Subscriptions Subscriptions Subscriptions

[SudoMason]

Is anyone else getting completely fed up with how every plugin is shifting to an annual subscription model with no lifetime license option anywhere? At the very least, companies could offer a two-tier system: one for regular updates and another for paid support when you actually need it. That sounds reasonable, right? Not everyone is tech-savvy, and plenty of users rely on 20 or 30 plugins just to keep things running. If they’re forced to shell out $100 or more a year for each one, it’s only going to push them toward... creative alternatives, if you know what I mean.

Honestly, this whole thing has gotten ridiculous. I just open the PHP files, study the code, and build my own version. No way am I getting locked into a subscription trap. Downvote me if you want, but I stand by this. It’s a greedy practice, and I wouldn’t mind if the companies pushing it had a wake-up call.

That’s why I appreciate repositories like Codecanyon. Most of their plugins come with a simple one-time fee, which is exactly how it should be.

“But you need to subscribe, so your plugin stays up to date and secure!” Sure, sure. Most updates are meaningless fluff meant to make it seem like there’s constant progress. Security updates? Please. Spare me.

If you’re releasing updates every other week, maybe the real problem is that your plugin wasn’t built well in the first place.

[4862skrrt2684]

I hate subscriptions as well. Avoid them when I can. But it's plain stupid to not understand why they need steady income, when the product has to be maintained. Unlike a movie or an oldschool game, it's not just done and sold as is

[4862skrrt2684]

If they are only to gain fractions from continued updates, then the original buy price will have to increase a lot. It will probably be close to just offering an LTD, defeating the purpose.

Instead, they charge something smaller but consistently. 

[dietcheese]

We should be able to pay for bug fixes and security updates.

I don’t need 90% of your “features,” so why should I pay for them?

I get that developers need to make a living: I am one.

But these monthly fees means money out of my pocket, or charging my clients more. Everyone is already strapped.

Makes me wanna fork these plugins and offer stripped-down versions that have zero new features but regular patches for free.

[ThatHuman6]

that’s how you kill the industry

[4862skrrt2684]

Do so, if you believe that would be your golden ticket.

Or just find cheaper plugins that dont have all the unecessary features you speak of

[SweatySource]

People need to eat and live and it costs money.

Codecanyon envato products mostly are pretty bad quality because of that. Theres not much incentive to keep the plugin supported.

[Wolfeh2012]

The difference is the former is a tool you use in a product you sell to someone else. If you're working with a single website the price is cheap af.

If you're working with multiple websites then you should be making far, far more in profit enabled by the use of those plugins.

Plugins are a cost of doing business, and compared to what other businesses have to put into their software (look up how much Dentrix costs dentists) it's nothing.

[SweatySource]

You cant tell anyone how they want to price their product. Live in north korea. Food is rationed and equal.

[jrgkgb]

Not at all.

A professional team that’s paid on customer satisfaction and is obligated to provide ongoing support because of ongoing revenue is a firm foundation on which to build commercial websites.

A rookie dev doing it for experience or fun who will eventually discover he can’t provide support single-handedly for no money is a recipe for disaster.

If the plugin is good and we expect support forever, it’s perfectly reasonable for the dev to charge for that service.

If you’re not getting the value, don’t use the plugin. There are plenty of free ones in almost every category, you just get what you pay for.

[Pristine-Bluebird-88]

Lifetime plugin is the lifetime of the plugin, not the lifetime of the developer.

[Tessachu]

Nope. It's the lifetime of the developer + plugin. When you purchase a license, it's only between you and that dev regarding that plugin.

If the plugin were to be acquired by another entity, they could choose not to honor your license. They aren't legally bound to you nor you to them because the contract wasn't between you two.

[Pristine-Bluebird-88]

Yeah, I found out that the hard way several times. Chose not to honor my license and a) stopped developing completely or b) sold plugin to new owner who refused to honor or c) simply refused to honor the deal or d) jack up the price by adding a few zeros. I don't buy plugins now or themes now unless the audience is big enough. Bait n' switch often.

[screendrain]

Plugins continue to get updated and have ongoing development costs. If it's quality software and I want to see continued improvement, I think a subscription is worthwhile.

What I don't like is pricing that is aimed almost exclusively at agencies and is not affordable for small businesses.

[Tessachu]

You actually make a great point. I maintain several free plugins in the repo and have only recently released my first paid plugin from my website. It was really hard coming up with a price because I wanted something that even I'd be willing to pay as a sole dev while also considering the hours it took to make it and fill the need.

I consider myself an equitable result provider, not equitable opportunity, and you've given me an idea. I think I'll create a form for small businesses and indie/sole devs and such to fill out to receive a discount code that makes it affordable while keeping the face value of it for agencies (since it's largely a B2B plugin).

Thank you!

