It’s been an incredible first year for WooCommerce. We’ve already accumulated close to 350,000 downloads, have 100+ extensions and 24 official themes, as well as boasting loads more huge accolades.
To celebrate we’ve put together an animated info-graphic (designed by the awesome Studio Muti) with all the interesting stats, which we strongly recommend you check out. We’ve also discounted all our themes and extensions for the week in celebration. Get shopping for themes and extensions now (the discounts have already been applied on checkout).
Offer valid until midnight (UTC time) on Friday, September 28th 2012.
Downtime this weekend
Behind the scenes the WooCrew have been hugely busy working on a top secret project, re-building WooThemes from the ground up. We’ll finally be moving our user management and e-commerce system to WooCommerce.
This will hopefully assure you that WooCommerce is the ideal tool even for a company with a userbase of nearly 300,000 users!
Expect downtime this weekend as we move to the new system and push the re-design live. That’s right, we’ve re-designed the entire site!
Important information about extension licensing
With the new system we push live we’ll also be introducing a licensing system for WooCommerce extensions. The extension will function perfectly without a license, but you’ll need to buy extension license keys for each site you use the extension on should you want support and future updates for that site. This is a carefully planned strategy to accommodate our users the best we can in terms of premium support and it’s future scaling.
Hopefully that’s enough reasons to take advantage of our birthday promotion!
We will be informing all users of the promotion, licensing and downtime via email so no one is left in the dark.
About
Happy birthday WooCommerce, it has been an absolute fantastic journey for ourselves too and to see it grow like this is the best feeling in the world!
An incredible year indeed!
Happy Birthday WooCommerce.
You are still so young and excited for another year of exponential growth in the WordPress eCommerce ecosystem.
Can’t believe it’s already one year! Well done, Mike and Coen!
*cough* 😀
You sir, deserve special praise 😀
I knew you were saving a special comment just for me <3
good news! and congratz
I was about to shop some plugins this weekend, glad I did not! 🙂
However it seems to me the Shipping Table rate plugin is seriously upping its price lately? Am I wrong?
What does this mean?
“Going forward you’ll need to buy extension license keys for each site you use the extension on. ”
How will this pricing structure work? Makes me nervous as we build a ton of sites and this could greatly increase our costs if for every site and every woo plugin we use we need to purchase an additional license.
Hi Blake,
The new license plan will have three pricing levels depending on how many sites you wish to use the extension on, so unlimited usage will carry a higher price than it does today.
Good to know.
And also, while moving to this model makes sense from needing to scale support, the larger web shops while they may build more sites that use a plugin, also hopefully they know what they are doing more-so than the average user.
I assume this will be better for the plugin authors as well?
Yes this benefits the plugin authors directly too.
I’ve wondered why that hasn’t been the case and I think it’s a fine idea.
Agreed! What’s the score with this??
Congratulations guys! It’s been a great show!
We’ve enjoyed building plugins for WooCommerce.
Let me think up something special to celebrate the first birthday as well 🙂
Keep ’em coming in! 😛
Congrat on 1 year for WooCommerce! Keep up the great work!
However (sorry), I have to say, I’m a bit concerned about the new licensing for extensions for a couple of reasons.
1. There are pretty much no live examples or demos for extensions (which is odd but a separate matter) and all we get is a pretty short blurb about them in the repository. As a result, I would often buy one just to see if it does what I need it to do, knowing that I could always just keep it and use it for a later project if suitable. The new licensing structure will make me seriously less inclined to do so. This equals potentially less sales for you and more uncertainty and hassle for me.
2. Compared to other repositories, the pricing for extensions is already much higher (e.g. see Code Canyon). This price difference was mitigated by the fact that I had autonomy over how often I used the extensions. Now, I can see myself potentially using Code Canyon more in the future as it simply makes better economic sense, when you consider most author’s over there stand by their products and offer great support which, other than price, is the only other main consideration.
