Horrible Plugin, Horrible Support

First, as a developer, I will not bash a product until the developer(s) has had ample time to address whatever the issue might be. That box has been checked as described below.

Second, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have used the free version of the plugin on my site for years without any problems. Granted I use it for relatively simple tasks, and handle some of the ‘membership admin’ manually, but I’ve had no real problems. So I recommended it to one of my clients. BIG MISTAKE.

My client bought all the paid ‘add-ons’ because he is really needed to use the full features of the product, which sound pretty slick. And he would like to if they actually worked. First, his database of users did not import correctly. Then the custom scheduling of automatic renewal notices did not work. I worked with them on this one, and found their fix was to install a patch, which did not work either. The product can’t send e-mails out on a proscribed schedule. That’s not good, but “install a patch”?! Really?! I actually have to go into the code and mess with it? Maybe the feature should be fixed in the product. In reading their support pages for far to long, this seems to be a standard approach of theirs. What does a non-developer do? Then when people actually were able to renew their memberships, memberships were terminated the next day. This proved to be a disaster! I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I have spent far too much time on this product. My client has spent far too much time and money on this product. Unfortunately, he has lost a number of customers in the process.

Now on to PMP support, or lack thereof. I tried chasing the issues down over a year ago. Support seemed responsive, at least until we reached a certain point, whereupon they went silent. My client took another run at them recently. He got all the way up to their president, who promised to fix certain issues himself, and eventually he went silent as well. Seems like when their product doesn’t work, they try to fix the issue(s) for awhile, and then they give up. They seem resigned to the fact that PMP simply does not everything they claim it does. CAVEAT EMPTOR!

BTW, I first heard about this product from Chris Lema at a WordPress meetup. Chris seems to be a straight-up guy, but I suggest you ignore anything he writes about this product. He’s either out of touch with reality, or he’s getting paid by PMP, I don’t know which.