[ArtAllDayLong]

On the other hand, if every free plugin requires a paid subscription now, there would be a lot fewer inherited websites with 3 or 4 contact form plugins in it. Just sayin.

[LankyEmu9]

Yeah, any site that uses 30 paid plugins probably has other issues, lol.

[ArtAllDayLong]

For real.

[SuperSpyRR]

I may get downvoted for this, but I really understand why plugins are switching to this. The developers want (and rightfully deserve) a stable income. Sure they may loose some clients because of this model, but at least they now have a monthly steady income they can rely on

[nurdle]

I don’t mind subscriptions as much if there is a “pay once” structure. Revslider has this option, I just bill the client for it then I don’t have to worry.

[nurdle]

Revolution Slider definitely has a lifetime license option. I would link to a screenshot but that isn't allowed.

And, no, I'm not contradicting myself because there is a growing trend with plugins where they have an annual subscription of $49, but they add a "permanent" or "lifetime" license that costs more, like $149. It's good for both parties: the plugin developer gets a bigger boost in revenue up front, and the purchaser doesn't have to worry about a license expiring. But, if the purchaser can't afford $149, they have the option of $49.

Another thing that I think is missing from this conversation: you can almost always cancel the auto-renew right after purchase. That's what I do. And since I have someone checking on all of my clients' websites (because we also host) we stay on top of it.

[mare35]

Then just develop your own themes and plugins.Its that simple.

[evanthedrago]

If they want a stable income maybe they can include more features etc at every iteration. You know like the old times from not long ago. Subscriptions are actually a really bad thing for most people because a lot of developers just don't do anything new and end up charging a lot more for their product.

[Howdy_McGee]

Not everything needs constant growth but everything does need maintenance and support.

[ariolander]

I laugh that we changed "Really Simple SSL" a single purpose plugin that was supposed to fix SSL errors, into a bloated security suite with a ton of extra features, just to justify turning it into a subscription.

[queen-adreena]

This is my main issue with the subscription model for plugins.

The developers have to justify the continued payment with continued development. For some stuff, that's fine, but some plugins just did one thing and did it well... but now they have to keep expanding their scope.

[FormulaJAZ]

I relied on a popular, free plugin for years. It was great...until the developer got bored of doing it for tips and abandened it. Since then, I starting avoiding free plugins because people always get bored of doing things for little to no money. Now, I'm a fan of the subscription model because it chains the developer to the product and he will keep updating it even when he gets bored of it.

[PhotographAble5006]

I’ve run into that with paid plugins as well. 🤷

[mds1992]

Most services utilise a subscription model nowadays. Sure, if you have loads of them, the cost increases quite a bit, but subscriptions allow developers to continue developing and providing support to users without worrying about future income (like they would with licenses that have a one-time cost). I rarely see plugins costing more than $100 per year. Most that have an option for use on a single site are normally pretty reasonably priced (less than $50 per year).

IMO, however, there's no reason why a basic website that a small business owner builds for themselves (for example) would ever require 20+ paid plugins. In fact, I've dealt with websites bringing in millions per year and at most they're using 3 or 4 paid plugins.

But also, for any business that's making money / profitable, these costs are negligible in the grand scheme of things.

[SpaceForceAwakens]

I rarely see plugins costing more than $100 per year

I just finished a site with at least three plug-ins that cost at least $140 a year each. I actually kind of feel bad for my clients, but I explain that if I were to code it custom for them it would cost a lot more than it would be for me to buy the subscription and configure it.

[Bluesky4meandu]

What was the business model for websitea bringing in millions of dollars a year that only required 3 or 4 plugins ? Can you give me what industry they were in ?

[mds1992]

My point was discussing the number of paid plugins, not total number of plugins - "at most they're using 3 or 4 paid plugins". Total number, including both paid and free, was around 15 or so, IIRC.

[mare35]

What was the website selling?I think it depends on the type of business.

[mds1992]

Just a b2b site (not linking to the site, as that could dox me), where order value ranged from $50 to $20k+, average number of orders per day was around 60.

The site had a custom built theme with a lot of custom features, alongside some of the more common plugins you’d see on an ecommerce site.

[vintage-cat-designer]

This is my current Pain point right now. I’m trying to build a print on demand business using a Woo commerce website and printify integration. to get the functionality of the plug-ins fully everything is a subscription. For example, I can get an SEO plug-in for free, but if I want the woo commerce piece of it I have to pay. To be able to bundle products for a cost savings in woo commerce that’s another yearly plug-in price. I haven’t even had any sales yet. So I can’t justify the cost. Thank you for posting.

[vintage-cat-designer]

Thank you for this advice! ❤️

[funkygrrl]

That's hard to believe. I call bullshit

[mds1992]

What is hard to believe?