On a broader point, although I still think WooThemes is a fantastic company, thinking back over recent blog post/announcements, WooThemes is making several massive changes, many of which have left your customers feeling a bit alienated i.e. the changes suit WooThemes 1st and the customer base 2nd.
1. I agree demos would be an asset but realistically, setting up individual demos for every single plugin isn’t realistic. It’s not the same as a theme where you just look at the prettyness and make your decision based on that. The majority of extensions involve backend interaction which makes demos more difficult to maintain.
Having said that many of the extensions really do exactly what they say on the tin. Reading the description and documentation really should be enough to demonstrate what they do. There’s not really much more you’d get from a demo in these cases.
2. We’re not really interested in the price points on other web sites. Our concern is making sure our products represent value for money. When it comes to WooCommerce extensions I think it’s well worth paying the extra for the knowledge that the products have been audited by WooCommerce core developers to ensure they’re of the highest quality. Not to mention that you also get access to our support desk which I believe is worth the price on it’s own.
Hi Jay.
Thanks for the reply.
You’ve helped me in the past several times (in the much missed support forums) and have always been helpful but I have to draw significant issue with almost everything you said. I intend what follows to be constructive, so hope it is taken in that way.
I think that the overall issue I (and others) are finding with how WooThemes have changed lately is that it is an “inside-looking-out” view of your company not an “outside-looking-in” view i.e. WooThemes is viewing things its POV and not seeing things from your customers POV. And your reply (unfortunately) highlights this.
1. You guys may think that the descriptions and docs are sufficient but have you ever asked if this is the case for your customers? All you need to do is go to the official WordPress plugin repository to see how much more info, screen shots and DEMOS are offered. Same goes for the likes of Code Canyon (I’ll get to your comments on that in a mo’). You said that there really isn’t much more I’d get from a demo than the description and the docs provide. Clearly there is, as I have found myself buying extensions for the very purpose of finding out sufficiently how they work.
2. “We’re not really interested in the price points on other web sites”. Honestly Jay, that’s a baffling comment and exemplifies the “inside-looking-out” perspective I feel WooThemes has adopted. How can to possibly assess the value for money of your products if you don’t care about what others (read: your competition) are doing? There is much more that can be said about on this point but I leave it at that.
3. “…you also get access to our support desk which I believe is worth the price on it’s own.” Sorry, but I absolutely HATE the new support system. With a passion! I’ve made this point previously on other posts but the the amount of collected knowledge on the support forums (which thankfully is still accessible for the time being)is quite simply impossible for a knowledge base to achieve.
Now, I have to make this clear that my issue is with the new support system NOT the support staff. I can’t stress this enough. Everyone I have dealt with has been friendly and extremely helpful. And as I said above, you definitely fall into that crowd.
Well put David. On the last point I think that what is happening is that the WordPress community culture, which is crystalized by their useful support forums, is at odds with a knowledge base only solution. Part of what makes WordPress a great platform is users helping users.
Early on I think woothemes embraced this but found that users did not always offer each other future proof solutions. Making the suport forum a public interaction with woo ninjas they improved the quality of the support. That being said searching the forum for solutions was tricky since their search function was not well tuned. If the search function had been tuned rather than throwing out the forum approach we would be in a better place.
As you have stated, woothemes employees are great! Really Great! The support approach on the other hand could be complemented by a forum for the self helpers.
I have to agree, the forums were MUCH better for exactly that reason.
Even if the responses were not entirely future-proof, coming from other users, the response time and variety of knowledge outweighed that possibility.
The WT staff, awesome as they are, have not built websites similar to EVERYone else’s website. BUT, there’s probably another user or two that HAVE built sites similar to yours.
Other users are also often willing to take the time to copy their code or help with specific modifications that WT support staff (understandably) cannot dedicate their time to.
I always used to say WT was worth the relatively small price differential, simply because the support system was that awesome.
With a growing price differential, and losing the forums… the benefit’s gone. I still love the WT products I have, and they’re on my list when I get new projects, but I increasingly find myself looking elsewhere.
