Not really free

Hi @dberebi,

thanks for your feedback. I have talked to other developers on WordCamps and also compare the advertisement with other plugins. Smaller and big once like Yoast SEO.

From my feeling and feedback from others I have found a great mix of free and pro and the advertisement.

I’m open for feedback. All basic functions are free and only advanced stuff is pro. You can create, edit and delete posts. Also manage the posts in BuddyPress with the BuddyForms Members extension.

Create Registration forms and contact forms without restrictions.

Please let me know what function you think should be free and I will rethink it.

I ask for your understanding. We all need to make a living and if I not make some income from the plugin I can not maintenance it like I do at the moment.

In an ideal world all would work with donations. But thats not the case. I work nearly 10 years with WordPress and we have gone a long way. This days people start to prefer paid plugins because they can be sure someone take care of the maintenance and support the plugin.

I hope this answer helps you. Please let me know if you have any questions left. I like to help. If you could change your review would help me a lot. Its a motivation for me. If you really think the plugin its a 1 star only and have no benefit ok, but please take a moment and rethink your review.

Cheers,
Sven

Thanks for your responsiveness, I’ve already improved my review considering that.

Only you should decide what is free and what is pro, but I do expect a clear statement and description. If there are more than one version of the plugin it should be clear what features are included in each of the versions.

For example, I quote the description of this plugin:

BuddyForms works great with other Plug-Ins. Enhance its capabilities with the following:

BuddyPress – Enable all publishing features of BuddyForms in BuddyPress
Ultimate Member – Submit and manage posts from your Ultimate Member profile
WooCommerce – Build your own marketplace with user-submitted products
WooCommerce Simple Auctions – Create and manage auctions via front end
Advanced Custom Fields – Integrate Advanced Custom Fields in your forms like native BuddyForms form elements
Posts 2 Posts – Efficient many-to-many connections between posts, pages, custom post types, users.
WC Vendors – BuddyPress WooCommerce Vendors integrates WC Vendors with BuddyPress and enables your vendors to use BuddyForms to create and manage their Products

also:

Full moderation control of the submitted content by predefining the status: pending, draft, published

Specifically, I wanted ACF, post2post and draft status. Since such integrations/features wasn’t included in the free version I find it misleading.

Since this was my main concern, if you’ll update the description with a feature comparison table between the versions, I’ll update my review to four stars.
(I’m not sure, if it’s technically impossible to insert a table into readme.txt, you can add an image with the table to the screenshots section)

As for advertisements, in my humble opinion, ads inside the admin panel should be totally prohibited. I am the web developer, the admin panel is used by my clients, so those ads will be visible to my clients. This information is irrelevant for them, and they are not your target audience for sure.

I do not expect those advertisement to totally disappear in the near future. So I will ask/suggest something else. If at all, ads in the admin panel should only be visible below all of the content/functionality provided by the plugin. Not in a sidebar, especially not above.

I am a developer myself (indeed, not my main occupation), so I do understand the need. I just find it frustrating to install a plug-in, try to figure out how it works, and only then find out that some of the features listed in the description only exist in the pro version.

Thanks anyway for supporting WP and releasing free plugins!
Good luck!

Hi @dberebi,

Thank you for taking the time and answer me such detailed feedback. It helps me a lot to improve the overall experience of the software.

You are right and I wander why I did not see it. You get blind if you look at something all the day.

It will need some time because I need to do this with my copy writer but I got your point and I will separate free and pro plugins to show which plugins work with the free/ pro in separate lists.

For your needs:

Specifically, I wanted ACF, post2post and draft status. Since such integrations/features wasn’t included in the free version I find it misleading.

–> This should work with the free version

(I’m not sure, if it’s technically impossible to insert a table into readme.txt, you can add an image with the table to the screenshots section)

–> It will not work but separate lists are fine.

About the Advertisements
I share you thoughts. I’m sorry to write it but I have done many testing and started with donations and did all for free. It just did not work. First after I add Advertisements it worked well

If you buy the pro version the adds get removed and this is also a motivator to buy the pro version.

I use https://freemius.com/ in all my products and learned a lot from how they see the market. They have also an interesting Blog. For me it was a positive decision to move into the freemius business model and I will adjust all until it is all in balance.

You help with your constructive feedback. I will let you know here after the readme is updated ??

Thank YOU!

Cheers,
Sven