Free vs Paid plugins

obviously free software is way better than proprietary malware.
free your software, embrace foss, preach to our lord and savior richard stallman!
But don't forget to thank the authors of the plugins for what they are doing.
whatever you donate to them, make good bug reports or feature requests or just say thank you to them doesn't really matter, just let them know that you love what they have created for you.

 

one in every 100 is not surprising.

 

Free plugins aren't as good as Paid ones,

1 Example is AAC which has been rated as one* of the best anticheats
Another thing is that Developers make paid plugins to get funds to keep the project running such as
if you need to host plugins on websites or need to make some extra money. It also says Thank You for making
a Good / Amazing plugin if you purchase it



*AAC is not the best but it has been rated as being one of the best on that list.

 

Premium plugins also keep a certain audience away from using your plugin or most importantly the stupid questions like "why my yaml says syntax error"

Let's face it. No one who starts their first server (aka doesn't know a lot about plugins) will buy plugins. Also it forces them to do some research: you are not gonna buy something unless you did some research on it. With free plugins it's usually: download, install and complain because it wasn't what you were expecting

 

me every day

It's about 1 per 1500 servers for myself, though the average donation is like $7 (Though there are generous people sometimes). You definitely never get back anything close to time put in in relation to ViaVersion but it wasn't created for that.

 

If everyone put in the same amount of effort without slapping a price tag on at the first sign of profits then perhaps the quality of free plugins would increase dramatically. But alas, paid plugins exist and do quite the opposite despite their intentions.

 

I like plugins that do what I want them to.

 

All in all you can't make a general statement if paid or free ones were better.

There where horrible free plugins (nearly no fratures, bad software architecture,...) AND there are bad premium plugins, too.

So if you need a plugin, search, think, decide and use it. After a while you'll know if your decision was right.

I personally won't publish premium plugins. I earn money at work and doing plugin development only within my free time.
When i publish plugins, i want to contribute the community, not make profit.

After many years of experience with information technology and programming in general, 5 years of object oriented programming, 3 years of Java and 2 years of Minecraft development i don't want money for my experience and work at spigotmc.
Earn money at work, do what you like to do in your free time so there is no need to get paid.

I could never get my motivation to make plugins because of money. I do it, because i like it.
And i'm pretty sure that i'm not the only one who thinks like that.

Keep in mind, the resources staff doesn't have the time to check every premium resource in detail before approving it. So buying a plugin doesn't give you any guarantee at all.

 

i've had around $60 in donations from staff+, which has 15k downloads. it just depends on how good the plugin is and how often it is updated

 

Not speaking for everyone, but I've donated on probably 5 to 10 free plugins in 2016 alone (anywhere between $5 and $20, each), because of differing factors, but mostly because of the level of support being mind-blowing great.

As for OP's question, for me it depends on what I'm looking for.

I'm not going to say "all free plugins good because they're free", because quite honestly some free plugins suck. There's no other way to say it. They're either terrible with decent support, or good but the moment you have a problem you get into an argument with the dev because they just assume you're wrong. (Even if it's an error on their end.) That's my #1 most frequent issue with plugin devs, when there is an issue: They assume the user is wrong 100% of the time.

I'm not saying ALL plugin devs assume such, but I'm actually more surprised when one doesn't think that. When, in all honesty, one should be more surprised that a dev DOES assume such. Now, I understand a large amount (if not the majority) of trying to help a user can be like talking to a wall, based on what I've seen in plugin discussions.

As for premium plugins, those can suck too. I'm not going to name any plugins/devs because that's just wrong. There are a few premium plugins I've gotten that are the obvious best choice for that specific application, but the level of support is close to zero.

To put it in perspective, I use a free plugin that there exists probably 5 or 10 free alternatives. Because of this, if there was a premium one, I most likely would not get it. Because there are free alternatives. With that being said, I do find a scary amount of bugs in this plugin and sometimes it breaks completely. But the dev is super friendly, quick to respond, and he's just generally awesome about it all. That's one of the few reasons, but a huge reason, for why I don't swap plugins. (Besides, swapping and learning new vote plugins is a huge pain.)

