I know money is short for all of us, and there aren’t many things more appealing than saving money when extending your website with that one crucial feature you need.
Sooner or later, you will find copies of my plugins offered for free or as part of a cheap yearly subscription. These copies are called nulled. They disable the licensing system of the plugin and offer it to you to save money.
Table of Contents
What are nulled plugins?
You will get many results from websites offering a free license if you search for a specific plugin and add the term “nulled” at the end. They often do this by buying a single license and reselling it or downloading it from an active user by exploits (hacks).
A bunch of examples could be:
- Passster Pro nulled
- Simply Static Pro nulled
- Filr Pro nulled
- Agy Pro nulled
- Qyrr Pro nulled
Should I use a nulled version?
The short answer is no, but let me explain that a bit further to you. Here are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t use a nulled version of one of my plugins:
Malicious Code
Nulled versions often include malicious code. This can be as simple as displaying ads on your website. Sometimes they even implement ways to steal all your user data (e-mails, passwords, names..). Installing and using nulled software always comes with a risk, and you shouldn’t be surprised if something wrong happens after using them.
Updates
Nulled versions aren’t regularly updated, and you can’t update them from your admin dashboard. Each time a new version is released, you need to return to the website, check if they have the updated version, and download and install them again.
No support
By using a nulled version, you don’t get access to support. If something breaks or doesn’t work as expected, you are left alone and can’t reach out to customer support to get help. I even block users entirely if a nulled version is detected, so you will not be able to use the pro version of my plugins anytime soon.
SEO
You may lose a bunch of rankings in Google using a nulled version of a plugin. Often these include hidden links to spam sites. Google will penalize your website by linking to those sites, and you will see a decrease in traffic to your website.
Stealing money from the developer
You may not care much about the developer behind the product, but imagine a developer stops working on the product because he doesn’t make enough money to justify the invested time for development. This may end up to the point that your website is completely broken because of missing updates, and there is no one to reach for help.