Was great but we now have to pay hundreds for our stats? Really Jetpack..?

  • I have been using and promoting WordPress and Jetpack since creating my site in 2011. Thanks for the useful tools you’ve provided over the years, but I’m extremely disappointed that I can no longer access my statistical data without paying a ridiculously excessive monthly ‘subscription’.

    The problem when you make changes like this is that you upset a lot of people and this one is particularly egregious. This greedy change affects millions of users who’ve rightly had free access to their stats for years – 15 years in my case – and expect them to be available without being extorted into paying a fortune to regain access to them. I don’t think this is an unreasonable expectation and it seems, almost without exception, that others agree.

    Having to pay $300 AUD a year to access basic stats – my stats – is quite simply outrageous. Changes like this often arise when businesses become elitist, lose sight of the bigger picture or think they are more important than they really are. Features like stats should always be free and the pricing for other modules is manifestly excessive. The price for the complete Jetpack package is currently $900AUD per year, nearly as much as the full Adobe Creative Cloud Suite! My entire web presence including hosting, CDN etc costs a small fraction of that. I cannot imagine how anyone at Automattic sees this pricing as reasonable.

    Piling expensive monthly subs on people for small fractions of functionality like $12.95 a MONTH for a search bar is a profoundly bad idea. Making really useful features very affordable, however, will typically see them widely adopted. I’d be more than happy to pay for modules if they were good value, say a few dollars a month, micropayments for what are pretty basic features if we are being honest. The current Jetpack pricing is, however, and very sadly, completely out of touch with reality. I’ll go as far as to say jobs need to be lost over this.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Plugin Support Ajay Kumar Jain (a11n)

    (@akumarjain)

    Hi @mikefitzman! Thank you for sharing your concerns about the recent changes in the Stats feature. Stats are free for personal sites that don’t promote a product/ service or generate revenue.

    We introduced a premium model for commercial sites to support enhancements and the development of new functionalities. This step was taken to ensure we can continue to deliver and improve upon the quality services our community values. We are committed to making Jetpack better and more useful for all users.

    If your site is not commercial, please <span style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;”>use?this contact form</span> and share your website address. We will manually review your site and make necessary adjustments to provide free stats.

    Thread Starter Mike Fitzpatrick

    (@mikefitzman)

    Hi Ajay, thanks for replying, though unfortunately, it doesn’t address my concerns. My site has always been a small business blog, and I’ve always rightly had free access to my statistical data until now. 15 years. My data.

    I’m not prepared to now pay $300 every year to access my data, and it’s clear that most others aren’t either. Do you think that I’ll get $300 per year’s value out of seeing how many views I get each day/month/year..? Seriously? It’s great to have stats and I loved that Jetpack provided them, but this new extortionate move to withhold them from us behind a ridiculously large paywall is disgraceful, no other way to describe it.

    Please don’t “enhance” anything, just let us access our data as we’ve been doing for decades. As I mentioned, someone at Automattic has gotten ahead of themselves with this egregious pricing structure, but you guys already know that. I just hope that management comes to their senses on this, because this is easily one of the worst software developer/business decisions I’ve encountered and highly unethical in my humble opinion.

    Hi @mikefitzman,

    We understand that our new pricing model isn’t going to work for your situation, and we’ll be sorry to see you go. If you’d like to be able to download your historical stats data, we can help you access that. Please contact us via this form with your site URL and we’ll follow up with next steps. It would be helpful if you reference the link to this forum thread when you contact us.

    Thread Starter Mike Fitzpatrick

    (@mikefitzman)

    Thanks Emily and yes, it will be very disappointing to have to stop using a plugin I’ve used and enjoyed for so long because my data is being withheld from me. I appreciate the offer to download my historical data though and will follow up on that if I decide that the basic data that I can still see is not enough, or if that access ends.

    Are you able to tell me which (if any) of our data we will still be able to see without having to pay for it? I only need basic stats. Mine is a small business blog, 30 – 50k views per month. My entire hosting costs are a small fraction of the new cost just to access my stats.

    Thanks again.

    Hi Mike,

    If you wanted to download your historical data for your own records, we would grant you temporary access so you could do that.

    However, on an ongoing basis, all stats information is behind a paywall for sites that are considered commercial.

    Let us now how you would like to proceed!

    Thread Starter Mike Fitzpatrick

    (@mikefitzman)

    Hi Emily, thanks, to clarify, does this mean that even basic stats in the Jetpack app for example like daily views will no longer be visible? I believe that is what you’ve indicated, but I want to be sure as losing access to all this in terms of historical totals etc is going to be a headache for me, and for many others no doubt.

    Plugin Contributor Stef (a11n)

    (@erania-pinnera)

    Hello @mikefitzman,

    I can confirm what Emily said is correct, so you got that right. We understand the trouble the paywall introduction may cause to many users. However, asking commercial sites to pay is the only way we can keep this feature available to people who run hobby blogs and similar.?

    As Emily said, we’re happy to grant you temporary access to download historical data if needed (contact form link for that!) – Let us know how you’d like to proceed and if you have any more questions about that ??

    Thread Starter Mike Fitzpatrick

    (@mikefitzman)

    Thanks Stef. I don’t want to subsidise others as I am a very small business owner and cannot afford this cost. Huge businesses are a different thing, but I am a one-man show. This stats feature will become my single most expensive website/hosting element, but I may very reluctantly have to pay for it until I can hire someone or find the time to figure out an alternative that includes historical data.

    Plugin Contributor Stef (a11n)

    (@erania-pinnera)

    Hey @mikefitzman,

    We hear you, and we totally see where this is coming from – and we also wish you will need to eventually hire more than one person, meaning your business will blossom ?

    Please contact us via the form so we can figure something out for you: we value the loyalty of long-time users like you ?? Please also mention this review so we can connect the dots!

    • This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by Stef (a11n).
    Thread Starter Mike Fitzpatrick

    (@mikefitzman)

    Thanks Stef, I appreciate that and I’ve reached out via the form.

    Mike

    Plugin Contributor Stef (a11n)

    (@erania-pinnera)

    Fantastic, @mikefitzman! We’ll get back to you very soon.
    We hope you’ll rectify your rating at some point eventually ??
    Speak soon!

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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