gpl.market review: do not buy WordPress plugins and themes from gpl.market
In today’s post, I’m going to do a review of gpl.market (do not confuse it with another website called gplmarket.com, an autogas parts website), and tell you why you should avoid buying WordPress plugins and themes from them.
Background of websites that sell nulled WordPress plugins and themes
gpl.market is a website which sells nulled WordPress plugins and themes. They buy the WordPress plugins and themes from the original developers, remove the license code and redistribute them under GNU GPL. There are a number of websites that engage in this practice. There are pros, cons and even dangers of patronizing this service, however, this is a topic for another day. You can do a little googling to learn more about the pros, cons and dangers of using nulled WordPress plugins and themes.
Reasons why people patronize nulled WordPress plugins and themes
People patronize nulled WordPress plugins and themes for various reasons:
- Ignorance: Newbie developers might not be aware of the dangers of nulled WordPress plugins and themes.
- For testing purposes: Some WordPress developers may buy and install nulled WordPress plugins and themes on test WordPress installations to fully test out the features, functionality and behaviour of the plugin or theme before committing to paying the full license to the plugin or theme developer.
- To dupe unsuspecting clients: Some WordPress developers could collect money from clients for a WordPress plugin or theme, and instead of buying from the original developer, may buy a nulled version at a fraction of the cost, while pocketing the rest of the money.
- Financial constraints: Some people just don’t have the budget to pay for all the plugins and themes they need for their website, hence they resort to the cheaper option of buying nulled plugins.
Why I started patronizing nulled WordPress plugins
My case falls within the fourth category: financial constraints. I’m trying to establish an online business from my meagre monthly salary. At the beginning, I bought the theme and the core plugins from the original developers. However, after more than two years of not making any money from the website, and still wanting to push forward with the project, I had to rely on nulled plugins (except for the security plugins) to be able to sustain the website.
My contact with gpl.market
There was a specific plugin I needed but it was too expensive on the gpl site I was buying my nulled plugins from, so I started searching for a cheaper alternative. Unfortunately, most of the gpl sites I searched didn’t have the plugin. gpl.market was one of only few gpl sites that had the plugin, and it was dead cheap (“cheap things,” they say, “are expensive”). So, I bought the plugin from them. I later bought two more plugins from them.
The problems I had with gpl.market
No plugin versions listed on the site
The plugins on gpl.market are listed without plugin versions, so you can only find out the plugin version by downloading and installing the plugin first. This is a complete waste of time. Before I bought the plugin, I wrote to them about this issue. Below is our communication.
Me:
I’ve noticed that you don’t indicate the versions of your products. How does one know he’s not buying outdated products?
gpl.market:
Hello. You can ask for versions of the products you want to buy.
Me:
Ok, what’s the version of this plugin?
Note: I removed the link
gpl.market:
Hello. vx.y.z is available.
Me:
Thanks for the response, finally.
By “available”, do you mean If I download the plugin from your site right now, The file will be that of vx.y.z or do you mean the latest version of the plugin on the developers website is vx.y.z (which I already know)?
What is the rationale behind hiding the version number on your site?. Do you mean that if I find a plugin on your site that I like, (1) I have to pay for it, download and install it to find out if it is up-to-date, and if it is not up to date, I message you to update it, or (2) message you to find out the version, then possibly wait for you to update before I pay and download it?.
In this age of digital technology, I don’t expect to go through this kind of hassle. Do you? I expect you to just indicate on your product pages the versions of the plugins you’re currently serving.
gpl.market:
Hi, sorry for the late reply.
We don’t show plugin versions right now. Our goal is to provide “usable” products. And we guarantee that.
You can ask us about the product versions. You can also get faster answers by contacting via Whatsapp.
This last reply of theirs will be addressed later in the post.
I tried to get them to show the plugin versions on their website but they had made up their minds and wouldn’t budge.
Communication
You can see in their last reply above that they apologized for late reply. This wasn’t the first, neither was it the last late response.
I had asked for the plugin version on Jan 20, 2023, but it wasn’t until Jan 25, 2023 when I sent them the following message that they replied:
Are you guys doing business or not? I asked you a question several days ago and you’ve refused to respond.
Then, I moved our communication to WhatsApp, since they claimed I would get faster response there. Communication on WhatsApp was also a disappointment. I received same-day responses for the first two support messages I sent them after my first purchase. After that, things began to go downhill. It took them 2 days to respond to my next communication. And things became increasingly worse from that point. Check sample WhatsApp communications below.
I guess the timelines above are self-explanatory.
Since I posted the above product update request, I’m yet to receive a response as at the time of writing this article on November 27, 2023.
Obviously, their communication wasn’t better on WhatsApp, as they claimed.
Problems with plugins
It took them a long time to update some plugins. Some plugins were corrupted. Some plugins were never updated. You will notice in the image on the left above that they claimed to have updated a plugin but when I downloaded, it was still the old version.
One of the plugin updates resulted in the problem below:
They never solved the problem. Finally, I had to stage the site, install the new version alongside the old one, then delete the old version and made sure there wasn’t any problem before repeating the process on the production site.
My next plugin update requests resulted in more problems. Check out the WhatsApp communications below.
Then I asked for updates of two plugins and got the problems shown in the image on the right. To date, none of those problems have been solved.
Finally, I couldn’t bear it and went into a rage:
Since they failed to provide a working update for the vulnerable plugin, I had to take it down and find a replacement. This was time wasted.
They claimed, “Our goal is to provide “usable” products. And we guarantee that.” Does the above service look like provision of usable products? Their products were mostly outdated, and when they did update them, there were always problems.
They appeared to be dumb
You can imagine the two questions they asked me at the end after all the explanations given before. Were they dumb or were they pretending to be dumb?
I bought a total of 3 plugins from them. The last time any of them received a working update was March 12, 2023. Since then, the updated plugins have not worked properly, and at a point, their support seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
Conclusion
I have shared my experience with you concerning gpl.market. Their products are cheap but they don’t keep them up-to-date, their updates have all kinds of problems, their communication is poor, and they hide the product versions, forcing you to download the products and install to find out whether they are up-to-date or not. You have been warned! With this article, I’ve officially ended my business with gpl.market.