Total Shares is PRO
– Subscribe Bar is PRO
– Floating Total Share is PRO

That would actually show you had a ounce of integrity. But it would still be wrong and violate the WordPress terms of service. However, you didn’t even do that.

The second thing you should do, John, is to apologize to the WordPress community for being such a jerk.

The way you change my blunt tone is when you do the right thing and stop deceiving this open source, thoughtful, giving, non-scummy community.

And plenty of them find a way to make a product worthwhile enough to garner PRO features without deceiving people in the first place.

I write this because this is the SECOND time I got fooled by you, and I find myself compelled to warn others. I came across and downloaded your plugin a few months ago only realize AFTER giving you my personal information of your deceptive marketing practices here on WP.org.

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for the information regarding our alleged WP Terms of Service violation, it’s really important for us to be compliant with the community rules.

Honestly, I can’t seem to find any mention to the prohibition or regulation of screenshots on the public plugin page.

The fact that I don’t know that what you’ve done is possibly wrong or you are pretending that you something exists when it doesn’t shows that you are either stupid or a just scummy user. I doubt you are stupid, so I think it is the later.

Please give me clear information that we’re breaking the rules and I’ll apologize you and the community myself, without a single problem.

Nevertheless, I find the feedback you provide quite useful, and will probably ask our designer to add a ‘PRO’ indication to the screenshots, like we clearly have inside the plugin.

-j

@captains Log I don’t know you & these developers, but you sound very rude. This is not the way to give feedbacks. As a user, it took minutes you to install or uninstall the plugin but it takes really very hard work to develop them. Everyone deserve a piece of their hard work earnings, Paid or nor, either use what is available as free or you better buy it if you have the money, don’t have money, can’t buy, then you better learn to code Mr.

Don’t like it, then at least provide positive feedbacks so that the people developing it genuinely be motivated.

P.S: & I don’t know what time and effort is required to download, install or uninstall a plugin. [Comment moderated]