Hi David,
Glad to hear I’ve helped you in the past.
As I said, creating and maintaining demos for all our extensions is unrealistic and very unlikely to happen. We can push developers to create demos, but it’s subjective as to whether it’s necessary or not. For example we really dont need a demo for a payment gateway. From your comment I understand you’d like to see more screenshots and detailed descriptions on the listing pages? That’s something we can certainly look to address going forwards.
Personally I don’t see CodeCanyon as a direct competitor. Our extensions and themes are built by/audited by the same people who’re building WooCommerce itself. I don’t think that should be under-estimated. It means you can purchase in confidence that all our products will work in harmony and continue to do so through upgrades to each individual product. And if it doesn’t, let us know and we’ll fix it right away.
It may be a bad analogy but it’s like buying a car from an authorised dealership vs a private purchase. You pay extra to get the car from the dealership but you also get peace of mind that if something goes wrong it’ll be under warranty and they’ll fix it for you. If something goes wrong with your privately purchased car, you’re on your own*. It all depends on which kind of customer you are I guess, but then that’s why there’s two markets.
I’m sorry to hear that you don’t like the new support system. But I can assure you that feedback as not fallen on deaf ears.
* I’m not saying all CodeCanyon authors are bad or don’t offer support. But there’s no obligation so you’re always taking a risk.
I have to agree on the documentation. It has gotten better as of late, but I think it could be dramatically improved. Screen cast videos, better images, more paragraphs on the features etc. It should just be mandatory.
The new support is also a little strange, but personally I don’t know how you managed to keep up with it all using the forum version. So if it has to be uservoice so be it.
As for codecanyon, I’m not saying anything bad about the developers there but I would much rather buy the extensions here at WooThemes. Just not that happy about the price increase as I do maintain many ecommerce sites. Hopefully the unlimited license is relatively reasonable.
David and Peter, I am 100% with you. I feel the same and I agree.
Jay helped me as well, so it’s not about him, it’s about the “new” moves.
Who makes the decision(s)?
1) I don’t like this new support system, there was no need to “kill” the community. Why? don’t even answer — I won’t agree. Period.
2) The new extension licensing, another bad move. No need for explanations.
I was using WP eStore before, and if I new about 1) and 2) a month ago, I wouldn’t have switched to Woocommerce last week.
Especially when Jay told me via email, during my pre-sales questions: “that, we will be able to help in our support forum…” — something like that.
Guess what? One of my first reply via the new ticket system was like so:
“consider hiring a Woo developer, and the CLASSIC — this is beyond the scope of our support — please read our policy… “. But you know what? I got annoyed, and after 3 x emails, eventually, I was told that what I asked was possible. No need for extra code, no need o hire a Woo ninja.
How do you expect me to feel good about this? Now I am reading about the new extension license…
That’s some pure and honest customer feedback.
I have to kindly say, today, I feel like I have been “grabbed by the balls”.
God knows what’s coming next.
@Louis – That is why we have a Support Policy. Unfortunately we can’t run our business sustainably, if we end up providing all of the code for massive customization projects built on our products.
@Adii, I am not sure you understood what I said?
There was no need to hire a developer and there was NO massive customisation at all… no extra coding needed. Period.
I didn’t even ask for customisations, my questions were about the extension, and how to do x, y, x.
First I was advised to hired a Woo ninja.
Than I was told different
It is the SECOND time I going through this.
It’s ok, no worries — it was expected — what do you expect from a “close” ticket support system?
This wouldn’t have happen in the forum.
Hi david,
I have been toying with the idea of setting up a wikeasi for a users knowledge base on woohq.com
do u think that might be of interest?
Hi Mark.
I think that although there would need to be some fleshing out of how it would best be set up, it certainly -in principal-, is a move in the right direction and that is more answers to more questions accessed quickly.
Good idea.
