WordPress CMS application comes bundled with basic functionalities which is sufficient to develop majority of corporate websites without adding specialised extensions or plug-ins.

WP applications are incomplete without the plugins. Or shall we say the CMS application and the plugins complete each other. In essence the plugins are building blocks of the WordPress content management system. They extend the life, usage, security & reliability, and functionalities of your WP powered websites.

Often we get requirements from clients to develop applications using WP content management system which cannot be achieved without using extensions or plug-ins to extend it’s functionalities.

This sets our team to research the right plug-in(s) to integrate with the website. During the course of research our team come across both free and freemium paid plug-ins to test and see if they meet our requirements.

We must say testing plug-ins isn’t entirely fun. Sometimes we feel happy that we found the right plug-in, at times we feel stupid, still at other times we feel cheated and frustrated; taken for a ride easily by the plug-in developers in making us a fool for trying. Not a nice feeling, we must say. 🙁

When we search for plugins in the WordPress plugins directory or elsewhere, our decision to test them, depends on the plugin description, rating & reviews, FREE Vs PRO features and if it meets what we are looking for.

Just as you judge a book if it’s worth reading from it’s preface, we too judge a plugin from the description given by the plugin developer and what it achieves.

Our search for WordPress plugins also involves investigating similar websites to know what WordPress plugins is the site using, as a starting point.

There are thousands of free plugins (over 59K plugins) in the WordPress plugin directory and majority of them have a PRO version, the real earnings for the plugin developers to make a living.

In addition to the WP plugin directory, there are thousands of independent companies and plugin developers who sell their plugins independent of WP directory. We can virtually develop plugins to achieve anything from the WP cms platform.

We will soon write a separate post on how to sell WordPress plugins successfully and make a living out of it.

As a WordPress plugin development agency ourselves, we understand the importance of a plugin being installed and purchased maximum. Providing a correct and accurate description of the plugin in the WordPress plugin directory helps in this direction as this can speed up or slow down the download or installs of a plugin.

Hiding the limitations of FREE version or partially showing the facts to trick the users into installing the plugins, only to be found later by the user, that the plugin isn’t what the user wanted, is the worst practice by the plugin developers.

This practice isn’t confined to WP plugins, but are prevalent across browser extensions and extensions for other open source applications out there.

This, combined with other black tricks and practices has earned a bad reputations for the WP plugins. Our team really finds it frustrating to have wasted time while trying plugins as the developers or third-party companies really do not explain clearly what one can find in FREE Vs PRO version.

We have found many plugins that apparently claim to be FREE in the description only to find limitations after installing them. For instance, you can only view the malware scan results but cannot correct the same in the free version.

In another instance, we ended up wasting lot of time while searching for a plugin to calculate shipping charges based on weight for a WooCommerce powered web-store. Darn rats!!

While we know there is no free lunch in this world, but say so in the description. As a WP plugin developer, we appreciate how much time and efforts it takes to develop, maintain, and support a plugin whether it’s FREE or PRO, and respect others in the same breath. But why hide the facts or trick users in using your plugins just to increase the download / install numbers?

Is it that the plugin developers or companies want to be ranked in the WordPress.org plugins repository’s Highest Rated plugin section or even in the Most Popular? In the quest to get there, aren’t these stake holders using tricks which can backfire on them or against the very essence of what they are trying to provide to their customers?

It is another story that plugin developers or the application development companies solicit paid reviews or ask their own team to rate and review their plugins. Rankings in those two list would generate more downloads for them and in turn may result in more sales of their PRO version.

Customers use plugins to make their job easy, to increase the security, and to enhance the functionalities of their websites. But what if, after installing the plugin, it performs just the contrary? Or what if you found the FREE features isn’t free after all and you need to upgrade to unlock the features?

Plugins and extensions make your job easy by helping you achieve more with your digital assets. However if you install a not so popular plugin or poorly developed plugin, it could seriously interfere with your websites’ working, affects it’s performance or worse even bring down your entire website.

In the earlier times, plugins had lifetime validity and unlimited updates; licence for the lifetime; however now we have WordPress plugins subscriptions where you will receive support and updates as long as you continue the plugin subscription or plan membership.

When clients ask questions like what plugins should I use for my website or how many WordPress plugins should be use in our website, our thousands of man hours of experience and these experiences help decide our plugin suggestions.

Majority of plugin development companies and freelance developers use the FREE version of their plugin to direct users to their PRO version to generate sales. Only when the financial gain becomes their sole purpose of the plugin instead of providing true values to all of their users, the things gets murkier.

We refrain from rating such plugins as we really do not want to dampen their spirit however we do leave our comments and show our disappointments in very strong words, some times in very expletive terms, at the time of inactivating the plugins.