I wont argue with you. As we said – it was this or probably close the project doen: https://simple-press.com/simplepress-reloaded/

What I don’t get is that you signed up and paid to be a member just to post that! Seems a little extreme when you consider how much cheaper an irate email would have been!

Yes I paid to post this because I am extremely disappointed and angry!
Thank you for send me an invoice.

okay.

invoice was emailed this afternoon.

FWIW, I don’t mind supporting this project through a support subscription. I like the product simply because I’m a strong WordPress fan, and SP is built to work within WP.

Lots of people are like the OP that expect a FREE Lunch from everyone.

I just want to say that I think it was a great move on your part to do this. Maybe you can offer a daily pass for those who just want to try to solve a single issue and read some of the solutions. It would probably drive people to sign up more often as well.

You guys work hard and deserve to get paid for it like everyone else who work int this world. It upsets me that people expect to get everything for free but they don’t contribute as easily. The total of donations that I have received for my site which receives over 1200 daily visits won’t even cover my hosting costs. You guys are smart to try to cover your time.

My suggestion is that you charge $5-10 for a daily pass and that person can receive the updates to the relevant topic after that for a period of say 30 days.

Thanks again for all the time, sleepless nights, sacrifices, etc. you guys gave to make and improve this forum. It is extremely appreciated.

Consider what you are getting… I can guarantee that these developers spent more than 40 hours a week working on the code and answering support questions. It’s more than a full time job. Simple-Press has been and still is a free pluigin. With the amount of features you are receiving, how can you complain?? They are providing a valuable service that would cost much, much more anywhere else… have you priced vBulletin lately? So, you have to shell out a few bucks every few months for personal support and updated plugins and features. I appreciate the hard work..and I can only imagine the levels of frustration they must deal with.

I think that you did absolutely the right thing. You wrote GREAT code, the Customer Service is FANTASTIC, and you deserve to be paid.  I would have paid for the plugin also but ….

One thought as someone who had only discovered Simple:Press just before suddenly it was “for pay.” 

If I hadn’t worked in it for two weeks with the use of the forum for help to actually learn how great it is, I would not have chosen to use it.  I have no idea how you could do a two week trial of your service to people who are new to Simple:Press — telling them up front that it’s a trial, BTW, so they aren’t suddenly surprised like I was — but the way it is now, you might be losing paying customers because they haven’t any experience with you or your wonderful plugin.  Just my 2 cents worth.  🙂

All I can say is THANK YOU.  Great plugin.  Great Customer Service.  Worth what I paid and more!

We would very much like to thank you all for the kind words of support. Positive comments are always, of course, appreciated and often so rarely received!

Thanks

I absolutely concur with Unhappy Clam. Don’t know why Andy and Steve are unable to see the point.I had , in fact, posted a similar feedback and some suggestions a couple of days back.

https://simple-press.com/support-forum/ideas-feature-requests-and-next-version/need-to-reconsider-the-strategy/

Simple-press is free for download for new customers and you guys think that will make the customers have the opportunity to experience simple press first and then take up gold/silver membership.  But I don’t think that this strategy will work great in the long run.Till now ,most of the people, including me, happilly paid for Simple press subscription because of the awesome support experience when we didn’t have paid membership. What you don’t see is that until and  unless a new customer doesn’t get enough support to configure simple press up,he would no way shell out money and go for paid membership. Simple press is quite userfriendly but still configuring simple press and customizing it to suit a website’s needs and then troubleshooting the errors is a daunting task and he’d be in two minds whether his problems will be resolved EVEN when he takes support membership. 

The current model is something like giving a complex machine to a customer -freee of cost but WITHOUT a manual. So if the user is savvy enough to operate the machine by himself, he’s good .Otherwise he’s in soup!

Again as I said, I have great respect for Andy and Steve and I’m sure that whatever they decide will be good but just hope that they’ll be able to feel the pulse of the people here, who themselves have silver and gold memberships and love Simple-press(rather SPV5) and that’s why want it to grow.

Mann has a good point. Though you guys deserve to make a ton of money but you might loose potential new members in the process. Not really sure. I had the good fortune to work out the bugs when it was free and now I love you guys and the plug-in.

I might have given up if not for all your great help back when….

Here is a new suggestion. Allow read only to the non members for one month……If they have a specific question that has not been addressed they will pay the membership cost.

Another big thumbs up to Simple Press crew – great support & bargain price 🙂

Good idea from @fiddlerman though; might even increase the number of paying subscribers

we are always evaluating options and ways forward… thanks for the input…

just to add my tuppence to this

I agree the service is excellent for what wer are paying for and they I have been saved from pulling my hair out a couple of time s thanks to the subscription however i very nearly didnt subscribe

I had an account just before it went paid yet my accoun was caught up in the spam sweep and when i contacted via twitter to get my account back so i could access the plugin database the response was, less then helpfull initally and then there was no response.

in the end i did pay out as this is the best solution out there for wordpress and the continued development is something im willing to pay for but the price is a little of putting I would have like to have seen a monthly option to the subscription also chances are i would have tried that and then signed up for the year or bought the monthly as and when i needed help

Im all for you being paid for what you do but i think it could do with just a little bit of tweaking in the way you go about it, i might also suggest some help documentation being made available would be good for those who dont want to pay (or if it exists how to get to it made a little clearer

nomis78 said however i very nearly didnt subscribe.
I had an account just before it went paid yet my accoun was caught up in the spam sweep and when i contacted via twitter to get my account back so i could access the plugin database the response was, less then helpfull initally and then there was no response.

I had a similar experience. The support never impressed me, actually quite the opposit from time to time. Especially if i compare to other wordpress related services as for example Elegant Themes, that i have subscribed to for the last 4 years. So if you want to this pay model to get successful, you really need to improve your support a notch or two.

However you have a outstanding forum plugin, which is the main reason i paid for the silver membership.