Hi again David,
thanks for your reply, any thoughts on the best way to work it appreciated 😉
regards
Hear hear
Congratulations to the Woo team! You guys rock.
How you guys keep changing rules (extensions) and slipping these in with an announcement like this is not satisfactory.
I am getting a little tired at this treatment, especially as i now have hundreds of clients using these themes.
This is barely “slipping it in”. Instead we’re providing a week’s worth of forewarning that the pricing will change. Once the new pricing goes live, we’ll speak about that specifically & in more detail.
What was major thrust of this release?
What has a bigger impact on your loyal members, your first birthday? Or….
Increasing prices dramatically for current loyal members who have contributed to woo commerce’s success?
Slipped in it was!
I am concerned about the new extensions license structure as well. Could make a big different to existing and new clients, as well as our e-commerce business model!
I understand however that support is very important and if this change means we are getting very timely support both for technical issues and helping us customise and extend the system then I welcome it, as long as it’s not extortionate of course.
Please let us know
1. What will the license costs be? you mentioned three pricing levels.
2. You say extensions bought before the new structure goes in to place will still be able to be used on unlimited sites. Will those of us who have bought the extensions pre license structure still get full support for the extensions, for the live of the product and get updates to extensions free? I bought extensions based on this belief so would be a bit miffed if that is not the case.
Thanks
Hi Tai,
1. We’ll disclose the pricing on launch.
2. Yes, you’ll get full support, and can use the extensions just as you do now on unlimited sites.
I sure hope you guys are not planning on a subscription plan where I’d have to pay some $ per month on every site e-commerce is used and even more if an extension is used.
That would be a very bad move and I’m sure many currently “loyal” customers will abandon woothemes.
I personally do not mind paying a one time license fee (like “purchasing” quality software), but recurring expenses are a huge red flag.
I think you are misunderstanding… There will be no subscription or recurring billing on extensions.
Just try to buy two extension but i had enough first you charge me 53 instead of 35 for one. After that it said 24 for Discount for review and when you check out it said 25. I bought it anyway and i sent you and email to support@woo with screen shoots you been great in the past but this is a mess.
If the price was $53 then the original price was $75 for this extension.
The 1 dollar more on checkout is just a rounding error, since $35*0.7 is $24.5, which rounds up to $25. It is the price on the website which is wrong.
As your moving our website over to WooCommerce for the store – does this mean that you will enable users to purchase items/subscriptions via PayPal?
I’m fraid we still don’t have plans to use PayPal, due to their terms and policies.
That’s disappointing. As someone without a credit card you would have a lot more on my money if I didn’t have to buy pre-paid cards every time I make a purchase.
If you contact us via our contact page, we can do a manual payment via PayPal, to save you the hassle of doing that.
I appreciate the offer but last time I did that it took 4 days and a whole lot of hassle to complete. Not to mention the headache of broken woocommerce plugins after that.
Magnus,
While I don’t agree with many of Paypal’s terms and conditions, especially the ones that result in near random holds on funds (especially if you’re non-US based), I still take paypal because my paypal total intake is low enough to be under the radar.
Stripe, on the other hand, takes in considerable income and I’m glad that WooCommerce supported Stripe and continues to do so through the plugin author.
However, if you guys are doing manual PayPal payments, doesn’t this undermine the entire “we don’t take PayPal” thing? I chose to accept PayPal because even though I don’t like their terms and conditions, my business case still requires that people pay with their preferred payment method.
If I turned off PayPal, it would be off — period, and no “manual payments” would be allowed. If I was not based in the United States, I’d have PayPal turned off and the functionality in core WooCommerce overrode just in case.
Being based out of South Africa, we’ve had PayPal put a hold on funds for no reason before, and that didn’t work for us as a business. We do manual if the user has no other means of paying.
“…don’t have plans to use PayPal, due to their terms and policies”
I knew it. It was all about Paypal ‘s policy and terms…
Well, thanks for being honest about it.
