Bait and Switch – Pretty much forced to buy if you want to use.
EDITED REVIEW: 2021.03.10 The free plugin works, but stops before it can finish being useful. 500 links is simply not enough for a free version. It doesn’t provide a free tier that’s functional for most medium-sized websites. You end up having to buy it to actually use it. That makes this more of an advertisement than an actual plugin. I’m using a different plugin. EDITED 2021.03.11 See my reply dated today. EDIT: The free plugin only checks 500 links. This is entirely useless, even for medium-sized sites. EDIT: Plugin registration consists of link allotments, with the minimum being 25K links checked in one go for ~50 Euros. It goes up drastically from there because Marco’s server is the one doing the crawling. Most target websites are small, hosted on huge commercial properties optimized for WordPress. Additionally, crawling the local site may not be as optimal as scraping each post’s content field for links and storing results locally. My server should be the one doing the work. If my server is doing the work, you can’t expect me to pay by the link for a service my server is doing. Period. An example of a per unit subscription model that works is Mailchimp. Their servers are doing the work in a trusted secure environment so that my web host box doesn’t become a shadow spambot. Offloading that service to mailchimp is not sketchy, and their terms are more than generous for small to mid-sized website admins, with a free tier that is actually commodious. That’s not what’s happening with this plugin. It checks every link on every page, even footer links that repeat across the entire site, so if you have a link like “theme created by…”, that link counts on every page against your priced link count. Absurd. Worse, it counts a number of known valid links as broken. WordPress plugins in the .org library should offer a reasonable modicum of usefulness out of the gate. It should not seem hampered to the site admin. The pro version should offer additional capabilities that make the free plugin seem more complete. This plugin offers only a glimpse of what the paid plugin might do if you are willing to pay 45 euros minimum to check 25K links. You want to check more links? Buy more tokens. EDIT: Given the Author’s (Marco Beierer) balanced response, I’ll say this would better serve the WP community and Marco himself by: scraping post content directly for links rather than crawling, removing the tier caps — including for the free version — and then Price the pro version between $50 and $100 for a single-tier paid version that also includes image and youtube link checking. Also for the pro version, add the ability to check all site menu links, sidebar/footer/widget links, post content for custom post-type links, custom field links, etc. This would give the expected additional capability along with unrestricted link checking found in the free version. A great plugin makes the free-plugin adopter feel like they’re getting such a bargain they feel guilty for not supporting the plugin with either a donation or an upgrade to the pro version.
Chris LOW
March 11, 2021
|
5 replies
500 links limit
the 500 links limit is too little for any website.
useless
The free version is useless.
useless
The free version is useless.
The URL limit was reached. The Link Checker has not checked your whole website.
The URL limit was reached. The Link Checker has not checked your whole website. You can buy a token for the Link Checker Professional to check up to 500’000 URLs. Thank you for wasting my time !
500 links limit
the 500 links limit is too little for any website.
The URL limit was reached. The Link Checker has not checked your whole website.
The URL limit was reached. The Link Checker has not checked your whole website. You can buy a token for the Link Checker Professional to check up to 500’000 URLs. Thank you for wasting my time !
Great plugin
Excellent Links plugin for checking and repairing. It helps me a lot. Added new features in recent months. Better than others, I recommend it.
useless
The free version is useless.
useless
The free version is useless.
500 links limit
the 500 links limit is too little for any website.
Bait and Switch – Pretty much forced to buy if you want to use.
EDITED REVIEW: 2021.03.10 The free plugin works, but stops before it can finish being useful. 500 links is simply not enough for a free version. It doesn’t provide a free tier that’s functional for most medium-sized websites. You end up having to buy it to actually use it. That makes this more of an advertisement than an actual plugin. I’m using a different plugin. EDITED 2021.03.11 See my reply dated today. EDIT: The free plugin only checks 500 links. This is entirely useless, even for medium-sized sites. EDIT: Plugin registration consists of link allotments, with the minimum being 25K links checked in one go for ~50 Euros. It goes up drastically from there because Marco’s server is the one doing the crawling. Most target websites are small, hosted on huge commercial properties optimized for WordPress. Additionally, crawling the local site may not be as optimal as scraping each post’s content field for links and storing results locally. My server should be the one doing the work. If my server is doing the work, you can’t expect me to pay by the link for a service my server is doing. Period. An example of a per unit subscription model that works is Mailchimp. Their servers are doing the work in a trusted secure environment so that my web host box doesn’t become a shadow spambot. Offloading that service to mailchimp is not sketchy, and their terms are more than generous for small to mid-sized website admins, with a free tier that is actually commodious. That’s not what’s happening with this plugin. It checks every link on every page, even footer links that repeat across the entire site, so if you have a link like “theme created by…”, that link counts on every page against your priced link count. Absurd. Worse, it counts a number of known valid links as broken. WordPress plugins in the .org library should offer a reasonable modicum of usefulness out of the gate. It should not seem hampered to the site admin. The pro version should offer additional capabilities that make the free plugin seem more complete. This plugin offers only a glimpse of what the paid plugin might do if you are willing to pay 45 euros minimum to check 25K links. You want to check more links? Buy more tokens. EDIT: Given the Author’s (Marco Beierer) balanced response, I’ll say this would better serve the WP community and Marco himself by: scraping post content directly for links rather than crawling, removing the tier caps — including for the free version — and then Price the pro version between $50 and $100 for a single-tier paid version that also includes image and youtube link checking. Also for the pro version, add the ability to check all site menu links, sidebar/footer/widget links, post content for custom post-type links, custom field links, etc. This would give the expected additional capability along with unrestricted link checking found in the free version. A great plugin makes the free-plugin adopter feel like they’re getting such a bargain they feel guilty for not supporting the plugin with either a donation or an upgrade to the pro version.
Chris LOW
March 11, 2021
|
5 replies
