Many people selling their smaller Envato profiles are popping up recently on multiple Facebook groups for me. I have a feeling that many others have the feeling that Envato is a sinking ship and they want a quick exit, while they still can…
I asked one, out of curiosity, was asking 3500 usd for a 3.5 star rated profile, with almost 0 recent sales and 55 CC items…
This happened in the past as well, and from what I know, it’s not allowed…
Just imagine buying 55 plugins that you have no idea how they’re coded, plugins that are nearly impossible to maintain, update, or even understand. If you want to drive yourself crazy, this is definitely the way to do it.
Most of the people selling these products aren’t passionate about their work—they simply treat it as a business. What they’re selling has no long-term value when transferred to another author.
Regarding Envato, we all know it’s nearing its end. I give Codecanyon and ThemeForest a maximum of nine months before closure, and after that, Elements becomes basically useless. All the top authors have already abandoned ship and found better paths, just like you did with WPBay and I did with my own website, participating here instead.
I learned my lesson the hard way. I was thinking today: if I had access to all the clients I interacted with over the years, every time I released a new product I could have made a fortune. But Envato played the exclusivity and closed-system game perfectly. We have access to nothing. At the beginning, this wasn’t a big issue because the marketplace was what it should have been—but now it’s a disaster. And of course, they will never share client information with us.
Envato’s CEO, Hichame Assi, has made such a mess that if he wanted to do it intentionally, he couldn’t have done a better job. The sad part is that he’ll walk away with a few million in his account and move on to damaging some other well-built ecosystem.
As for AI, I don’t see it progressing that much at this point. It’s better than previous versions, but not nearly as revolutionary as they want you to believe. I use it every day with Agent Mode in VS Code, and the more I use it, the more I notice its flaws. Is it good? Yes. For a senior developer, it’s perfect—it saves an enormous amount of time. But without guidance, it becomes chaotic. The idea that someone with no skills can create full apps using AI is ridiculous, and we all know it. Yet somehow these CEOs want the world to believe otherwise.
PS. I wrote to Envato asking for my clients’ emails so that I can keep them notified when I release a new product. answer was NOPE 
Yes, i also know that it is not allowed, Envato does identity checks and you cannot change payout method to other person’s name that easily…
Yeah, it’s very important to have your own shop and client data. Additionally I would add, I think subscriptions are a MUST-have today.
It gives you a lot of security and peace of mind to have them.
At some point in 2021-22 I wanted to sell B2BKing and got into discussions with some potential buyers (medium size WP firms) - nothing materialized, but the number one advice I received was to switch to subscriptions. At the moment I wasn’t sure about it, but later realized how correct they were.
Probably you are right about subscriptions, but man, I hate them… every time I subscribe I feel robbed somehow, not sure why
By the way, which WooCommerce plugin are you guys are using for subscription support?
WPBay uses the “official” Woo Subscriptions plugin.
I get it, I think it’s about whether or not you feel you’re getting something in return. Because if it’s just the same static software that does exactly the same thing it did 1 year ago, it doesn’t feel very fair.
For plugins though I do think we provide a lot of ongoing value and support, we constantly have to update them, etc. If something changes in WP making the plugin incompatible, customers expect an update to fix that.
For WooCommerce plugins in particular I think this applies, as they are doing SO many changes all the time.
Yes also unsubscribing is almot impossible to find is so frustrating that most of the time I give up.
Do you know of some free version of such a plugin?
I don’t think there’s any free subscriptions plugin.
I assume you’re asking for your website:
- You may be able to handle it via the payment processor. E.g. if you are using Stripe, simply implement a Stripe-checkout (there are free plugins and solutions)
- And on the product page itself you can customize something, it may be just a matter of adding the " x$ / year " text.
Depends on the setup. For example I use Paddle.com, product pages are custom, and then the checkout simply calls the Paddle.js integration files (all custom coded, no plugins used).
Yes, for my website, I don’t want to pay another subscription