One user’s perspective:
I don’t understand how unlimited usage (mentioned in the comments) works with having to buy a license for each site (as mentioned in the post). That alone – the act of having to buy a license for every extension for every site – increases the time we have to spend (buying, accounting, etc) and therefore the cost of extensions. We don’t need support necessarily, so there’s no value for us there. However, we don’t mind paying more – just registering each site.
For what it’s worth, we used ExpressionEngine for years and one of the reasons we moved to WordPress was because we became exhausted from buying tons of little extensions, licensing each one, etc. Some of those addon developers are moving toward unlimited licensing, rather than requiring registering each site.
Hi Bud,
No if you buy an unlimited license, you’ll get 1 license key for that extension, which you use on all your sites.
Whew, thanks for that. Wasn’t clear to me from the blog post, but quite glad to know it.
Ah this is starting to make sense. So one of the options will still allow for unlimited use?
So basically you can be at a more expensive level that gives you the unlimited level we enjoy now or two lower levels for fewer sites?
I understand that this info will be released soon but I think the vagueness of the mention to this in the post is causing some worry.
I trust you guys and know that whatever results will be better.
Yes one of the license tiers options is a multi-user license, which will come at a higher price than the other tiers.
We are letting you know about this change, so that you still have the opportunity to make use of the sale to get the extensions at 30% off and multi-use.
Question: Are you using the stock License Keys extension with WooCommerce, then building in the license key server check that comes with the extension?
If so, this may actually be a very good use case as to the License Keys extension’s worth, and perhaps you could do a 3 month later blog post about how its working out for you.
I just purchased some themes this last Friday…how can I get 30% back?
E-mail us and we can potentially make a plan. 🙂
Yeah not sure about this promotion. When I go to purchase this extension for Per Product Shipping, on the product page it says it’s $24 and then on the order page, not only does it *not* automatically give me this 30% discount but it actually ups the price to $25 ?!? Any help?
+1 No discount automatically applied in the shopping cart. I too am seeing prices go from $24 up to $25 when I click “buy now”
Also, totally annoying that i can’t purchase multiple extensions at once, I have 7 or 8 I want to buy and I don’t see any way to add them all to my cart at once.
Novel idea for you, use wooCommerce to power your wooCommerce extension store, then we could have a proper shopping cart! 🙂
We’re going live with a new version of WooThemes.com soon, which will be powered by WooCommerce. 🙂
The $25 price is the correct price (already discounted) and the $24 is due to a rounding error.
If you’d like to purchase multiple extensions, please e-mail us and we’ll make a plan for you.
Well,Adii,I’m writing hoping this time you may do something for me.
Last time when 40% discount was going on I tried to purchase almost 12 extensions but everytime I try to do so I was getting error so I had mailed support with the list fo extensions I wanted to purchase before the promotion ends asking for help so that I can avail the offer but nobody ever got back to me till date:(
Since then I have been checking woothemes blog for a second promotion chance and today when you got one I tried to purchase again and still getting the same error.
I tried my card,my bros card and my moms card..all failed:(..even tried by creating a new account.So again shoot an email to support and dunno…!I would really like to purchase at least 15/20 extensions for my new Woocommerce site,can you get me a plan for me too please?
Many thanks in advance.Have a great day!
Please contact us directly at info@woocommerce.com and we’ll whitelist your creditcard.
Hi,I have emailed.
thanks for your support.
Happy Birthday, Woothemes! Thanks for great things You do!
Sorry but I’ll have to second the previous posters’ lack of enthusiasm regarding your price strategy change, soon to be landed on us.
I bought a premium theme a bit more than 7-8 months ago and was entitled to choose 2 more themes for free. Not only that couldn’t preview them/choose them using my account’s dashboard, my help request wasn’t answer at all…
Hi Daniel,
The new pricing is only for WC extensions, not for themes.
I’m sorry if your support request wasn’t answered, could you please try contacting us again?
@Magnus:
“The new pricing is only for WC extensions, not for themes”
What about “WordPress Plugins”?
