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WPMU DEV Review: It Is Too Good To Be True

Jun 11, 2012 - Written By - Amit
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Overall Rating
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wpmu dev review

While searching for some WordPress plugins for my website, I came across WPMU DEV. They offer tons of plugins (142) and themes (150), which can be purchased individually or by becoming a member.

According to their website, they have ~88,000 members, so they must be offering some value.

However, I wanted to write this WPMU DEV review, because while I was excited to join as a member, my experience did not live up to expectations.

You’ll probably feel the same way, if you’re like me and:

  • Want plugins which work well right out of the box, with minimal customisation.
  • Are not a developer/coder.

I joined WPMU DEV because I was interested in a few plugins to start with:

  1. Directory: Online business directory.
  2. Comments Plus: Social commeting.
  3. WordPress Wiki: Wiki features and management.

The Comments Plus plugin crashed my site and I couldn’t get it to work. The other two had very basic features and design. To get them to the level I expect from premium WordPress plugin, I’d need to hire a developer.

I tried to see if I could make any changes myself, with the help of the WPMU DEV support team. They were very responsive and provided suggestions for how I could modify the plugins to achieve what I wanted. The problem was that I didn’t understand half of what they said, because it was too technical :) . When I asked for more detailed and simple step-by-step process, they did not provide that. I was told it would be beyond the scope of the support they provide.

So for a customer with my profile, I felt that WPMU Dev did not deliver on their promise:

  • More quality WordPress plugins, better support and guaranteed code than anywhere else on the web.
  • All developed with WPMU DEV quality, they ‘just work’.
  • Being a member is like having your own WordPress development team with full access to our experience and expertise, super fast response times, great resources and your development requests guiding what we do.

I also think that they are quite expensive, with membership options at $75 per month (monthly plan), $53 per month (3 month subscription) and $34 per month (annual subscription). Individual plugins and themes are priced at $39, which is not reasonable in my opinion, since many of them need additional work to be done.

To their credit, I had signed-up for a yearly subscription, for which there is no refund. However, when I put forward my case, they were kind enough to provide a full refund.

WPMU DEV Review in a nutshell: Avoid if you’re not a developer. If you are a developer then I think they can provide value (and are doing so for ~88,000 members).

WPMU DEV Review: It Is Too Good To Be True1.625Amit2012-06-11 10:29:53While searching for some WordPress plugins for my website, I came across WPMU DEV. They offer tons of plugins (142) and themes (150), which can be…

Written By: Amit

Amit is an entrepreneur, online marketer and career advisor. In a previous life, he's worked with Bain, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Amit has masters degrees in Business, Finance and Organisational Psychology.

  • Louis Abbott

    Hi,

    Thanks for the review.  I found your review while researching WPMU DEV.  App Sumo is offering a year of membership for $125 at the moment.  I have modest development skills, but little or no WordPress knowledge.  Based on your review I think it still may be a good deal for that price.  With some patience I would hope to get my money’s worth out of the themes and plugins.

    Louis

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      Hi Louis,

      Thanks for the tip. I hadn’t heard of App Sumo before. The site looks interesting at first glance and when I have some time, I’m going to see what they offer in more detail.

      • Louis Abbott

         I’ve been happy with App Sumo so far.  They do seem to offer some great discounts on products.  I did go ahead and purchase the year of WPMU DEV, but have not used it yet.  I have a steep learning curve to get a website out, and will need to make time to work on it this summer.  At that point I’ll find out just how helpful these tool are.

        • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

          Good luck building your website Louis. I hope it turns out well.

          Once you try out WPMU DEV, I’d be interested in knowing your experience with it.

        • Yossi

          Hi Louis, What has your experience with WPMU DEV been, 6 months later? I’m also looking at a deal via App Sumo and would love to hear how it worked for you….?

    • http://www.facebook.com/sonny.koo.5 Sonny Koo

      hi louis, if u have coding skill, that wpmu dev is worth it ……… you basically can get a lot idea and ready (not working at the time i subscript) plugin to make your site perfect …. good luck.

      me running out of luck cause i don’t have any coding skill ..

  • David E.

    Hello Amit,
    I found this post as a result of a very similar experience with Directory. I do have some skills and do understand much of what I was told. However, I discovered that the plugin was simply broken. Many of the promises features either don’t function as described or don’t function at all. Several techs gave me conflicting advice and explanations. Anything from “oh it’s better than it used to be” to blaming my stock template to telling me I had to change the permalinks (an undocumented requirement) to it was my fault for messing up the plugin.

    I hope others will come here and see that this shiny slick site doesn’t provide what it claims.

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      Hi David,

      Thanks for sharing your experience with WPMU Dev.

