Useless

At every opportunity I will defend wpDataTables because it works and is an ideal plugin for tables with excellent support. You, like others, who are quick to abuse the developers, should take the time to read the documentation and you will find you can test fully without purchasing the full version.

So .. think about it … because if you need tables on your WP site this is the plugin for you.

That might be true about the paid plugin but my review is for the version uploaded here, which is essentially a useless demo. You cannot be surprised by the negative reviews when it doesn’t say so in the title. The developers are basically abusing the WP plugins repo for free advertising.

Hello Martin … you are talking COMPLETE rubbish.

READ the DOCUMENTATION and understand what is required.

The documentation is pure misleading rubbish.

If you don’t require the most advanced features because you only create a table in WordPress every now and then, wpDataTables is perfect for you.

The only tables that this plugin allows you to create are based on imported CSV/JSON files. You cannot style them in any way. There’s even an obnoxious ad Generated by wpDataTables inserted in the frontend.

ALL other features are locked, not just advanced features.

Hi @martinsotirov, thanks again for the honest opinion. We already replied in a different thread, quoting the reply partly here:

<p>We understand the reason why you may think there’s “no use” for the free version of the plugin is because some specific feature or use case that you‘re looking for is not available in the plugin hosted here, while it is available in the paid version.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the free version of the plugin does provide useful functionalities and has a lot of built-in features, among which:</p>

• Creating online sortable/searchable tables in the website frontend from uploaded Excel spreadsheets.
• Creating online sortable/searchable tables from uploaded (or linked) CSV files.
• Creating online sortable/searchable tables from uploaded (or linked) JSON files or streams.
• Creating online sortable/searchable tables from uploaded (or linked) XML files or streams.
• Creating online sortable/searchable tables from uploaded (or linked) serialized PHP arrays output.
• Creating interactive Line charts from the table data.
• Creating interactive Column charts from the table data.
• Creating interactive Pie charts from the table data.

Interpreting which features are advanced or not is a debatable topic as most of the people tend to believe that their specific task or use case is implied to be most basic and a “must-have”. Typically when users need to display sortable tables on their websites, they find the provided functionalities enough: there are websites that rely fully on free wpDataTables versions to publish technical specs for thousands of products in their large catalogs; some publish and update price lists, some use it for currency exchange rates, etc., and they are happy with it for years. We mention the limitations transparently in the plugins’ repo home page and there’s no intention to force people to believe they will get something with the free version that they won’t.

Styling can be fairly easily done with CSS — if you need any help with that feel free to let us know and we will gladly assist you.

The footnote link is totally optional and can be disabled with 1 checkbox on the settings page. Many users do not mind putting a credit to us for using the free tool.

Overall, again, we are sorry to see your frustration and if our tool made you feel disappointed in some way, accept our apologies. Let us know if we can help, and we wish you the best with your projects!

No matter how you spin it, the free version is extremely limited and that can be seen in the reviews you get.

If you want to sell a premium plugin, then do it outside of the plugins repo like Gravity Forms, WPRocket, WPML and many other great premium plugins.

If you insist on being included in the WP Plugins Repo, look at Advanced Custom Fields or Yoast for how to do an actually useful free version.

Hi again @martinsotirov – we understand your point of view and you have the right for it; while, in our opinion, not matching your needs does not equal being “useless”. The majority of satisfied users, unfortunately, do not come back to leave a review while people that do not find the feature they are looking for do it right away.

In terms of the features, there is a roadmap for adding more features in the free version while we evolve the paid one.

Best regards!