Yes, WooCommerce, WooDojo and WooSidebars are FREE but WooSliders is a PAID plugin.
It even has an extension to be WooCommerce compatible?
Yes our paid WP plugins like WooSlider will also go over to the tiered licensing model later on, as mentioned before.
The WC extension for WooSlider will have the tiered licensing.
Happy Birthday guys and thanks for the discount!
I’ve been trying to purchase a number of extensions this week. Your ‘basket’ only allows one item at a time, and when I try to purchase another item immediately afterwards, rejects my card, and I have to wait ages to purchase anything else. Hence I haven’t purchased the items I’d like to!
In addition, my club membership has ‘expired’ again. I’m assuming it has to do with the changes on your website, as I just used the same card to make a purchase elsewhere with no problems. Before you ask, I’ve raised a ticket. The thing is, I already had an open ticket about something else, and I’ve no idea whether your system views that as bumping or not.
Which brings me to another question. You used to have a ‘panic’ button. I never needed it, but it was good to know there was a way to escalate issues. If raising more tickets, adding extra information to an existing ticket or raising a new one is ‘bumping’, how do we actually get through to someone when we do need to escalate things?
Just hit the panic button and we’ll help you out with multiple purchases. All e-mails sent via info@woocommerce.com or our contact page are answered within 24 hours, usaully shorter.
Multiple products is one of the things WooCommerce will finally solve on our site.
Just wondering, would the license key be required to activate/unlock the extension or will it just serve the purpose of updates and support?
Just updates / support. 🙂
How do you plan to enforce the license model? Will there be a lame license model where users are told not to use an extension on more than a single site (if that license was bought), or will you add some kind of code that actually prevent an extension to function?
Or, will the user not be able to generate more than one API-key (if there is a one-site license in effect) and if the latter is chosen, will there be a need to authenticate with your servers? The latter is very important since that is a potential hole for evil-doers?
An other change that I think greatly benefits WooThemes not the users. Just on my past billing cycle (Aug 22 – Sept 22) I never received a new theme. So the new 1 theme a month approach has really benefited me how? Can’t see this licencing approach working for anyone other that WooThemes and the plugin devs.
PS I want a refund for my past months payment –
“*****During your membership*** you will receive:…
Minimum 1 new theme per month”
Did not happen during my Aug to September billing period.
Hi,
We release one theme a month, but that might not always fall inside your billing month. We use the calendar month e.g. 1-31st.
This months theme is coming up this week.
Your policy didn’t help me the one month I had the membership. Thanks for nothing. Guess I will call Visa for that refund then
On further reading of past blog posts I get your point. That makes more sense now.
No refund required.
Customer threatens chargeback for not comprehending how the calendar month works? Sounds like this customer needs identified and WooThemes needs to ban them from doing business.
I know I would, chargebacks are serious business and at the mere mention of one over something that is user comprehension error, I’ll drop that person before they cost me money.
Nathan,
You are are right
.
I guess I was stupid to think that if I “Started” my membership on Aug 22 and it ended September 21/22 I would have seen a theme during that one and only month / billing period I had paid for a membership.
But I realized I made the mistake of “not timing it right” and “not reading the really fine print.”
My fault – I apologised publicly to WooThemes for my error in not timing it right. I even apologised in an e-mail to them too.
But I have to ask;
Think you would be happy if you paid for one month to try it out – didn’t time it right and got no new theme in return?
My fault I guess for being dumb and not timing it perfectly.
Chargebacks are a legal consumer protection and not a stick for arrogant staff to beat their customers with when they’ve already noticed their error and apologised in public.
At least now we know what you really think of your customers, so thanks for that.
And Happy birthday by the way.
Leon
I forgot to mention to Nathan that here in Canada – as in the UK and France we are on the metric system. And that always messes me up when trying to figure out how the months work compared to the US. With February, March and April now being Farch that really messes things up for me. The one plus is I haven’t had a legal birthday since 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar#Calendar_design
I apologise. On further reading of past blog posts I get your point. That makes more sense now.