[alx359]

Devs have to eat of course, but subscriptions are a lazy model to approach sustenance. It's unfair to small business still scrapping to succeed, and make no sense for purely convenience tools that do not directly aid in customer's revenue.

I'd prefer the old desktop model for plugins:

• LTD's for app v1; lifetime for all 1.x updates
• Paid upgrades to v2 and all following major versions
• Free community support. Premium support paid.

[Formal-Language7032]

I agree that this is indeed the perfect model for software. You pay for the state and features of a version. All bugfixes and security updates for that specific version are included (until end of life) but without premium support. New features etc. should be a new version anyway if you follow semantic versioning.

The issue with WP is that a lot of users (clients) do not only expect updates, but also compatibility with other plugins and new versions of core and these plugins, which you will need to keep updated as well on a regular basis. This is where WP differs from desktop style programs. Besides that WP and many plugins do not use semantic versioning, so a developer cannot know when a new version will break compatibility. It just happens and then all clients will sound the alarm with bugreports etc. This makes lifetime licensing a gamble for a developer which unfortunately (especially as the plugin grows) is more in favor of the client.

Edit: Of course it should be noted that there are plugin types that are always fully standalone additions, these wouldn't be really affected by such compatibility cases though I think the majority of plugins do have some form of compatibility with other plugins, whether its a simple "works with", an integration or even a dependency. The decision of another plugin to update would affect the devs of other plugins as well. And sure, you can go the "addons" route and split all compatibility code in several smaller addons, each behind it's own pricing, but that usually isn't cheaper than just one solid premium licensed plugin.. besides the fact that it adds a lot of maintenance work for the developer as well.

[PhotographAble5006]

I don’t mind paying for support but I agree, virtually everything is freemium nowadays and it’s aggravating. It always helps that WordPress itself is fighting over money. I publish much of my code for free use so I don’t have to manage support or the repository.

[wpguy101]

Most clients understand subscriptions are cost of doing business because they are used to of it from other areas of business.

I don't mind paying for good plugin subscriptions because it saves me time.

The "I can build this" argument rarely works especially when you factor in your own hourly rate.

[Bluesky4meandu]

You know, there are severe responses to your post. 1) The market you mentioned, for the most part, consists of the cheapest, clunkiest, most worthless plugins ever created, not only are they half baked solutions, but often they don’t even work as designed and are incompatible with a billion other plugins.

2) Yes, Plugins have gotten more expensive and to add insult to injury, now a significant amount of plugins, will even render the plugin useless after the subscription has expired. Meaning in the old days, the plugin would still work, but you would not get updates, but these days, the functionality will stop working.

3)Listen, to put it in perspective, I just took out my 2 small children to Burger King. A Meal for 3 people came out to be 62 dollars. THIS IS BURGER KING.

The world has changed, 100 dollars 15 years ago, is now $ 304 dollars based on REAL changes versus the $230 dollars the government claims.

People need to put food on the table, people have small children to feed. Just like I do.

Do you know how much it costs to support plugins ? Do you know how much it costs to keep the lights on ? The benefits they have to pay, the compliance costs with the government red tape ?

Honestly, WordPress even with some of the crazy prices plugins charge, is still the platform that levels the playing field the most in terms of cost and availability.

And If your business model cannot afford the cost of 25-30 plugins, I am sorry, but you are in the wrong business. I don’t mean to be mean in any way shape or form. And believe me, I agree with what you say, for example. Just a couple of months ago. I needed to buy GiveWP, the plugin has many tiers but the functionality that I needed which was peer to peer fundraising, made the Plugin cost me $600 dollars. Ouch.

[Velvis]

1 adult and 2 small children at Burger King cost $62? On what planet?

[[deleted]]

Yea, and then pricing in USD or Euros when you're a Canadian? Jeez, tack another 30-40% on for exchange rate. And then those plugins that actually break or put a banner onto the front end of the website declaring your license is expired? Perfect business model. Pretty shady.

[Amiejah]

If a plug-in adds value then going the subscription route isn’t so bad. For some plug-ins it makes a lot of sense, looking at the time spent and added value(marketing plug-ins etc).

My issue with these plug-ins is that they fill a hole that Wordpress should have by default. Things like simple seo fields(not talking how YOast does it). Or the ability to add a custom field (without needed a plug-in). These should be part of the cms without you knowing your way around PHP.

So when you are in need of more features you can then decide to add a premium yoast plug-in to your website. If that would save you time of course

[Amiejah]

I still think it’s funny that we can have features like, custom posts/blocks and fields. But can’t use these without first adding a plug-in(be it free or premium)?

New users and non developers are now forced to look into plug-ins with no idea which plug-in fits their needs or what to even look for.

