Hi @liteweight,
thanks for your feedback here!
You are right in that I use Freemius for the TablePress Premium licensing and payment handling.
However, I’m not really using most of the marketing or links that they offer in the admin area of TablePress. Therefore, I’m a bit confused as to what exactly you referring to here with those “6 new texts” or the “green color of the upgrade text”. Can you maybe take a screenshot of that (you can create one by pressing “Print” on the keyboard on Windows, or Cmd+Shift+3 on a Mac, and then upload it to a service like https://imgur.com/) and post the link here? I would really like to understand what you mean here. Thanks!
Best wishes,
Tobias
Freemius is a profilation tool and if you are concerned about privacy, you should read their Privacy Policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/
Please use EDD over Freemius. Freemius collects:
Personally Identifiable Data. We want to use big recognized payment providers (Stripe or Paypal). Data breaches are everywhere and we don’t want to give to small companies like Freemius (who don’t have the resources to defend themselves) our payment/contact details.
Usage Data. It is too intrusive. You collect data we don’t want to share. You have to respect users. Sorry If you lack data, you can create a staging or ask your friends their accounts. But please don’t push too far data collection.
You are a developer so I’m sure you like the free web right? We don’t want to give our data voila.
But I’m sure you know all this. I’d love to buy your Lifetime plugin of Table Press. I tested it and it looks great.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by
liteweight.
Hi @liteweight,
thanks for your feedback here!
These are in fact all things that I also look into before deciding to use Freemius! However, I come to different conclusions, that I would like to explain.
Personally Identifiable Data: In fact, Freemius is using PayPal and Stripe directly! They are not storing the payment details on their own servers (see e.g. this FAQ entry)! And of course I totally agree that data breaches are happening and that this is a high risk! This is in fact a good reason for me to use a service like Freemius! This way, I don’t have any personal information on my own servers, but everything is securely stored with Freemius! They have a knowledgeable team that has years of experience with this. If I were to use EDD on my own servers, I would have to invest a lot of time and energy in properly protecting this, and so does every other developer who uses their own EDD solution on their servers. So, to quote your words: I’m sure Freemius has much better “resources to defend themselves” than a single plugin developer with a custom solution on their own server!
Usage Data: While this indeed was an issue in the past, from everything I read, I don’t really think it is anymore: Users of the free version of TablePress (or any plugin that uses the Freemius SDK in their code), can just click “Skip” the opt-in screen. A site will then not contact any Freemius servers and will not send any data! And even if someone opts-in to receive security email notifications, they can choose to not share any site data (like active plugins and so on)! In the same way, it’s even possible to activate a Premium license without sharing any usage data! Only data that is absolutely necessary to verify that a license is valid would be shared then. Please see this blog entry for more on this.
So, in summary, I do believe that Freemius has come a long ways here, and concerns from the past are no longer valid, and maybe my explanations help a bit here.
Of course, if you are still concerned about the payment provider data, we could consider other paymeny ways here. If you are interested in that, please get in touch by email (the address is at the bottom of https://tablepress.com/pricing/).
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi @tobiasbg,
Thank you very much to have shared all this information and taken the time.
Why is Freemium involved in the payment processing part then? They could have the same exact licensing solution without being the middle man in the transaction. Right now, transaction still goes through Freemius and they have data they don’t need for this business. That’s my main concern.
Now if you read carefully their Privacy policy, you’ll notice that in reality they do a great effort to appear transparent while hiding right before your eyes the exact data they collect when capturing/storing payments. Why do you think they keep this under silence in their privacy policy?
The whole model of being involved in the transaction does not suit the need for more security and privacy.
I will send you an email. Thank you for your help.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by liteweight.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by liteweight.
Hi @liteweight,
Freemius is involved in the payment, because they not only need to know what was purchased (so that a proper license key can be issued), but also whether that was successful (so that a license key can be invalidated, e.g. if after a year, the subscription renewal payment failed). They also need to know about the purchase because of the tax issues involved. For example, Freemius is directly paying the sales tax (VAT) to the tax authorities for me (which I need to retrieve from EU customers). So I’m not really sure which data they are collecting that they wouldn’t need in your opinion?
But as indicated above, we should be able to circumvent that, if you want. 🙂 I’ll be looking forward to your email!
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hello @tobiasbg I eventually bought it 😉
I don’t want to argue on the third party payment.
The pro version of your plugin is fantastic! Thank you.
Hi,
cool 🙂 Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it!
Best wishes,
Tobias
