In my quest to speed up my WordPress site I came across WPMU Dev and they offered 30 days trial period. I thought why not and ran a trial. The plugins seem all interesting or rather they were interesting those days because they worked well.
I tried their caching plugin, Hummingbird Pro and thought it was definitely out of this World. But trouble came when I switched on their Smart Crawl, an SEO service. This caused my site to crash luckily I had back-ups that I had made. In conclusion, I dropped them.
There is however 1 plugin of theirs that I had found to be very effective, Smush Pro. But paying $49 per month for one plugin seemed like a waste of money so I stopped. A few months later I got an email to say try our plugins for 30 days and speed up your website. Since I have many sites I thought why not try with a different site and the results were the same, speed was better before using the plugins and when you use all of them, the site crashes. So I concluded these might just be plugins from hell.
I dropped them again and as I was still batting with Image Optimization I went online and looked for WPMU Dev reviews. Lots of people had reasons to use them and lots had their reasons not to use them. Black Friday rolled around and they offered a free trial again via email and I thought maybe the plugins have been updated and might work on my website. So I tried again with a different site and the results were the same – plugins from hell except for Smush Pro. Then I thought why not actually pay and see if the service is the same, at least for a paid account I would get Tech Support. I ran the account for a few days and noticed that the problems are the same. I removed the plugins from my sites but forgot to cancel membership. My issues were the same, plugins slow down my site much worse to the point the site crashes.
I requested a refund seeing that I wasn’t using the plugins and they made my websites crash. Luckily I got my money back as I was not using the service anymore. A few months later, I thought maybe they are improved and spoke to one of their sales team who offered me a discount to pay $29 for 3 months as I see if the plugins are working. This time I was committed and even spent hours on chat with the tech support until even them noticed the problems that I was getting with their plugins. After repeated chats with tech support, nothing was resolved and again I left WPMU Dev.
A few days ago (17-04-2019) I went onto their website and chat with another sales guy. My questions are always the same, are your plugins working now? He assured me they are and because I had a few trials before I would not be able to test them for free. He offered me a 6-month discount of $34.30 per month and I thought why not try them for the last time. I ran the plugins on my small website Jobs365 and was constantly checking speeds with Google, GT Metrix and Pingdom. The results were the same, I am not sure if it’s my server or its just that WPMU Dev plugins don’t play well with other plugins.
That very day I made a decision to cancel the membership for good this time. The next day I opened a ticket on their website asking for their Refund Policy. I mean my problems are the same ever since I started using them so I felt I was entitled to a refund. It’s not my fault that the plugins don’t work as good as they say they do. I was told I can’t get my refund because I ran free trials in the past and also because I asked for a refund on an account that was not being used. Talk about daylight robbery, Andri was nice enough to list all the accounts I ran free trials with and then said my account was in violation for trying out their products more than once. I personally felt sorry for them because Instead of focusing and really understanding why their plugins are not working, they were focusing on $34.30 and how many times I tried out their plugins.
The reason for running a trial before buying is to see whether your WPMU Dev plugins have improved and if they don’t crash anymore, pity they failed to realise that as they were busy were focusing on $34.40.
Anyways I thought why not write this rather long post and tell my story to the rest of the World. Maybe Hummingbird Pro will work best for you or maybe Smart Crawl will work for you but before you decide to pay that $49 per month make sure because there are no refunds with these guys. Personally, I noticed these 2 plugins work best separately, the moment you put both of them on, the website freezes and goes offline. Deleting other plugins will not solve these, tried and tested.
WPMU Dev should focus on making their plugins lighter and making sure that the problems we face are solved. I have used their plugins more than 5 times and I still have the same issues. This is why I am saying these are plugins from hell and I have proof!
