About: Peter R

I for one think the refund policy is BS. S2Member is not easy to use. It’s hard to know in advance where the stumbling blocks are going to be, even if you spend a lot of time investigating upfront (I know I did). Being stingy about refunds creates unhappy customers. Especially toward customers who have poured hours upon hours in trying to figure out the product.

I’m using s2member because I purchased it, but if I had known the pain and limitations involved in getting things to work, I would have not purchased. I’m stuck using s2member now (sunk cost), I think the code is solid, the flexibility excellent and the documentation extensive, but I wouldn’t recommend the plugin for 2 reasons: the refund policy is customer-unfriendly and disrespectful and just the sheer amount of information and work that goes into getting things setup, it’s a big hidden cost.

I find it really hard to justify the refund policy as it stands. At the very least have a 30 day trial for the pro version if you don’t want to deal with administrative hassle of refunding people.

It’s crazy with all the membership solutions out there for WordPress, all of them seem to be stuck in mediocrity on some level or another. For S2Member it’s the refund policy and the fact that setting it all up is time intensive, labour intensive and not fun to do. I hope someone creates something better to be honest. There’s so much room for improvement in this space.