No refund required. Thanks
No problem. 😉
And remember, that when you subscribed initially, you immediately got access to 100-odd themes.
I have a few thoughts on the pricing change, some negative, and some positive.
For users/customers:
1. If you’re angry about the price change, my first thought is “get over it”. There is absolutely nothing obscene about having a separate license for each site, especially not when there is an option to purchase a multi/unlimited-site license. If you’re complaining because it’s more accounting or additional costs for your business, then I’d encourage you to look at your business model. If paying for a $20-$60 extension breaks the budget for a project, when you’re already getting literally thousands and thousands of dev hours for free by using WooCommerce, then please take a step back and consider what you’re really saying.
2. If you’re unhappy about the change, I’m actually completely with you, just for a different reason that in number 1. I personally really, really do not like the licensing change because actively restricting the use of software is one of the things I despise most. I personally do not feel a WP plugin (including extensions for plugins) should ever, ever be limited in their use. Purchasing a license means unlimited use. Period. Part of this is because of the GPL licensing that WordPress is licensing under, which means that all plugins are also GPL.
For Woo:
1. I completely agree with the pricing change in regards to support management. With the number of users that WooCommerce has, the support is huge, and by allowing unlimited extension usage with a single purchase only exacerbates the amount of support. By requiring that users purchase a license for each site, you dramatically help to mitigate the support burden, or at least help to supplement the cost of providing the support.
2. I 100% disagree with the way the license restriction is put in place. The number of sites an extension can be used on should NEVER be limited. It’s part of the GPL. Instead what you should do (in my mind) is provide two services to sites with a valid license:
a. auto updates (I don’t think you have this yet)
b. support access for that site
Getting access to automatic upgrades is definitely enough reason for me to purchase a license for each site.
Getting support access for the site I’m using the license on is also enough reason to purchase an additional license.
Users should NOT be forced to purchase a license for each site, but they SHOULD be encouraged to do so in order to gain the benefits of A and B.
This is exactly what I was thinking. But because the description of the licensing model is so vague, I decided to ask for clarification.
If they plan on restricting activation of an extension because of a single site license, then that is definitely not a GPL practice. But if the license key is only required for support and updates, then I’m cool with it 🙂
Coen Jacobs and Mike Jolley have just clarified clarified this a bit for me on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/pippinsplugins/status/250255701203623936
Glad to see the clarification.
Good to know.
@Pippin – RE: #2, that is exactly the case. We will never prevent the extension code from functioning, but will limit support / updates to registered sites.
This is exactly how large scale open source based companies do things, GPL code and paid support. I see no problem with this.
I do wonder how one will get support in the future, though. Will we input the domain of the support case, or the license key itself?
When you activate an extension with your license, the domain is mapped, and this is tied to your user on our site. So we’ll see it 🙂
I think automatic upgrades should be included without the additional licenses, only because of the security implications that come from running outdated software. It’s a disservice to the internet community, and likely a PR issue for Woo in the future when someone gets hacked “through a hole in WooCommerce”. Nobody hears “it was an old version”. They hear “WooCommerce”.
+1
I don’t want or expect free tech support, but any updates to extensions that are security related, or needed to enable an extension to keep working with future versions of WP or a parent WP theme, should be free to anyone who has purchased any extension.
Updates are free if you’ve bought the extensions. You just need to add your license key to receive the update.
Agreed.
When a big outage happened earlier this year to a really big web host – it was apparent that some of the blame was out-of-date WP plugins…
Other factors at play too but it can start with a small hole in, and that is what was remembered. Not the other issues.
Thank’s for the clarification. License key required for support and updates, not for usage. A good model to ensure quality support. What can we expect from support? Response times etc?
We are always looking to improve response times and would like to get as close as possible to a 6-hour maximum turnaround time on all tickets within the next 6 – 12 months.
Woocommerce and I have the same birthday?