45. Let’s Pay Less: Do I Need to Pay for Premium Plug-Ins?

Stephanie 0:00

One of the benefits of blogging on WordPress is the comprehensive plug in library that they have. But do we need to shell out money for premium plug ins? Let's chat about it.

Stephanie 0:13

Hey there, teacher business owner. It's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:24

Welcome back to the podcast. It's the last Saturday of the month, which means it's time for another installment of the let's pay less series. If you're new to the podcast, in these episodes, we discuss the pros and cons of popular budget busters in the organic marketing space, so you can decide if they're worth the additional expense. I never really give a suggestion one way or the other, because only you know your business budget and your priorities. Instead, this series is meant to provide you with some food for thought as you plan out your business expenditures. Since we've been working on spring cleaning our websites this month, I thought this would be a good time for us to talk about whether premium plugins are all they're cracked up to be.

Stephanie 1:05

As we talked about in last week's episode, it's important to keep close tabs on the plugins you're running on your website. As you look through your plugin library, you might be wondering if a premium plugin could fill in a gap for your website functionality. So first, let's clarify what I mean by a premium plugin. This just means a paid add on to your website that improves some aspect of your site's functionality. The cost could be a one time fee, or it might be an ongoing subscription. There are premium plugins for basically anything. You can pay for an add on to help with SEO, with your website appearance, with page building, like Elementor Pro, there are contact forms, social sharing plug ins, like tasty pins, product sales, you know, like if you have a WooCommerce, and honestly, any plug in imaginable, there is often a premium version. But are these paid plugins worth it? Let's talk about some of the pros and cons.

Stephanie 2:17

So first, let's focus on the pros. The first one is that paid plugins often have better support. When plugin developers require a subscription or a fee, at least some of that cost is usually earmarked for ongoing maintenance and support. Another pro is that paid plugins are generally around for the long haul, and will be updated regularly. And this is a really important part of any plug in you want it to always be compatible with your version of WordPress. And so when you're looking in the plug in library, you've probably noticed that it says whether or not it's compatible, it tells you when it was last updated, so you can kind of keep tabs on that. And I've found that premium plugins are usually like the first that get updated once there's been a significant update to WordPress. And that would make sense, because as a paid plugin, they have the resources available to, you know, prioritize those updates for their users. And then finally, premium plugins also just have more features and functionality. We've talked about the importance of not bloating your site with a whole bunch of plugins, and so a premium plugin might allow you to do the work of multiple plugins with one paid tool. Sometimes piecing together what we need from a bunch of free sources might not be the best option, and that is when a premium plug in could come in handy.

Stephanie 3:52

But now let's talk about some of the cons. Obviously, as always, the first is the cost. Anytime we submit our business credit card for a recurring membership, we're decreasing our net income and it's always important to pause and make sure the cost is worth the outcome. The next con is that some premium plugins might have too much functionality. They could bloat your site by adding more features than you actually need. Now, just as a side note, premium plugins often have an option where you can pick and choose which features you want to activate. So that would be probably a pro that we should have included in the pro section, but they often mark that option to customize as advanced setup, and that can be intimidating when you're doing things yourself. And so maybe that's a con so anyway, I just wanted to mention that as a side note. But the final con might sound, you know, a little melodramatic when I say, you know, nothing lasts for forever. But a plugin might not last forever, or you might not want it to last forever, so it's important to consider whether you want to be tied down to a plugin for the long haul. Sometimes it could be a better option to contact a website developer to create custom code for you. This could help you create the functionality you need for your website at a one time cost, plus, that way the features you need aren't really dependent on whether or not a plug in remains available and up to date.

Stephanie 5:38

Now, before you decide on a premium plug in, I wanted to make sure we talked about the fact that there are many alternatives to paying for a premium plugin. First, many of these premium plugins have a free version that can meet most of your needs. Just as an example, the free version of Yoast is plenty. Now there are some helpful features in the premium version of Yoast, but you could use other tools to gather the same information. And you might be thinking, well, that's just another plugin, but sometimes you can find this information from tools that aren't on the back end of your website, so you don't have to install another plugin, and that kind of leads me to the other alternative, which is to get comfortable with having multiple tabs open. Yes, it can be handy to have one of those, you know, stat monitoring plugins that pulls all of your data from different tools and puts it on your WordPress dashboard for you. It's very pretty, it's very handy, but all of that information already exists somewhere else, especially like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and so you can just make a habit of having Google Analytics open in a different tab, rather than installing a plug in on the back end of your website to consolidate that information. And then the other thing I love about the digital marketing space is that there are so many helpful websites that provide side by side comparison of WordPress plugins. So if you find a paid plugin that looks interesting, just google the name of the plugin and add free alternative to the search. You might not always find a perfect alternative for free, but it's definitely worth a try.

Stephanie 7:35

I hope this episode has given you a permission slip to pause before pulling out your credit card for a premium plug in. If you're enjoying this series, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review for the podcast. This helps me know what episode you're loving so we can create more content on those topics moving forward. I really do read each and every review, so thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.

Stephanie 8:01

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher biz bestie. You have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.