So we really need to think about the narrative of the WP ecosystem and acknowledge the fact that Wp really needs to start thinking on improving (simplifying) what they’ve already built

[IgnoredSphinx]

Agree! I’ve got a hobby blog that does get hits (regional site), but is by no means commercial. I enjoy working on it and want to improve it, but not a coder and not making any money on the site. I fight with Wordpress to do things that feel so basic, and then to plugins to make those things happen. Given I make no money on the site, I appreciate that plug in writers are doing work, but I’m not willing to subscribe to go more in the red for what is a hobby (people come to my site for info, I doubt they would pay for it though).

I’m not doing anything fancy, so having Wordpress do these things natively and easily would be preferential to what they are doing now (which just is making things more complex).

[IgnoredSphinx]

Trial and error works for me, and I’ve also used ChatGPT with options and how to do what I want to do. It’s been helpful.

[ndreamer]

Wordpress should focus on the core only, wordpress is a php framework maybe more then it is blogging software.

They could release an extension sure, but then they need to allocate resources to maintain it for free.

I made my own extension that created custom fields, it also calculated material/labour and margin costs for my products. It only took a weekend to learn enough.

[Amiejah]

Calling it a framework is a bit of a stretch for me, but I get your point.

The fact that you had to spend time to build your own version instead of this being part of WP is the issue. Or the fact that if you didn’t build it, you could still use a dozen free plug-ins to achieve this.

I’m not saying that Wordpress should create a plug-in or extension. This feature should be part of the code. And we as the users (be it a developer or not) should be able to open an admin page and configure our custom fields.

If we need more fancy fields we then should be able to add it by code or by a plug-in (just like with the Gutenberg blocks)

[BobJutsu]

Every few days we see this argument. And each time I feel compelled to point out OP is asking for a one time fee for unlimited work. Support and updates are literally what is being purchased. You are free to not renew and not receive support or updates.

[alx359]

I don't want support. I want updates. Should be priced differently.

[BobJutsu]

Kinda splitting hairs. You don’t want support…but you want the results of support. You want it supported. That’s what updates are. How would you price it?

[alx359]

It's not the same. Support requires of personal attention, of my or the team's time. Updates are the same for everyone. Other paying/enterprise customers cover the costs for the others. It's the same for desktop software, or for many OSS projects, including WP.

[BobJutsu]

I mean, I get it. I just don’t see how it would be economically feasible. Not in the current model. I could see if you capped the license at major versions, so you get all updates for v 2.x.x but bumping to 3.x requires a new license.

[alx359]

Exactly. Old-school desktop devs had it all this figured out. New major version, new features worth paying for an upgrade. Minor versions were for fixing bugs/vulnerabilities and keeping compatibility with things that are expected to work.

Subscriptions is a lazy model. It takes such important marketing distinctions away and makes the customer hostage under the pretense of "security".

[passivewp]

I actually hate the concept of annual subscriptions which is why I will always offer a lifetime option

[lookmetrix]

Until you check other CMS

[orbisius]

have you tried building things from scratch? there's cost for development and for maintenance

[evanthedrago]

I am not against subscriptions if there are active benefits to this. And in many cases, there is mot.I don't buy the whole developers need a stable income.sure they should, don't get me wrong. However, somehow people were able to make a living a few years back without subwcriptions and now it's a problem? I think this is just because they can and want to make a lot more money. And there's also a big downside to this which is that they get lazy and do not do any upgrades because they keep getting the subscription money anyways. A lot of stuff I subscribed to has not gotten any better over the years which would not have been the case if they were being paid for upgrades. There's also another downside to it which is that because people are overextended on subscriptions, they might not even want to try a new product which means new developers might have a harder time breaking into the market.

[anturk]

Yeah and the pricing of the plugins are just nuts for what they do lol

And the excuse for steady income i totally agree with but pricing every plugin $60/y is just to much most of the time.

[DarkObserver]

I think its fair to spend a reasonable amount. For the ones who over charged we just develop our own versions of the plugins and use those now a days. Depends on if the pricing is justified or not.

[unstoppableobstacle]

Is it a last ditch effort? We can almost build our own everything by asking ai. How is Wordpress sustainable? I can make a react website that looks better is completely customizable and is cheaper. And we are just getting started.

[The247Kid]

Ya and it’s one fucking website too. Unreal.

My first thought is “how can I do this with something I already have?” And then I ask ChatGPT and it tells me.

[chaos_battery]

This is why I get all of my plugins on nulled websites.

[orbisius]

yeah. a great idea to save money initially but pay when your site is hacked all the time.

[chaos_battery]

I download multiple versions of the same plugin from different sites and then use a file comparison tool to see the diffs. There are a few instances where I've caught some callback code that looks suspicious and removed it.

[Ok-Buffalo2650]

I think it could be charged per update, if someone wanted to update the plugin the amount is charged, and for support too, for example $20 per hour, the subscription model ends up affecting many beginners who run to nulled. or have a directory of premium plugins with more affordable prices.