On the flip side, I use a gamemode plugin that is premium and I've spent the last 6 months looking for an alternative, free or not, because more than a few of its main "talking" points are buggy on certain MC versions and the dev doesn't want to fix it or doesn't think it's an issue. Took them a year to implement something that a large amount of buyers had asked for, attacked me for leaving a 4 star review, etc. Another plugin I had purchased (shining reviews, happy users, etc.) kept breaking in regards to MySQL...which was required to use it. Posted in discussion, no response after a week, messaged the dev, no response. After about a month, I left a bad review and was attacked by a random user for it. I will never use a premium plugin by either of those 2 devs ever, no matter how nice or awesome it is, because of the fact I felt like I was a bother when I was reporting bugs and trying to get some things fixed or understand why they didn't work as expected. (Like, if my expectations were wrong.)

As a side note, there are a few devs that I've come to expect the highest quality from, and if I'm using something (free or premium), and one of these devs release something similar to what I'm using, I will most likely check it out (free or premium). Just a few months ago, I was looking for a plugin to show items in chat, for bragging rights and whatnot. I also use custom enchants and wanted those to display as well. The plugin I was using wouldn't show custom enchants. I found a completely new "show item in chat" plugin and was hesitant to even look into it, but then I noticed who made it. That pretty much sealed it up in a nice package, and I bought it.

TL;DR: It depends on what you're looking for. Free is not always good. Premium does not mean better support or even a better plugin. Also, it depends on the dev who created the plugin.

 

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

 

@Aberzhulan summed up my feelings on the subject quite nicely.

I am happy to pay developers that are responsive and have a competent, working plugin that does everything it advertises. Whether that payment is paying for the plugin itself or making a donation for a free one, either way works.

 

While talking about Minecraft server developer/admin community:
1. I prefer NOT to stay with people who are motivated by money.
2. I hate those kids releasing useless paid plugins.
3. I feel sad for non-experienced users buying useless paid plugins.
4. For those who maintained a user base with free content, then changes the content to be paid (because they think they can get money by doing this), you suck.
5. For those who never thank authors for their awesome free plugins while making endless complains, you are the ones who leads to this situation.

 

A ton of Free Plugins are just as high quality and effort filled as Paid Plugins. So it doesn't matter if it is free or paid. The quality matters.
As you can see most of mine don't have quality and only 4 or 5 of them have any giant effort.

 

As many users have pointed out, there really isn't a one size fits all answer to this. So the poll is fairly useless.

Firstly, I believe all free software should be open source software. I'm a huge supporter of free and open source libraries, working together to make something awesome that everyone can use sort of stuff. I love creating things like that, and I love seeing other people who create things like that. It makes the development world a much better place, for both the developer and the users of the stuff getting developed. Instead of each of us developing our own wheels, we're working together to provide the best possible wheels and awesome and stable alternatives which best fit each specific project.
However, when it comes to building a car, and you're bringing together all of these unique and intricate pieces designed just for your car, and you come out with something you're proud of, something nobody is asking for, but you know some people might want because of how unique and special it is; put a price tag on that. Because those that actually want that unique car would have downloaded it whether it had a price tag or not.
That's how I feel about plugins.
Supply and demand will always prevail. The best plugin for the lowest price which does what the most people are looking to be done will get the downloads.
If you're making something that a million people are looking for, then chances are you're not the only one making it, and if you don't have something to offer, if you can't compete, whether in price or in quality, then you are not a viable option.
And I think the amount of downloads each individual plugin has is a very decent reflection of whether or not that specific product, assuming it's worth downloading in the first place, was priced appropriately.

 

I like both. Paid developers do that what I want. Does'nt matter how stupid some plugins are
But what I really like at free plugins, they think with you, what you could improve, what is unnessecary, etc.

 

Whilst paid allows the developer to gain more motivation (Well the most of them).

 

Yes What I like with paids you can kick them in their ass, without you have to care that they won't do your requested work anymore