Beware Contact Export is locked behind Paywall

Hello @sebastianalbert

Thank you for trying our products. We always try to build functional products for small businesses that add values to those businesses. As part of that, we built FluentCRM. We have added lots of features in the free version including contact management, email campaigns, automations. As a business, we have to pay salaries to our staffs, pay utility bills and make a profit to continue the development. That’s why there has a premium version of this plugin like thousands of other plugins.

Contact Export is a Premium feature but if someone want to export the contact then they can just export from the database easily. All the data is in your own database tables. We don’t lock anyone or host any data in our server.

I am really sad to see this review that for a premium feature you are giving us 1 star review. I hope you would reconsider your review.

Have a great day.

Hello!
I totally understand that you have to pay your bills and you therefore offer a premium subscription and restrict the features in the free version.
But locking the csv export behind the paywall is just not fair to users. Especially as import is a free features.

So you basically let people import their data for free, but then want money when they decide to export their data again (and maybe move to another service).

Telling people to get the data out of the database is not fair either. WordPress is a inclusive platform where not only pros are working, for a new user, who has not touched SQL they cannot easily do that.

It is bad practice to trick users into buying premium.

I am totally fine paying for premium, but not to be pushed into a subscription only to get the my own data in the same way out again as I could import it for free!

I was on the brink of buying even more into FluentCRM (already owning FluentForms, which I know totally regret buying). But now I will stay miles away of any of your offering! You have lost a customer!

I will change my rating as soon as you offer CSV export for free – until then I have to warn people about your practice.

So we need a line for premium and free features right, So tomorrow someone can just leave a 1-star rating and blackmail us like this to make it free, right? Yes, so we should definitely make everything free and stop developing this product.

Anyway, have a great day

No, I have not said that you should make everything free! Please read my comment carefully. I am solely referring to the CSV Export option.
As you use this option solely for pushing people to buy premium, when they want to get their data out of your plugin.
Having premium function behind a paywall is fine, as I mentioned.
But using the paywall to hinder users to get their content/data back out of the plugin is not!

If CSV handling is a premium thing, why is the import free and the export not? It is tricking the user in a system, where they will pay to get their data out, if they are technical not sufficient enough to handle SQL.

I am not blackmailing you. But as I has fallen in your trap, others will too and that is a business behaviour I am totally against.

Sorry man this is not a trap. And you are blackmailing the developer. You should be reported. It is free software and you deliberately installed it by yourself without anyone holding a gun to your head. They are not to be blamed because you were bored to not read their documentation. You act as if you are entitled to something. The paid version is extremely featured so if you need paid features then pay for them. You said yourself you are ok with paying but then you continue twisting reality to accommodate your cheap nastiness. Otherwise stop acting as an internet moral pillar, because you are nothing more than self-entitled blackmailing user.

If I was on developer place I would report you immediately.

And no I am not from Fluent CRM and they did not paid me to say this. I am here to read reviews and well surprise I also love to read bad reviews to get my head about the product. But I am sick of reading false flag reviews made by self entitled clowns.

I have no problem with a paywall, but it should be clearly communicated.

You KNOW, nobody will use your plugin without the option to export data. So you hide this and use it to force users to pay for your plugin.

Giving a review is not blackmailing the publisher. Everyone has the right to express their opinion.

It definitely has a bit of a ransomware smell to it. The plugin will happily take your data in, but you have to pay to get it out.

That said, I’m quite happy with the plugin and the array of free features is quite generous.

My TL;DR:

• For disappointed users: take this as a great opportunity to learn some basic SQL to get the contacts straight from the database.
• For the plugin developers: please clearly indicate on the import page that export is a paid feature. The negative sentiment arises not from the fact that some features are paid, but because of a perceived lack of transparency on your part.