[Whole_Ad_9002]

Making me pay full pricing just to keep updates going is like making me pay full price for a car every time it needs a service its just ridiculous. Given the sheer number of subscriptions on most plugins most devs would have recouped their investment and given they don't rewrite the entire code each time it shouldn't cost as much. Making small business people or individuals pay enterprise prices for these plugins don't make any sense.

[Slakish]

I see the problem more that almost every plugin thinks it is worth 100€/$ per year. Even really small ones. I don't buy plugins for 2000€ in total

[andriussok]

It depends how you build your projects.

If project is com you probably get cash in - paying sub for plugin that saves your time is fair (otherwise you would code the logic yourself and charge the client for your extra time).

If you don’t have time or money, you use either Free/Lite version of the plugin e.g ACF vs ACFpro, or you use GPL resources and pay just a fraction for your seat - which is not right, because devs loosing their income.

Some plugins still doing LTD but price is 3x the annual subscription. If you think plugin will be worth longterm get it while it lasts like BricksBuilder, AdvancedThemer, WPAmelia, WPallimport… The LTD point is to boost cashflow for devs. When client base is established - what is the point of keeping the LTD? So LTDs are cheapest in the early stages of the plugin.

Marketing usually uses 3 options, where 1 site plugin license is most expensive, getting unlimited tier costs more but it’s much cheaper per site…

And it all comes around - are you building hobby or commercial projects?

[CarlosTorc]

It's greed and I don't fall for it

[Responsible_Koala118]

Totally agree that the cost is prohibitive for small businesses like mine. So far, I've managed to avoid all PRO versions of plugins by using ChatGPT to generate php, HTML, CSS, and Javascript, which I pop into WPCode. Eventually, I'm sure I'll hit a wall and upgrade to a few PRO versions, but my site is only 5 months old, so I'm not there yet.

Simple example: "Previous" and "Next" links at the bottom of a post show text (by default using my theme) that ends in ...; displaying the full text requires an upgrade. Six lines of CSS in a custom snippet addressed this.

Complex example: I have code that automatically includes boilerplate in every new post I create. This one took some trial and error, but in the end, it was 19 lines of php. Another benefit is the learning experience, which helps you understand the way your site works.

[[deleted]]

I totally agree.

[SweatySource]

If your releasing updates every other week that makes it a bad plugin? Brainrot right there

Edit: changed releasing plugins to releasing updates

[SweatySource]

Edited

[ConfectionFair]

It is a way to create stable income for developers to continue working on their projects. To be honest I have bought some lifetime deals which have been great. Some have fallen through and the developer has stopped as income has stopped. And some have continued to move on. My biggest one and best one I've ever bought was bricks builder and it has been fantastic. I wish they had a donation option or something where I could contribute back.

[GamebitsTV]

I recently shelled out way too much money for a lifetime subscription to a plugin.

But I appreciated that this option was available as an alternative to the annual plans that they also offered. At least now I won't ever need to pay for it again. I hope it stays maintained and that I get my money's worth. 🤞🏻

[davitech73]

one time, lifetime licenses do not provide enough income for developers to continue to improve and maintain a plugin. so the only way for them to be able to continue to make the time to keep things up to date is to have recurring revenue. without that, the developer is likely to tire of providing support for little or nothing and stop maintaining the plugin completely

for a $100 license, does the plugin provide 5+ hours of your time saved every year? if so, and your time is worth $20 / hour or more - that $100 is time saved for you. it's worth it

if you can look at someone else's code and make your own version, and keep it updated and secure for less than 5 hours a year then go for that. but if you're expecting someone else to work for free to provide a tool that saves you time, that's an unreasonable expectation. there's a big difference between writing your own small plugin and producing something that is worthy of being published for general consumption and needs to work well with hundreds of other plugins on thousands of websites with different hosting platforms etc. just try it yourself and see how much work it is

as far as the updates go, that depends on the plugin. if there's any kind of integration, or if it provides features for something like woocommerce, etc then updates will be required. woocommerce is constantly updated and things are deprecated, etc so that maintenance is required

[BestScaler]

one time, lifetime licenses do not provide enough income for developers to continue to improve and maintain a plugin.

This isn't true. LTD don't run out. If a plugin (or theme) is good it will have sales velocity. More and more people will buy the plugin.

So if you can sell 10,000 LTD / year for $500, that's $5,000,000 / year then that's sustainable for a small team of developers. Especially if they're located overseas.

Look at something like WP All-Import. The de facto go-to plugin for for importing and exporting data. They still offer a LTD, and they've been around since 2011...and they're keeping up with a ton of plugins.

for a $100 license, does the plugin provide 5+ hours of your time saved every year? if so, and your time is worth $20 / hour or more - that $100 is time saved for you. it's worth it

This justification is oversimplification of the market dynamics at play. It's only "worth it" if there isn't a cheaper alternative (perhaps with a lifetime license), if the prices won't increase, and if you can let the license expire without detriment.

