Premium WordPress Plugins – When The Free Ones Are Crap

Don’t get me wrong, I love WordPress because it’s free. And the themes are free and the plugins are free. Fantastic!

But lately, I’ve been searching for more complicated plugins for my own websites and for clients, and the free ones just aren’t doing the job.

And support for these plugins is virtually non-existent.

The developers are too busy working on projects that pay them money, they haven’t got time to serve me for free. I don’t blame them.

So where do I turn?

I turn to Google of course and search for “Premium WordPress Plugins”.

Here’s what I found:

• Source: Tomuse’s list of 11 Premium WordPress Plugins
• 5 more Premium WordPress Plugins from WPHacks.com
• 13 more Premium WordPress Plugins from Sociatic.com

Are there really only 29 of them?

Let’s have a closer look at the more interesting ones:

1. Gravity Forms
2. Add-ons for WordPress e-Commerce
3. PhPurchase
4. Shopp

1. Gravity Forms

I’ve been using the free Contact Form plugin “Contact Form 7” for free on all my WordPress websites so what does Gravity Forms offer that Contact Form 7 doesn’t?

Here are 3 features that appeal to me:

1. Email Notification Routing – Now you can set up notifications to route to different email addresses based on rules that you define. Use one form to route form submissions to sales, marketing, customer service department
2. Create Autoresponder Emails to Users – Send automatic emails to users in response to a submission. Add any form field content to your message to create professional and personalised messages.
3. Easily Export Form Entry Data to CSV Format – Need your entry data for other applications? Easily export all or part of your entries to CSV. Our export tool makes it a breeze to export only the fields that are needed.

How much does it cost? US$39 for a single site license (US$99 for 5 websites, US$199 for unlimited websites)

2. WordPress e-Commerce

The base plugin is free (open source) and then you can choose from a list of add-ons like:

• Gold Cart & Grid Module (US$40) – product search, multiple images, more payment gateways (including DPS.co.nz)
• DropShop 2.0 (US$100) – drag and drop into shopping cart
• Fedex Shipping Module (US$25.00) – just that
• Members Only module (US$25.00) – just that
• Product Slider (US$25.00) – fancy product display
• MP3 Audio Player (US$10.00) – sell music
• NextGen Gallery Buy Now Buttons (US$10.00) – adds a buy now button to images

And the open source community has provided another bunch of free add-ons for WordPress e-Commerce.

3. PhPurchase

Another premium e-commerce plugin.

• US$49 single site license
• US$199 5 site license
• US$299 unlimited license

Can I distinguish between this one and the previous e-commerce plugin? No. No I can’t.

4. Shopp

Another premium e-commerce plugin.

• US$55 single site license
• US$299 unlimited license

And for another US$25 you can choose from a list of payment gateways.

“Is that all? Just 4?”

Yes. That’s about all I could find.

I must say I am pretty disappointed.

These premium plugins are mostly about advertising, classifieds, shopping carts & seo.

I don’t really need those.

To paraphrase one of elance’s top WordPress professionals “2009 was the year of Premium Themes, perhaps 2010 will be the year of Premium Plugins”.

Let’s hope so, because surely all the developers providing us with the free plugins in exchange for feeble requests for donations isn’t motivating them to continue to develop and update?

What Other Premium WordPress Plugins Do You Use?

Add them in the comment below.

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