Disputing commercial classification

Hi there, @brawl345,

We have reviewed your site and the system flagged it as commercial as there is a support widget that accepts donation. That is enough for our system to consider your site as commercial, and therefore in need fo a plan to see Stats. As far as the system in concerned, you could also make a million dollars via donations – it can’t check the revenue, but can only check whether a source of revenue is in place.

Free stats plans are for truly personal sites only; asking commercial sites to pay is the only way we can keep this feature available to people who run hobby blogs and similar – we cannot make exceptions.

Please upgrade to a?paid plan?to continue using Jetpack stats.?You can check out our?help article?for more information.

Alternatively, you can remove the donation widget, and we’re happy to review your site again ??

Hope that’s all clear! Let me know if you have any questions about that.

Very, very disappointing decision.

asking commercial sites to pay is the only way we can keep this feature available to people who run hobby blogs and similar

That’s simply not true, it worked the last >10 years. This is just rent-seeking like when you restricted Publicize but later reverted that decision (bad for the users that bought a subscription for this!). This change was done without consulting any of your users. You can’t just say “you need to pay now” after more than 10 years, that’s just extortion. My site is not commercial just because it has a donation button.

Do you think this will make me pay for JetPack? Certainly not. I can’t even export my data, the current “data export” is a bad joke. I will never trust Automattic again and I urge others to do the same.

Hi @brawl345,

I understand why this feels unfair after more than 10 years of using the site the way you have. It’s tough when policies change, especially when it impacts long-time users like yourself.

I want to be transparent with you—while I completely respect your position, our system automatically flags sites with revenue sources like donation buttons as commercial, and that’s something we have to stand by to ensure consistency. I understand this won’t change your view, but I wanted to acknowledge your concerns.

As for the data export, please get in touch with us privately and we’ll help you with that.

Best regards!

My request for export was denied with the reason that it’s not possible. I’ve deleted Jetpack from my site, I won’t come back. Goodbye.

Hi @brawl345

We’re really sad to see you go. Please keep in mind the you can still use Jetpack with stats deactivated (see Turn off Jetpack?Stats).

My request for export was denied with the reason that it’s not possible

I found your ticket in our system, just to clarify – we are open to help our users with exporting the stats history. On the other hand, we are not able to go beyond the data detail that is currently recorded.

Thank you!