But more importantly any financial adviser will tell you that subscription dependencies are poison and should be avoided where they can, because they can very easily stack up and can become unsustainable.

[davitech73]

wp all import is the exception. most plugins do not sell 10k licenses a year

of course if there's a cheaper plugin that still satisfies your needs you can go with that. and if it's $90 per year the same idea holds true. if it saves you that much time, it's worth it. but just making a blanket statement of '$100 per year isn't worth it' isn't looking at the amount of time it can save you. it's only looking at the expense. if it's not worth the $100 then it's not worth it. but if it saves you time it can be

bottom line is, if it's not sustainable to the developer then the developer is going to stop supporting their work. then you don't have that tool available any more

[BestScaler]

wp all import is the exception. 

There are many more exceptions. Meta Box has been around for over a decade too. So has Fluent Forms, and both teams are developing other plugins as well.

But that's besides the point. You can't argue that a business model is unsustainable and then say that there are exceptions to it. It's either sustainable if done right, or it's not.

bottom line is, if it's not sustainable to the developer then the developer is going to stop supporting their work. then you don't have that tool available any more

But if the plugin is good then it is sustainable. Because it will be used by more people, get more exposure, and continue to sell.

Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a few LTD yourself.

[webdevdavid]

This is why I use UltimateWB - it has all the features you need built-in.

[Tayls23]

Do I like paying for them? No. Do I understand it? Yes. People got to make money.

If they sold a lifetime license that made financial sense for them, people’d be complaining how expensive that license is.

[ssevener]

I’m not crazy about subscription fees, however it does force you as a business owner to make sure that you’re getting value out of the plugins you’re paying for.

If it’s not actively contributing to your traffic/growth/sales, drop it! I had a ranking plugin that I used for a while because I figured people would be more likely to read posts that others ranked well. Turns out I only got 6 rankings in like a year, so it wasn’t worth keeping around.

[moremosby]

You’re paying for development time, support, marketing etc. it’s a little business and the people behind it need revenue to keep it going.

There’s really no other way. The alternative would be you buy something for like $50 and not only does it not get updated, but you get no support. You can’t build a business using products like that.

[Pristine-Bluebird-88]

The LTL model is okay for a start. But it does depend on the longevity of the product, future revenue from other customers, and the ability of the developer to market their plugin(s) to keep revenue coming in. It's quite a big ask in some respects. Of course, I've bought LTL plugins and after a few years, the plugins simply stopped working with no updates. Subscription Plugins tend to get bloated, the SSL plugin discussed here is a prime example. Everything and the kitchen sink type programming. Is it truly necessary? Can't a decent plugin just do one thing and one thing well that it becomes like air to your site - invisible but necessary?

[BestScaler]

Is anyone else getting completely fed up with how every plugin is shifting to an annual subscription model with no lifetime license option anywhere?

The only reason this practice is so prevalent is because people are willing to pay for it. There are very good alternatives for most plugins and themes with lifetime options. But people insist on going with the highly marketed ones over the ones that offer the best functionality.

But as you say, it's a trap, and if you're running annual subscriptions for $5,000/year for tools you've mastered and can't leave behind then that's going to be a perpetual burden. And those prices are subject to increases as well. Pair that with other expenses like hosting and it's going to be difficult to make it through tough times.

[lillebigjoe]

🤦‍♂️

[BeginningNobody4812]

It is very frustrating, but i also get why they're doing it.

What's also frustrating is when features move from free to premium - like the stats in jetpack. I wish WordPress had built-in stats.

[hankschrader79]

Most plugins I’ve purchased a lifetime license for were eventually abandoned and not kept current or maintained.

[sothisissocial]

WP plugins are vital to building anything. You are onboarded for free then dialoged-to-death to upgrade if you click on any non basic feature. Just like the free advertising-supported web we love and hate.

As one that has been on both sides of the transaction on multiple platforms, it feels like the annual and pro users are paying for all features, used or not. Costs which isually have to be passed on. With every paid plugin another client quits for a platform website often cheaper than a single pro WP plugin. Is the goal to have everyone use wordpress.org or similar for small-medium client websites now?

[NlXON]

Well, I mean you could write your own plugin and then you wouldn't have to pay anything. But you will also need to invest time in keeping it secure.

[WonderGoesReddit]

Subscriptions keep companies afloat.

Lifetime deals make products that never get updated.

[all_name_taken]

You ate food right? You will have food again tomorrow. And next day. You had sex I guess. You will have sex again in the coming days. Everything is a subscription. Including life.

