How the cost of free plugins can pay off for WordPress developers

Recently, I was looking at a plugin I had been using for my local town website. It was a simple plugin that lived in the WordPress repository. It had great value.

The plugin has been discontinued. I really don’t know why, but my guess is that the author has other things to do. My first thought was how I or someone I knew could take over the plugin.

Then I thought I or someone else might end up the same way.  The same day, I saw someone boldly claim they weren’t interested in a plugin if it wasn’t free, even though it was a freemium plugin. Another person told me they were looking for a plugin that posted on social media, also for free.

I thought back to all the times I took advantage of free plugins. Often, I too only wanted free plugins.

It is only natural, especially if you don’t have a lot of money to work with. Some people may have come into the WordPress community largely because it is free software and there are free, open source, add-ons they can use.

Entrepreneurs in other industries don’t think twice about paying for software or tools that will make them money or save them time.

So, I wondered if the plugin I saw discontinued would be picked up by another company, but likely it will not. The truth is, there is another plugin just like it that exists as an add-on for another plugin that has a freemium model. My best bet is to pay for the pro version and use that.

Free can be a good thing, especially when you are bootstrapping your business, but it becomes a bad thing when expectations by business owners are set only to free. It also is a bad thing when someone cannot afford the time and money to keep up with a plugin.

The truth is, in the early days, plugins were something many developers did on the side. They were developers, they used WordPress, there was a need, and they met the need with a plugin. Most of the time, these plugins were and are free and we benefit from them.

As the WordPress market matured, some developers went completely into plugin development (think MainWP). Since that is their main revenue stream, they offer pro or premium versions for a price that allows users to get support without waiting for someone to answer your question in the WordPress support forum. That saves time.

How developers use free plugins

For Tina Todorovic of HYPEStudio, makers of Social Web Suite, packing extra features into a free plugin becomes an issue as the plugin can become bloated, cause security issues, and slow down a WordPress site. Additionally, you create additional work for something that is already free. If you aren’t careful, she says, “Your full-time job is supporting your free plugin, and you cannot pay your rent from that.”

[click_to_tweet tweet=”‘Your full-time job is supporting your free plugin, and you cannot pay your rent from that.’ @TinaTO ” quote=”‘Your full-time job is supporting your free plugin, and you cannot pay your rent from that.’ Tina Todorovic” theme=”style4″]

HYPEStudio benefits from the excellent support they give users which leads to using their paid products. The free plugins also give them a chance to give back to the WordPress community.

Robert DeVore uses his free plugins as a gateway to use his premium plugins.  Initially, DeVore used plugin development as a way to give back,

I started a long time ago with Wordpress before the premium theme market and anything like that. So growing with it, it’s taught me development. That’s what I learned with, that’s what I built with, and then I turned it into a fulltime job freelancing. So for me it was just a way to give back.

When he was looking for a way to stand out in the marketplace, he decided to create and launch WP Dispensary.

I realized the market was just going to keep growing and there was nothing really out there for it… So I start I just put it out there, and over time as it started to grow then I started to find needs for like the coupons and age verification.

He explains that if users like the free plugins, they begin to check out the paid plugins. The free plugins bring traffic back to the main site. DeVore’s model for a free plugin is a gateway to the add-on plugins which are paid for.

For Marcel Bootsman, the appreciation from users is a driving force for him.

He told me, “. . . the free plugins I have require zero to very little support. I get very nice reviews for them, and occasionally, someone suggests a change, either code or UX. The appreciation is what drives me to keep supporting and maintain these plugins.”

Wrapping it up

For Bootsman the cost is mitigated by the appreciation from users. DeVore uses his free plugins as a gateway to paid products. For HYPEStudio, they thrive on plugin development and it leads to paid development and products. They also enjoy giving back to the community with their free plugins.

Each plugin developer considers the cost differently.  Do you have a free plugin in the repository? What is the reason you support a free plugin? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.