Hey Gary @garymanners,
We are sorry about the issues that you were facing, but could we firstly ask you to keep your chat in one support threat instead of spamming us and blacking with your one stars? What is the point of that? You already rated the plugin a month ago. We hope your goal is to help the community and us to build a great plugin, not to do any harm.
Anyhow, back to the conversation.
As we have mentioned in your previous post here – https://wordpress.org/support/topic/stretches-portrait-oriented-photos-in-most-display-options/
We will gladly helped you had you contacted us by email and would have modified the plugin code to open any option you need for your gallery. It is actually a normal practice for us, and we do it absolutely free , unlike other companies or developers. We love our customers and friends, as well the community. So the statement “developer of this plugin won’t fix that issue unless you buy the paid version.” is false. There is no evidence that we have refused to help you nor in forums not in our emails.
The reason we do not obviously open all the options freely for public is due to the fact that the plugin is a “freemium” tool , so we had to limit some options.
And you are free to use any other gallery plugins that you like. We dont push anyone to stick to our plugins.
Have a great day and let us know if you change your mind regarding this plugin. As we said, we will gladly open you the dimensions in Free version.
Thank for you well thought out letter.
I do not believe that I am spamming or blackening with one star. I am merely stating the obvious in a public feedback forum about an open source product, which is exactly the way this community grows and gets better.
I do like many of the things your plugin does and because you took the time to respond I bumped up my rating to two stars.
I still disagree that the distorted images is a “limitation”. If you want to offer limitation on your plugin you’d simply turn off certain features. You can still show that they exist and features that can be bought. It’s very enticing to see that other possibilities are available should someone buy the pro version. This is how most developers handle freemuim plugins. And the fact that you offered me a fix just because I complained about it shows me that your business model is slightly out of whack. Just think of the business you are loosing when people try out your plugin, sees how it distorts the images and then move on the the next one.
I hope you can see I mean no malice, just interested in you plugin being a better user experience.