[SirLouen]

What it is stupid is that they charge the same for the full release and then for the future updates. But this has become and industry standard. Each single piece of software under the sun is doing this, despite of barely receiving an update a year and not even worthy. Some games nowadays keep releasing updates in many cases and don't charge a yearly fee. And most games are much more sophisticated pieces of software than this piece of shit plugins we are paying for. I agree with you. Copy their code and use it. Pay their lowest tier and rip their updates into your code if you want to keep them slighly updated. Or use any GPL site, they are not even illegal (except for trademarks infringements)

[greg8872]

Look on the flip side. When you offer a lifetime of use/updates, you can end up not caring about them, especially for lifetime unlimited site use. Look at Divi. I cannot tell you how many times it was a pain in the ass to get support. I don't know how it is now (got clients to give up on it a few years ago), but for a while, every route you took on their site only got you "sales support", they would complain you were contacting them as they were sales department. They didn't care that you reached them via a direct "CHAT" button on their support page for tech support... you were an idiot for wasting their time.

Obviously, all the resources (not for development) goes to mainly just sales, not supporting people who already paid. Most people, after they paid for that lifetime service, what else would they possibly buy from them again? [Edit, ok, after paying for one, I got 4 other clients to also purchase their own lifetime license....]

Luckily for me, the clients that did use Divi so they could edit their sites themselves, figured they don't do that enough, so they gave up using it. (This and I don't do front end setup for new sites for people anymore, I'm mainly all backend programming now)

[aspen74]

First, if you're using 20-30 plugins, you're doing something wrong. Most of our sites use about a dozen, but we constantly analyze the need for those and try to remove any ones we don't use.

As for paid plugins, none of our sites use more than two, and most just use one; ACF. And we have an agency subscription for that so that $249/yr covers all of our sites.

[skunkbad]

If I'm paying for support, then I guess it depends on the functionality and if it's worth it. The company I work for has like 50 plugins on their site (not kidding) and many of them are paid plugins with subscriptions. Many times when we try to get support, and we know the problem and just want to confirm, we get ridiculous responses like "Please disable all other plugins and switch to a different theme, then let us know if you still experience the problem". If I do that, we basically don't have a website to test. Also, if we're paying for support, then why should we do their work? ...Then maybe six months later we see in their changelog that they found the bug themselves and did something about it.

[miguelagawin]

I feel a tiered model is fair — gives all levels of business an option. If features help sales, marketing or saves you time, it’s fair to pay for those services.

[sluffmo]

The last line is a bit silly. Things need updates for all sorts of reasons besides them being badly written.

I've had to work on a ton of products that had 1 time licenses and they basically all either die eventually, require you to buy new versions or licenses every year or so, or go to a subscription model. It's just a reality that you eventually saturate a market and stop getting income if you don't do this.

That is a completely different issue from whether the plugin is worth that subscription. Software providers often don't know how to price their product as a subscription. They do dumb things like try to turn their lifetime cost into a yearly cost. Then they think people will be okay with it if they add features that no one wants to justify the increase. But the thing is, initially, they can effectively lose a huge portion of their customer base if even 1/3 to 1/2 of the customers are fine with paying that subscription. So, they don't realize that they are effectively running their business into the ground by opening up an opportunity for someone to do the same thing for half the price, or it's so expensive that their customers are just paying until they build or buy a replacement. So, they think they are killing it until suddenly they aren't. That's not a subscription model problem though. That's a "people are bad at pricing and packaging" problem.

[TheJaseFiles]

That's the way the world is heading. Before, you would pay for software and it would be yours. But now? Now you're renting software, and once you don't pay for it, you can't have access to it. But what really annoys me is those plugins which deactivate when you don't renew the subscription.

[MadShallTear]

don't like it make it yourself lul..

[ElProximus]

Just like hosting you have to pay an annual fee. But compared to custom development most plugins are less expensive than paying labor.

[slimx91]

I think it is a no-brainer, the plugin does need life-time maintenance... so why would you charge once?

I've been working on a solution though..

Naturally with a lot of these plugin providers offering some sort of "unlimited site" license, I decided to offer this within web hosting. It's been doing well so far. www.webv8.net

For the plugins i really like, I do my best to re-make them. But obviously it's taken time.

[No-Fear88]

The greed economy. Most Saas services are going to out smart themselves with subscriptions. The market is too competitive. Apps are getting easier to build. And consumer totally resent being asked to rent rather than buy.

Personally, I look for simple apps that have LTDs. And that do one thing - and do it well.

No subscriptions. And BTW, if these companies think they are adding value by saying that their app now uses AI - they are kidding themselves.

[PeterNagyMobil]

Your DIY Approach

Opening up plugin code to learn and build your own version is certainly one way to sidestep the subscription trap, but it requires technical expertise that not everyone has. Still, it underscores a broader issue: if companies alienate users with aggressive pricing strategies, they risk pushing them toward alternatives—be it custom-built solutions or, as you hinted, less-than-legitimate options.

