I’ve been around the WP world a wee while long enough to see this happen more than once.
I’ve been a WP Rocket unlimited license customer for around 5 years now, paying between $124.50 and $239.20 (Not sure why the changes year to year). I’ve just been charged for my next year, and to my astonishment it is now $479.20, AND they’ve removed the Unlimited option. They expect me to pay DOUBLE what I paid last year whilst also capping me at 500 sites? Easiest cancellation and refund request of my life. (source:Reddit)
It’s either a prelude to an exit strategy by juicing revenues at the expense of customer volume OR WP Rocket has ALREADY been sold, and the new owners juice revenues to pay bills (perhaps they borrowed too much to finance the deal at higher interest rates). Either way for existing customers it is bearish.
At their previously priced increase, I exited the subscription by canceling the subscription. I had just got a previous subscription that surreptitiously increased their subscription rate without advising me & dinging subscribers by a major hack of their accounts. So at the same time, I canceled my WP Rocket subscription to prevent rate jacking via Paypal. Glad I did.
There are two things I don’t like in Plugins that charge:
- huge subscription rate increases with or without notice
- over promising (lifetime licenses!) and under delivering (canceling lifetime licenses/plans)
- plugins that also include endless upsells!
Oh, wait! that’s three!
It seems that all 3 are standard plots for acquisitions looking to sell off the biz at a higher value.
Of course once it is acquired, the new acquirer may no be that motivated and start to cut coats, remove bloat, and increase prices further to pay for the details bdebt used to acquire.
At some point, the music stops. Plus new owners may only manage the plugin in context of its other ”assets”. That’s what happened with Spencer Haws Long Tail Pro after he sold his SaaS. Of course it may not happen.
But there is too much capital chasing returns, not building businesses, from hedge funds, individual investors, and digital business aggregators. They may not see the future of the plugin acquire in quite the same light.
There was also another thread I replied thusly:
Additional functionality. Not being subscribed to a wretched mailing list. Consistent, transparent, and reliable pricing.
Instead, I got functionality I didn’t need, regular spammy emails touting the benefits of further (expensive) upgrades, and consistent pricing increases/license terms that got progressively worse.
Sometimes plugins were bought out, became either irrelevant or useless to me, stopped development completely, or experienced large jumps in pricing (as owners tried to recover expenses of purchase!).
A year’s promise of vague “support” just didn’t cut the mustard, nor did annoyingly frequent plugin updates. Lastly, lifetime licenses that got killed by the new owners really pissed me off the most.
In the end, I stopped buying plugins/themes because of these reasons. It’s a hard balance to manage, I realize, for developers.