Ineffective with a strange marketing model

  • Thunderfunk

    (@thunderfunk)


    6 years, 8 months ago

    I used this plugin when I first ventured into WordPress image optimisation. Regardless of its being a free version, its compression rate is suspiciously minimal. I was tempted at the time to purchase the Pro version on the back of its promise of being twice as fast… but then found out that in order to buy it, you have to buy WPMUDEV’s entire WordPress suite at roughly £50 per month. So for one plugin, I have to acquire dozens of other elements that I most likely wouldn’t use? No thanks.

    Since then, I’ve discovered other compressors that are not only more effective and drastically cheaper but also you can buy on their own without having to buy the entire back catalogues of the respective companies. There are even free plugins in the WordPress repository that do a significantly better job than this one, I’m afraid.

    The only ‘highlights’ I can find here are the plugin’s slick, welcoming interface and WPMUDEV’s business tenacity (i.e. asking for upgrades and that strange purchasing model). Otherwise, I recommend users give this a miss.

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Thunderfunk. Reason: Wrong use of a word
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author WPMU DEV – Your All-in-One WordPress Platform

    (@wpmudev)

    6 years, 8 months ago

    Hi @thunderfunk,

    Thanks for the feedback (honestly, it’s always good to get feedback) but if I could clarify (and also, perhaps tempt you), you can actually use Smush Pro for a whole 30 days completely for free, and try out everything else, and then cancel your membership (without paying anything) and keep all the other pro plugins we sell.

    Or, if you like them, and our other services, stick around 🙂

    If you could point us to any issues with compression that’d be great too, we’ve done some pretty frank testing of various free image compression plugins here: https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/smush-kraken-ewww/ and we’re always keen to do whatever we can to improve so some specifics would be excellent.

    And, just to be annoying, it doesn’t sound like this is *really* a one star review, just that you don’t like our marketing model… do we really compare that unfavourably to the other free plugins?

    Cheers, James

    z0rg

    (@z0rg)

    6 years, 4 months ago

    Hey James,

    While I do appreciate you answering to negative ratings here at all, I must also say your business model is annoying. I stumble across many of your plugins lately and they all try to convince me signing up (FOR FREEEE). This plugin is free, but with PRO you get better compression, BUT that is gonna cost you 49$ a month just for that. The saddest thing is, that your plugins look and feel very nice, but are crap as free users. And 50$ a month for non-commercial blogs is just a huge amount of money to ask for.

    And just to be fair I did not put up another 1 star rating. This *really* is one star, because it’s worthless without PRO. And PRO is a shitty model.

    I could run some “jpegoptim” command on the server with a cronjob and have the same or better results.

    Plugin Author WPMU DEV – Your All-in-One WordPress Platform

    (@wpmudev)

    6 years, 4 months ago

    Hi Z0rg,

    I hear you re:

    “I could run some “jpegoptim” command on the server with a cronjob and have the same or better results.”

    And you know what, I’d actually really like to know if that was true! Personally, I reckon we’d win but a comparison between the two would be awesome.

    And I suppose what I’m suggesting in the first instance is that while you could easily do that, the vast majority of WP users actually couldn’t… so it’s not really useless at all. But I do appreciate you not giving us a 1 star review 🙂

    And I do totally get how our pro model doesn’t really work for individual or non commercial users, but I guess that’s also not really our market. In the same way, say, FedEx tries to work well for the enterprise we’re really aiming our products at web developers using WP for clients, or agencies, for whom an unlimited site license (and all the other tools) make a lot of sense.

    Hope that explains where we’re coming from a bit better.

    Cheers, James

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Ineffective with a strange marketing model’ is closed to new replies.