I get your point, but since the javascript is his copyright, it’s his right to do so. But I agree it is not very customer friendly. Many people here develop sites for clients and a monthly or yearly fee is out of the question in such a case. A one time fee would be preferable there.
The thing I really don’t like, though, is that it isn’t mentioned anywhere that this plugin is ad supported. Not in the main description, nor in the FAQ. Even on the Printfriendly website it isn’t made very clear. You have to notice the small text link saying Ad Free Version to get to that part. This is a clear case of tricking you into installing the plugin, than finding out about the ads and thus tricking you into taking the subscription.
Of course, since the plugin is published under the GNU public licence, I’ve checked the code to see if the ads could be removed. However, the essential javascript code used by the plugin and hosted on one of the authors servers is not published under the GNU license, but is copyrighted. And guess where the AdSense code is included…
I’m also a little disappointed that a highly respected plugin developer like Yoast is involved in this.
I’ve just discovered another plugin, that looks just as good as this one (or even a little better) and I haven’t discovered any ads there yet. So I will be going with that one and leave this one alone.
Agreed, this is such a useful plugin and I’ve used it before but I had one client who was really unhappy with ads for their competition on their site.
The thing is, they would have been fine paying for an ad free version, but not an ongoing monthly cost.
Thanks yaki-ruud for the link to the alternative. Seems to work well.
@krazykatz911
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I used to feel the same about subscriptions, here’s why I reversed course and have one with PrintFriendly.
We have a team of 5, we work on it full-time, everyday. Parsing webpages for content is tough (ask google :p). The different types of content, layouts, html (standard and not so standard), and browsers/versions keep us very busy.
We also want to create a quality product/service, end-to-end. This includes the UI/UX, performance, reliability. Also service, as a publisher you don’t have to think about things like… “will it work when I update my page?”, “Will it work with such-and-such technology?”, “Do I have the latest features?”. It just works 🙂
I’ll keep your feedback in mind as we smooth out the rough edges. Thanks again.
Best,
Taylor Norrish
@yakti-ruud
You raise a good point, and we’ll get on this.
Ad-free service is relatively new, organically started from Publisher demand like this forum. We’re still figuring out how to present.
I like the plugin and of course I would pay for an ad free version. But I’ll NOT pay for it month-after-month! How should I get along with my client?
Perhaps there’s a way to work it into the costs?
Is it allowed to put this in a CSS file:
#gaiframe { visibility: hidden !important; }
@printfriendly: if you have a hosting/service agreement with your client, than yes, it might be possible to work it into the costs. However, if you’re only making the website, than this is impossible.
I would really advice you to look at a different way of selling this plugin.
@tunixtunix Clever 🙂 But we’d prefer you didn’t do that.
Just wanted to point out someone wrote cleanprint was an alternate print plugin without ads. I just installed this plugin and it absolutely has ads as well it is not ad free
