Freemius is a comprehensive software licensing and distribution platform for WordPress plugins and themes. For some background and transparency, we use it very extensively as part of our plugin development under our 5 Star Plugins brand, creating plugins such as Featured Images In RSS, Mailchimp, and More (with over 30K active installs, very popular for publishers and bloggers to automate their email marketing), Pretty Simple Pop-Up (a pretty and simple pop-up maker that we are actively adding more features to), Easy Age Verify (targeting wine, beer, liquor, vape, or adult sites), Marijuana Age Verify, and our newest one, Dynamic Copyright Year (keeps your footer copyright year updated without shortcodes or file editing).
Some of the key features and benefits of Freemius for plugin developers include:
- Licensing and activation: Freemius provides a licensing system that allows developers to control how their plugins are distributed and used, including the ability to activate and deactivate licenses.
- Sales and payments: Freemius handles payment processing and provides developers with detailed sales reports and analytics.
- User management: Freemius allows developers to manage their user base, including the ability to view user data, communicate with users, and manage user feedback.
- Marketing and promotions: Freemius offers tools for developers to market and promote their plugins, including email campaigns, social media integration, and discount codes.
- In-app purchases: Freemius supports in-app purchases, allowing developers to offer premium features or upgrades within their plugins.
- GDPR compliance: Freemius provides tools and guidance to help developers comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Over the years, there have been some serious privacy concerns from a small portion of users around adding any plugin that uses Freemius, particularly regarding the potential data collected by the platform if a user opts-in, and how it is used.
Some of the concerns include:
- Data collection: Freemius collects a significant amount of data from users, including personal data such as names and email addresses, as well as usage data such as plugin and theme activations and deactivations.
- Third-party data sharing: There have been concerns that Freemius may share user data with third parties without users’ explicit consent.
- Lack of transparency: Some users have criticized Freemius for not being transparent enough about what data is being collected and how it is being used.
We’re very pleased to see that Freemius has been listening to those users and is actively addressing their concerns by improving the privacy-focused features of their platform and Software Developer Kit (SDK). Freemius has made several changes to its platform to become more privacy-focused and address the privacy concerns of its users. Some of these changes include:
- GDPR compliance: Freemius has implemented measures to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which includes providing more control to users over their data, transparency around data collection and usage, and obtaining user consent for data processing.
- Privacy policy updates: Freemius has updated its privacy policy to provide more detailed information on the types of data it collects, how it is used, and who it is shared with.
- Data minimization: Freemius has minimized the amount of data it collects from users to only what is necessary to provide its services, and has introduced features to help users delete their data.
- Opt-in data sharing: Freemius now allows users to opt-in to having their data shared with third-party services, and provides clear information on which third-party services their data is shared with.
- Anonymization: Freemius has implemented measures to anonymize user data to protect user privacy.
- Increased transparency: Freemius has increased transparency around data collection and usage by providing clear information to users about what data is being collected and how it is being used.
More specifically, since November 2022 with v2.5.1, the Freemius SDK has supported some key privacy-focused features around user opt-in and anonymous paid license activation, such as revamping the design of the opt-in screen to clarify and offer more transparency about it’s purpose and user benefit, what is being shared with the platform – and only if the user opts-in. During license activation for customers that have paid for a plugin or theme, it now collects only the site URL required to tie the license to the website, and any diagnostic information that it previously collected is now optional. It no longer collects any user IP information or the user nickname. It also no longer appends it’s own querystring to all of a site’s AJAX requests. It boosts PHP 8 compatibility as well, which is important as PHP v7.4 and below no longer receive security patches. There are a lot of other very important fixes and improvements included, too.
More recently with v2.5.4 of the SDK, released March 6, 2023, it no longer makes a connectivity test to the Freemius platform upon plugin/theme activation, making the platform completely free of any communications if users skip the opt-in process, which alleviates any privacy concerns completely. Further updates over the last year have fixed many issues, including improved error handling, a link to a dynamic explainer video about how license activation works, security improvements, new garbage collection process to reduce storage use, improved white-labeling, improved PHP 8.x support, expired licenses notifications, API caching, and lots more. Needless to say, with so many quality plugins and hard-working developers using Freemius, the work they put into their SDK is very impressive, and prove they give a high priority to frequently addressing a variety of privacy, security, and performance concerns.
It’s important to note that Freemius-based plugins detect and use the latest Freemius SDK across all plugins activated on a site, and if multiple versions exist across various plugins, the older SDKs are not used – meaning plugins that have not been updated with the latest SDK still use the latest version installed via another plugin. This benefits users because effectively all plugins use the most recent version and now also trigger those new privacy-focused opt-in and activation pages.
Overall, Freemius has made significant changes to become a very privacy-focused platform, and provide much greater control and transparency to its users over their data and exactly what is shared. Users should not worry about Freemius collecting their data from now on!
|
