Hey @sickleadz,
Before anything else, I’m really sorry to hear you’ve had issues with SliceWP!
We do our best to test that everything is working as designed, but we also understand that issue can occur.
The WordPress ecosystem is quite large and conflicts can always appear. This is why we offer support to each and every one of our users that need it.
Unfortunately, from what I see, you have not opened a support topic to allow us to help you with the issues you’ve encountered.
Even so, I’ll take the time to respond to each one of the issues you’ve encountered, just in case you still need help or for other users that find themselves in the same situation as you:
1. out-of-box user dashboard looks pathetic – more like it’s been designed by a 5yo.
Aesthetics are subjective. We try to offer minimal styling so that the elements from our interface can integrate as neatly as possible in the design of the active theme.
If the theme or page builder that you’re using does not style default HTML elements, such as forms and tables, then yes, the dashboard could look out of place or unstyled.
In this case, please share some screenshots and we’ll help you out via a custom CSS code snippet.
Additionally, if you believe that we can improve the interface, just let us know. You can always open a support ticket here on the www.remarpro.com website or on our website (here: https://slicewp.com/contact/).
2 there’s no notification emails sent out to the potential affiliate – tested three different recipients and none of them received anything.
Email deliverability can be affected by a variety of things.
Considering that we don’t have any other reports from our users about email notifications issues, I believe the problem you’ve faced may have been localized to your environment.
To start, I recommend following our step-by-step guide about email issues, here: https://slicewp.com/docs/emails-not-being-sent/
If this doesn’t help, please let me know.
3. there’s no way to customize alerts eg. when user is waiting to be approved. It’s just a general line of text saying “Your account is waiting to be approved”.
This is true. After a user registers for your affiliate program, while they are in the review process, a simple notification is shown to them.
If you have any feedback (besides offering the possibility to change this message by the admin) on how we can improve this part of the plugin, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please let me know.
Also, I have added your feedback (about customizing the message) to our development log for future research.
4. there are no reports that you as an admin can view and track your affiliates – you need to upgrade to Pro (one-time payment of almost $500) to be able to see any sort of report. Really??
By default, detailed reports are not offered in our core plugin. Even so, in each section of the plugin (affiliates, visits, commissions) you have quite a lot of information, which can help you determine the health of your affiliate program.
Furthermore, currently our Pro plugin is priced starting at $169/year. This includes not just reports, but the entire suite of tools that we’ve ever developed.
Compared to other plugin shops, we offer all features in a single paid plan, instead of upselling you with convoluted pricing plans based on feature sets.
We also have a 30-day money back guarantee, so if SliceWP doesn’t work for your business, we’re happy to refund you entirely.
The price you’ve mentioned is our $429 lifetime option, which is priced at 2.5 times our annual rate. This offer is quite good compared to what other plugin shops offer, which sit at 3 to 3.5 times the annual rate.
5. this plugin does not track visits at all – tested with Google Chrome incognito mode, Firefox and 2 phones with different IP’s – not a single visit reported neither within admin nor user dashboard.
I believe this issue is something that is localized to your environment. We currently have no other reports about tracking issues from our users.
I’ve also just tested the tracking feature and everything is working normally on my end. Both locally and on our live website.
If you’re still open to us helping you, please let me know how you’ve tested tracking so that I can replicate what you’ve attempted.
I also recommend you to follow our step-by-step guide on how to test referral visits and commissions, here: https://slicewp.com/docs/troubleshooting/
6. So, free version of this plugin is to basically show you its basic functionality. If you want to make a use of it (provided that Pro version is fully functional), you will need to pay a lot of money.
Our core plugin offers all the tools you need to run an affiliate program. Also, the majority of our user base is using the core plugin, so that’s a statement that the plugin does the job it promises to do.
Furthermore, our Pro plugin is priced somewhere in the middle. It’s not the cheapest and not the most expensive.
As with any other plugin that has both a free and a paid version, it’s hard to draw the line between what is offered in free versus pro. We also understand that it’s hard to make everyone happy.
If you’re not happy with the free core plugin, we can understand it. If you are not able to pay or don’t want to pay for the pro plugin, we can understand this as well. There are other plugins that might be better suited for your business.
Closing thoughts
Again, I’m really sorry you’ve had issues with SliceWP! But, I hope you’ve found the above information useful. If you need any help, please just reach out.
Furthermore, for other users that are reading this, if you’re having trouble with SliceWP, or any other WordPress plugin or theme for that matter, please contact support if you’re having issues.
We know that it can be frustrating to try a new plugin, but we, at SliceWP, and a lot of other WordPress product builders, will do our best to help you out.
Thank you and best wishes,
Mihai