      The service didn’t live up to its promises for me either.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sonny.koo.5 Sonny Koo

    yah this is so true …
    1. Most of plugin have bug. (my experience 100%)

    2. Very poor support, basically they provide nothing.
    3. No customer support after purchase.
    this is my personal experience, i subscribe to make thing easier but wpmudev make it worst ..

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      Thanks for sharing your personal experience with WPMU DEV Sonny

  • Deltafactory

    I’ve heard that many of my colleagues have WPMU Dev memberships. I imagine that it’s quite enticing to have so many plugins with so many features. As a developer, I agree with your assessment. I am in the process of patching Autoblog, and probably the Snapshot plugin for one of my client’s larger sites.

    Their plugins can be poorly coded, spitting out plenty of PHP Notices in debug mode. I have also found a few blatant coding errors that they would have seen/fixed if they were using debug mode themselves.

    The MarketPress plugin is in shambles. WooCommerce is everything their plugin should be and more, with a fraction of the hassle.

    As a developer, I’m loving the extra billable hours. Non-developers beware!

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      Good to get a developer’s perspective as well Deltafactory. Looks like it’s not easy for anyone to use their plugins!

  • http://hackerkepzes.hu/ Hacker Képzés

    Beware, they don’t give you updates unless you keep paying for them! And of course the plugins quickly became obsolete if you update WP…

  • ronnieburt

    Hi Amit,

    I just came across your post and wanted to thank you for sharing your experiences with WPMU DEV.

    I work for WPMU DEV (for 3 years now after becoming a member in 2009) and have forwarded your feedback on to our entire team. Our goal is to provide the most user friendly and feature-rich WordPress products around, and we are all sad to see we didn’t meet your expectations here.

    It looks like it has been a while since you gave us a try, and please know that we are always improving to meet the needs of all of our members.

    If you or any of your readers are up to giving us a (second) try, we’d be more than happy to help over at contact@wpmudev.org. You can ask for me if you’d like, and I’ll make sure we get you taken care of.

    All the best,
    Ronnie

    • Roy Bretton

      Hello Ronnie,

      I joined a month ago, and I’ve found the whole experience really disappointing, I am writing to James at this moment to get my money back, I can’t believe how many bad reviews there are!

      You advertise on your site that questions are answered with one hour normally, it took me over a week to try and resolve the problem which was never resolved! Even trying to attach a word document to your forum, causes issues and I ended up having to email direct to WPMU DEV!

      The only thing that WPMU DEV has done for me, is to cause loads of frustration, so much so that I have gone back to my original themes etc, as WPMU DEV themes plug-ins etc did not work for me!

      So please do yourself a favour and avoid WPMU DEV!

  • jason

    I had a terrible experience with them as well. I was under the impression that they would help with
    development questions but most of my questions were “out of their scope” One person even got insulted when I asked to speak to the developer of the plugin, he obviously didn’t not understand php was just a customer service agent.

    When you’re paying 79$ per month I expect detailed support. If I want to change some core functionality and have a question to point me in the right direction I expect clear answers. $79 per month is extremely high for a service that basically will help you install a plugin and go over general details about the plugin.

    The site promises that you can continue to use all their plugins even if you cancel your membership, but they fail to tell you that you need to download all of the plugins from their dashboard right away. If you let your membership expire and want to use a plugin that you haven’t used yet (that you paid for technically) well too bad you can’t get it.

    Avoid this company at all costs.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Edward-Stanaway/100000808348317 Edward Stanaway

    I completely agree with this assessment. Although I am a developer, I dont often have time in my day to work on hobby sites and joined WPMU in the hopes that some of that workload would be reduced. It was not. The support I encountered was less than ideal, with support staff often giving token replies and then forgetting a request existed. Also many of their comments break a basic wordpress MU installation, giving error 500. This morning I identified 4 distinct plugins that cause a site to crash. I feel the product is very poor, with many alternatives out there of higher quality, for free.

  • Robert Frump

    Similar experience recently. They really do misrepresent the ease of usage here. And refuse to make any sort of refund if you fell for the $39 price than then turns into $200 on your credit card. I would be very wary of these folks.

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      I agree Robert. It’s fine if the service has some problems – that happens. But I felt that WPMUDEV over promises big time and then doesn’t deliver. That’s a shame, since it could really be a great service if it worked

  • Longarm

    Their Market Press plug in didn’t work. After initial contact with their customer support (for which I paid $19) they then ignored me. I went with Woo Commerce instead. I requested a refund as they did not provide me with adequate support in a reasonable timeframe but they refused. I would not recommend them.

    • http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/ Amit

      I think WooCommerce is a good choice Longarm

  • Mark

    Wish I’d seen this before I signed up with them.

    I tried their “Directory” plugin, but it wouldn’t work properly with my theme. I was told that my theme would have to be modified to make it work.

    Apparently this applies to most themes – something they conveniently fail to mention before you sign up.

    $19 down the drain.