SunPlum review for Ilana's JSON‑LD for SEO (TM)

March 1, 2019

Usually I do not leave reviews unless I can say something good, but felt that we needed to make others aware to warn them, so they can save themselves the trouble/disappointment and skip this app and work with another app/company. Essentially, it has gotten to the point where it seems like this app developer does not care about his clients anymore and provide misleading and false advertisement; since, he may believe he has gotten enough good reviews in the past, so he doesn’t need to bother anymore. In that, we signed up with this app developer about a year ago and at the time he offered two license plans: JSON-LD Basic tier option [$69] and JSON-LD for SEO Plus+ option [$299]. However, although money was tight, we chose to invest more upfront with this app developer by opting to pay for the $299 Premium Plus plan and install the app [he just recently stopped offering the $69 basic plan in 02-04-19]. Please note, he advertises this app as a one-time fee setup for each Shopify business store. During this time we rebranded and trademarked our brand and as a result updated our store URL to be consistent with our new trademarked brand. Since it’s the same business we also setup a permanent redirect of the old-shop-URL to the new-shop-URL. At the time we also had about 3 other one-time charge apps, including the JSON‑LD for SEO, making it 4 one-time charge apps in total; along with several other paid monthly apps. Subsequently, we contacted all 4 app developers including JSON‑LD for SEO that provided the app at a one-time charge, to let them know we changed our brand but we are the same business and all products are same just update to our shop URL. All the app developers had no problem checking/verifying this, then told us to go ahead and install the app again and then they moved over/restored our account settings to the new shop URL without charging us again; since it’s the same business with one Shopify account. However, its only Eric D the developer for this app, that refused to help us restore our previous paid account license and went as far as insulting us by telling us we can sign up for the $69.00 Basic license instead of the$299 Premium+ license because after 02-04-19, he would only be offering the $299 plan [as if we were unable to afford the $299 plan though we already paid him $299]. However, when I countered that if we wanted to buy his basic plan for $69, I would not have given him $300 for the premium plus+ plan before, for our Shopify store. He basically responded and stated in summary that, ‘since you are using a new myshopify url, it does not matter if it’s the same business and store, the only thing that matter is that only that you have a new Shopify account that has not paid for the app yet’. So, we were really shocked and felt cheated by this response, because for him to communicate this after advertising that’s it’s a onetime fee license for one shop, it became very concerning the way he dealt with me and his cold inflexibility. For although we are a startup, we did not hesitate before to pay him for the JSON-LD for SEO Plus+ at $299 and now we are not able to benefit from the app, since you would have had to wait a longer term to see the results. But because of this very bad support service we will never know...as we no longer have the app setup for our store because of this unfair app developer. However, I did not want to waste any more time trying to reason with him on this, because it was pretty clear cut, that he had a choice to do the right thing and help us restore our previously paid licensed account like the other app developers, since it’s the same shop and business and he chose not to do the right thing. So, I just decided to cut our losses with him while we are ahead and alert others about this dishonest/misleading practice. Also, please note, once I told this app developer I was going to share my experience, he did not respond. But all of a sudden, the regular business tips newsletter he was sending me before when I paid for the $299 plan, stopped abruptly, so it looks like we got unsubscribed from his newsletter. Which actually works out best for us, because when you first signup up for his plan, he starts spamming you with several canned emails in an exaggerated effort to show he cares about your business when the reality is, he doesn’t. So, we would rather not get any emails from him, because what he is telling you, you can easily get this information from Shopify blogs and online resources when you need it. So, I am glad he has decided to stop spamming us, because 99% of his canned emails we don’t read anyway. Since then, we’ve researched and signed up for the free SEO JSON-LD Boost by Verge that does the same thing his app does for $299, so we wish we had found that before we lost $299 with him. Plus, to complete our SEO circle we also use the Smart SEO app that does even more and that team is very professional/easy to work with. The cool thing is that Smart SEO works awesome with the free SEO JSON-LD Boost by Verge that replaces this app, so there is no app conflict. Plus, to ensure we get the best results, we are doing ongoing organic SEO optimization for our shop as well for the long term game and PPC for short term, that helps balances out our store traffic very well. Hope this helps.