An all right free plugin goes premium, is no longer all right

  • What quite a lot of people have been repeating here: Jetpack which, despite its faults, was cool because a lot of the basic features were free, has been slowly transitioning the different offerings behind a paywall. This would be OK if Jetpack did things better than other plugins, free or not, but it really doesn’t.

    The last straw (again, for a lot of us, it seems) is that Stats is now a paid feature unless you satisfy some pretty strict criteria. Even if you DO satisfy that strict criteria, it appears that even if you have your own domain hosted outside of Automattic, you now have to jump through hoops and link your page to WordPress.com. Why?!?

    Add this to the facts that :

    1) the new Jetpack Stats experience has always been, and remains, clunky and broken (leaving it self-refreshing for more than an hour causes it to fail completely and requiring a manual page refresh). That’s something you can deal with if it is free. But if Automattic wants people to start paying for it, they should really have made sure it works all of the time before making that transition.

    2) Jetpack Stats doesn’t do anything that Google Analytics doesn’t already do better… for free. Sure, Google Analytics and the Site Kit plugin are a bit clunkier, but for sites that may not qualify for Jetpack’s non-commerical license, but also don’t bring in anything near the monthly income that Jetpack wants you to pay, the free option is always better.

    I suspect that Automattic’s continual attempts to monetize Jetpack are what is actually killing it. Jetpack was nice when it combined a lot of options that would normally be free via other plugins into one place. But not nice enough to justify the prices that Automattic has been steadily added to each individual feature.

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  • Plugin Support Alin (a11n)

    (@alinclamba)

    Hi @aspleniastudios,

    Thank you for taking the time to share your detailed feedback. We understand your concerns about the transition of Jetpack Stats to a paid service and the challenges you’ve highlighted with its functionality.

    Our intention behind moving certain features behind a paywall, including Stats, is to fund the continuous improvement and support of those services. However, we recognize that this change comes with expectations of high reliability and added value, which you feel are not being met. We take your comments seriously and are committed to enhancing Jetpack Stats to ensure it delivers a seamless and valuable experience.

    Regarding the need to connect to WordPress.com, this is required because it taps into the collective power of our globally distributed servers. This setup enhances your site’s performance and security and unlocks advanced functionalities built originally for WordPress.com sites, such as social media integration, real-time notifications, and detailed analytics.

    We are also aware of the comparison with Google Analytics and other free services. Our goal with Jetpack Stats is to provide a more integrated experience specific to WordPress users that complements other analytics tools but not necessarily replace them.

    Your feedback is invaluable, and we are always looking for ways to better align our services with the needs of our community. We invite you to continue this conversation by reaching out to us directly using this contact form, where we can discuss your concerns and suggestions in more detail.

    Thank you once again for your honesty, which helps us improve.

    Warm regards!

    As a volunteer webmaster for several small NGO and charity groups, I find the sudden disappearance of Jetpack Stats very unhelpful. That the “non-commercial” version can’t be used on sites that accept donations makes it practically useless to most of the organizations I volunteer with.

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