When I first started using WordPress, I avoided premium WordPress plugins. Why? I assumed there were lots of free plugins available to meet my needs. Guess what? For the most part I was right. I didn’t need to spend money on premium plugins, because there were thousands of free plugins readily available.
Then something happened. My needs shifted. My novice WordPress skills turned into using WordPress to build and run a business. At that point I realized the oodles and oodles of plugins available were great, but a few key plugins were worth their money in gold.
Since I buy developer licenses of plugins, I often feel the money I pay doesn’t come close to covering what I get out of the plugins. After a few months I feel like calling up the plugin developer and offering them more money. Crazy right? But honestly this is how I feel. I feel guilty because I know I’ve received a lot more than what I paid for at purchase.
My “Must Have” Premium Plugins
- Gravity Forms – I cannot imagine creating forms with any other plugin. Gravity Forms offers great styling options, it is easy for clients to use, and it integrates with a bazillion third party software packages.
- Soliloquy – Robust, easy to use, and the best slider for my money. Add in the fact that I love the developer because he offers great support and you have the trifecta of premium plugins.
- Events Calendar Pro – This event plugin will accomplish 95% of the needs of our stock and custom theme clients. The Modern Tribe guys are also really great at support.
Other Favorite Premium Plugins
- WooCommerce Extensions – WooCommerce is great, but you need the extensions to make it really work well. There are lots to choose from and I’ve not found one thing we cannot do with Woo and some extensions.
- Simple:Press – I used this forum plugin as a free plugin years ago. I now pay for support and we use it on our own website to manage the support forum for our stock WordPress themes. It fulfills our needs without being overly complicated and bloated with unnecessary code.
- SliderVilla – We recently started to use this plugin and have it installed on our stock theme Joshua, as well as some custom WordPress themes for clients. It’s a great slider plugin for showcasing recent posts.
There is a Reason Why I Think Free Plugins are Sometimes Scary
With over 26,000 free plugins in the WordPress repository you’d think I’d find something to satisfy my thirst for functionality. But I view free plugins a little like that bottle of beer on a hot summer day. It taste good while you’re drinking it, but once you’re done, you’re still left with the original thirst.
I’ve searched through the WordPress plugin repository and I’ve found tons of possible plugin options available. Then I dig deeper and I discover many of them are old and unloved. Many plugin developers can’t even be bothered to show you sample images, let alone keep the plugin up to date.
At times I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette. I install the plugin in hopes it will work and accomplish my needs. In 9 out of 10 of the cases it doesn’t and I’m on the hunt for yet another plugin option. Before I realize it I’ve spent three hours trying plugins that fail to deliver, so I head out to find a premium plugin I know will work.
The WordPress Community Does Offers Some Excellent Free Plugins
There are a lot of great plugin developers who offer free plugins that rock. Take Yoast for example – his SEO plugin is free and filled with a massive amount of functionality that works well on each and every installation. He keeps it up to date and blogs about updates so we know exactly what is coming and why.
Unfortunately we need more people like Yoast and his team. We need more developers who stand behind their product and keep their products up to date or voluntarily remove them from usage.
The Inspiration for this Post
Late last week we discovered a few theme buyers had an issue with our embedded Soliloquy license. After trying to figure it out on our own, we reached out to Thomas Griffin. Not only did he reply, he replied on Labor Day weekend, which is a long holiday weekend in the US. He found the issue and pushed out a fix for us. We are now in the process of updating our themes to push this to our theme buyers.
As a business owner and as a theme developer, this support is priceless. I want to keep our customers happy and I couldn’t do it without the support of people like Thomas. Not only does he offer a great premium WordPress plugin, he offers stellar support as well.
I’m realistic though and I know superb functionality and support do not free. That is why I allocate part of our annual budget to premium plugin licenses. It is money worth spending and it’s one of the best business decisions I’ve made.
This may as a shock to some, but I also offer to pay people like Thomas when they help us. I pay immediately and I thank them along the way. Why? Because our firm is where it is at today due to the help of the WordPress community. It is the community that makes us all stronger and together, working as a unified body, we are better. Being better helps us all in the end.
If you’ve avoided premium plugins in the past, you might want to give them a second chance. When you find the right plugin, they are worth the money and so is the fantastic support that comes along with the functionality.
Great post. I’ve found that freebie plugins can sometimes interfere with your site. Recently had that experience with a popular free one.
Some are great and some not so much! 😉
Also a big fan of Gravity Forms – the conversion tracking feature, amongst all the other features it has, makes it a must have premium plugin. I agree with your post that it can sometimes be frustrating when developers don’t update plugins etc. When that happens it’s often best to find a long term premium plugin replacement rather than find another free plugin and wait until that free plugin goes by the wayside. Cheers for the read, Rob
Rob what conversion tracking featuring are you referring to above? I use a number if add ins, but I’m wondering if I’m missing any good ones.
Hi Rebecca, the conversion I’m referring to there is a built in feature of Gravity forms whereby you can see number of views the form has had and how many views actually completed the form.. Makes it nice and handy to test different forms to see which performs better..
Got it. I do love that data. Have you used Yoast’s add on to see what they visited on the website before form submission? It is awesome!
Ooh, no, hadn’t heard about that one but if it’s anything like his SEO plugin I’m sure it’s top notch..For tracking users on site though I use Clicky – it has real time analytics which makes tracking users real easy..Yoast actually provides the plugin for Clicky integration with WordPress so we may possibly be talking about the same thing hehe?
They would be different add ons, but I’ll look into Clicky. It sounds interesting to say the least.
Thanks for the informative blog. I also use Gravity Forms, Yoast SEO, and Soliloquy (since you guys have such awesome WordPress themes). I understand your pain when dealing with free plugins. I’ve run into a few that I’ve had to deactivate for clients because they were not updated and there was no support. By the way, how do I get this new version of Soliloquy? Will I be prompted to upgrade the plugin automatically or do I have to download it? Thanks again for the information on WordPress plugins. At PersistSEO, our company values your expertise in the industry.
Leave the Soliloquy question on our support forum for Chris. I know he has helped a few buyers with the updates.
Just read your write up here and I thought I should pass along a bit of info on Thomas at Soliloquy. I was having a problem with the license key because of the multiple installs on one domain that I’m doing – also happening on Sunday and Labor Day – and Thomas hung with me even though I’m new to all of this and probably didn’t explain things as well as I could have. He kept up the correspondence and got the problem taken care of quickly. It’s working like a charm now. I was already a fan of your themes and he made me a fan of his slider. Thanks for associating yourselves with good partners. It made my life easier and I honestly appreciate that.
Steve I love hearing feedback like this and I’m sure Thomas does too. He is a good man for sure.
I wish everyone could/would go buy a license and support him and Soliloquy. WordPress needs more plugin developers of his caliber.
Hey Rebecca,
Great article. I wish more people were having this conversation. It’s time the WordPress eco-system grew up into a mature adult and realised that freemium is actually more damaging than good.
I’m all for demo’s and time trials but good products and good service require money.
It’s like the old days when I stopped wasting hours downloading movies from Torrent sites because it would take all night and the files would be corrupt. Much easier to pay iTunes or Netflix a few bucks and get what you want, when you need it.
We develop a premium plugin so I’d like to thank you for starting this conversation.
Keep up the good work.
Troy I recently had a friend tell me he could download a song for me via a sharing site. I laughed and said I would rather pay for it. I sell digital products and I could not ethically steal digital content from someone else when I challenge it myself.
I wish people would understand that while many things in life are free, solid WordPress themes and plugins are not. Or at least in many many cases.