Too commercial
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If asked a couple of months ago, I would have given 4 stars, but after the 4.6 update I drop my review to 1 star.
In that update they decided to remove the most basic feature, the “download count”, without asking a question or providing adequate feedback. I opened a support ticket it took 5 weeks to have it resolved.
Also, the plugin is full of commercial links to the “pro”, displayed everywhere, I added some CSS to turn of that many “pro” labels… You cannot get the extension you want, you have to buy them all, $159 plus tax, way too much.
I will understand a price like that for an LMS or some complex piece of software, this is just a download monitor…
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@caban13 – Thanks for taking the time to review Download Monitor. I know the last updates haven’t really been smooth sailing, but I believe 4.7.3 has fixed most, if not all outstanding issues.
Now, to answer your questions:
———————————1. What’s stopping you from using Download Monitor 4.5.99 (latest before 4.6) and using whatever features you liked more about that version? It feels to me like you’re saying 4.5.99 is a 4* plugin (in your books) while 4.7.x is a 1* product. Even though, according to the support thread you’ve opened, that we’ve answered as fast as possible (given this is the free version of Download Monitor) – https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/rolled-back-to-4-5-99/page/2/#post-16130852. It looks like per your last reply you were happily using 4.7.x and all issues were gone. I’m not sure what changed in the meantime.
2. No, we haven’t removed anything. Download counts are still there and, as explained here -> https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/rolled-back-to-4-5-99/#post-16128390, we’ve seriously improved our download counting functionality through a LOT of work (almost 10 months of 8 hours/day of work). I dare say we’ve probably got the only accurate download tracking solution on the market. The exact core feature that people end up choosing Download Monitor for.
3. Sure, you might dislike the PRO upsells but then again, as you’ve mentioned, adding a little bit of CSS to hide them wasn’t that big of a deal, right?
NOTE: We use these upsells to advertise our PRO version of the plugin. Paying clients are what help us support the FREE version of the plugin as well. Rolling out updates, features, maintenance, etc is entirely supported by the paying clients (which makes up less than 10% of the entire user base of Download Monitor).
4. What makes an LMS more complicated than a Download monitor plugin? What makes you say this is a “simple” piece of software? By all means, if you want to contribute – and think it’s a simple piece of software – please do so here: https://github.com/wpchill/download-monitor – we love pull request and promise they get answered or merged (if they make sense) as quickly as possible.
Are you judging based on the number of lines of code? Based on the number of available options? Based on what, specifically, did you consider this “simple”? Simple’s not even in the title of the plugin.
After building plugins for the past 6+ years for WordPress, I’d personally say Download Monitor is the most technically challenging solution we’ve tackled.
Again – I want to re-iterate that I appreciate EVERY SINGLE REPLY that we get. Even though it’s not positive. I might not agree w/ every single review we get, but that’s an entirely different story.
P.P.S: Thank you for giving Download Monitor a try and I hope you’ll land w/ a solution that meeds your needs @caban13.
Much love,
/Cristian.
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