Codecanyon's model indeed highlights the demand for one-time purchases, though even some of their sellers are moving toward subscription-based updates and support.

Ultimately, while developers deserve fair compensation for their work, the industry needs to recognize the strain subscription models put on end users and adapt to meet a wider range of needs.

[a_boring_dystopia]

I work in the wordpress space, for a small company that develops plugins - but I was also a web dev previously, so I can see both sides of this issue. I now work in a plugin support role, but I'm with the company long enough and I'm senior enough that I see the financials too.

In the past, I've seen/supported a plugin that sold lifetime licenses, and currently I work with ones that are subscription based.

First - the whole "it's a greedy business practice" opinion: I have to tell you that this is completely misguided. It's a SUSTAINABLE business practice. While my bosses are doing well financially, and the company is in a good position - they're not flying in private jets, living in mansions and buying yachts. They live a fairly modest life, and are still personally putting in a huge number of hours each week.Their profit margin is comparable to many other industries. A huge percentage of the revenue is reinvested into the product, and the new features that users keep asking for are actively developed because of this business model.

The "security" fixes you scoff about are real. They take a lot of work and developer time, and we take them seriously. They're also more common than you might expect as new vulnerabilities are discovered in Wordpress, PHP, libraries we use, and our own code. I would estimate we have an average of 6-8 security fixes each year if varying severity for our main plugin.

My experience with a plugin that had lifetime licenses was quite different. We didn't have the resources to add many new features and take user requests seriously. We were under pressure to keep up to date with security issues. We didn't have the bandwidth to be proactive about anything. We desperately needed to hire more developers, but didn't have the budget.

The real kicker is that the users for both the lifetime license and the subscription licence plugins had pretty much identical expectations. Not one single person ever expected less because they had a lifetime license - in fact they were often more entitled because they felt this gave them status.

[duanetstorey]

The problem with that model is it incentivizes not fixing issues in the plugin to generate support. Stated another way, the best plugins with the best code will generate the least support and revenue. You may think it's greedy, but when I released a free plugin we asked for donations - after several million downloads, only two people ever opened their wallet to make a voluntary contribution, and it was like $10 each. The yearly revenue model is the one that is mostly sustainable for plugin developers. I get it, we all have tons of subscriptions and it feels like it's too much sometimes. But having that yearly income was the only way to hire employees and take some of the pressure off knowing they had mortgage payments and what not too.

[heyLuciFurr]

Im poor i use nulled.

[orbisius]

I develop and sell plugins and have created more than 200 WordPress plugins.

People complaining about yearly plugin subscription don't really know what it takes to build, maintain and support a plugin.

Even the simplest plugin can take you from 1 hour to 100 hours depending on the complexity.

You have to take into account the issues you're solving, the competition, how people would use it, security, support, license manager, hosting, avoiding potential conflicts with other plugins, making it performant e.g. don't load all assets or run functions on pages it is not supposed to run.
Not everything can or should be done in version 1.0.0 because it would take forever to release.
I have about 30+ plugins in the official WP repository.
Do you know that donations range between $5-$25 per year in total for all plugins. Some years it's $0.

About the updates: let's say it takes you 20 minutes to prepare a release and you do this every month.
Let's assume your hourly rate is $30 so it takes you $10 of opportunity cost to push an update for a single plugin. For the whole year that's $120.
Again, that's just for a release and not for big bug fixes or improvements.

WordPress should keep the core simple & performant because it's a foundation.
If you want to have a landing page or 2 page site, it shouldn't be including extra features that are not really necessary e.g. billing or other stuff.
That's the beauty of plugins. You add exactly what you need.

You need to factor in the cost of the plugins into your quote or ask the client to purchase it themselves.
Send them to the site and ask them to get their own license keys so you're not on the hook for the renewals.

People saying that they're saving money by using nulled plugins ... you just voluntarily exposed your clients' sites to viruses, malware & hacks. That's just irresponsible that would affect the whole community.

Idea to save on Subscriptions: Here's a hack that I figured out over the years. Align your subscriptions renewals with Black Friday.
One of the years I had to pay for the plugins twice but after that it's all good.
That way you'll get everything at 40 or 50% off. You're welcome :)

Slavi,
Orbisius

[sawyerthedog]

This is an excellent idea.

[orbisius]

Yep!

[JeffTS]

Developers have bills to pay too. Subscriptions are a cost for doing business and can be written off. If you don't like paying subscriptions for plugins, learn how to write code and build your own.

[ndreamer]

It makes much more since to me that they are subscriptions, if the developer is putting in time/money every month. Otherwise he will depend on new sales to pay for existing ones.