Repeatedly seeing "Thank you for using Intelephense. Upgrade now to access premium features."

[orrd]

Every time I start VS Code for the last few days I've had to close the "Thank you for using Intelephense. Upgrade now to access premium features." nag. I thought it would only show it once, but it does it every time I restart VS Code, which can be as much as once a day.

Honestly, the $10 fee is quite reasonable for people who want the added features or want to support a project they like.

But now it's a situation where a widely used free plugin and open source project is using an intentionally annoying nag screen to be overly aggressive in suddenly pushing longtime users to pay for it. It leaves a bad impression and makes me not want to support this tactic.

Is the repeated nag a bug, or was it intentional to bug people enough to make them pay for it?

[bmewburn]

This has been raised several times . Though, I'll reiterate here and leave open so that everyone knows I'm still giving this some thought.

What happened?
New features have been developed as additional premium (paid for) features. A small, non-modal, auto-fade (15s I think) notification, shows in the lower right corner that notifies users of this. It originally showed with every intelephense server start. I tend to work on a single project a day and have a vscode window open the whole day (or longer). Thinking that everyone worked like me, I thought they would see it once a day. After listening to users in #615 , I patched it so it would never show more than once a day no matter how many servers were started.

Unhappy about this?
Please consider this small, non-modal, auto-fade notification in the wider context of the hundreds of notifications this extension provides in the form of completions, parameter hints, hover, diagnostics, highlight, go to definition, find all references, formatting, breadcrumbs, outline, document symbol search, workspace symbol search. I worked for free to provide you with these, you can still access these for free, they will always be available for free, and they likely help you in your paid developer role. I want to continue to develop and improve this extension (see issue list) and, like everyone else, have to spend my time and energy on work that rewards me for my efforts. I don't have a big company like MS backing me.

Still unhappy with this?
Rollback to 1.1.6. It has all the free features, is reliable, with no notifications and will always be available. This can be done within vscode, see here for information on installing another version. There are also other intellisense solutions out there. Some of which are completely open source that anyone can spend their time improving.

Edit: Daily notification has been removed #631 (comment)

[orrd]

I appreciate the response. I did later see the other issue. I think a lot of us are just conflicted. I like the idea of supporting software developers, and the fee is reasonable for people who want the extra features. But I also feel like using a nag pop-up that users can't turn off is an overly aggressive and annoying tactic for an open source and previously free project, so a lot of us are less likely to want to support it because of being annoyed by the repeating nag pop-up tactic.

I appreciate the option to rollback to 1.1.6, but I think we then end up with a distracting red notification dot on the extensions icon indicating that there's an extension that's not updated, and being stuck forever on a past version isn't ideal either.

I think a nag that displays only once, or maybe once each time the extension is upgraded to a significant new version would be a good way to let users know they can consider getting the premium version, but without purposelessly annoying users who already decided they don't want to.

[Jimbo99]

My thoughts may be a little different, I don't know. I would happily pay the fee but currently I am not confident it is doing what I expect it to do. It does not seem to be finding the definition for me every time. for instance. And with only the free version, I am not sure if that is because I have configured it wrongly, or if I need the premium version, or whether it cannot do this with my version of PHP (v5.4). Ideally I would like a 14 day trial period of the premium version, then if that worked I would happily pay the fee to continue. The payment reminder is rather off-putting but I understand we all need to make money from our programming so it is not a major deal to me.

[ahinkle]

@bmewburn No other free/paid extension prompt you to pay on every instance opening VSCode - turns into a complete ad spam.

I don't want to "rollback" and stay on older versions as bugs or other issues may arise.

Perhaps giving a one-time prompt when installing or updating the extension?

I would be glad to pay once I see the maturity of the Premium version. 👍

[robclancy]

You are combining nagware with having a premium edition. Nagware doesn't work when you lock out features, it works when you let people use all features. Much like sublime text.

This isn't going to get people to get premium more. It is going to get them to complain just like this thread. And will just end up with someone forking to have a version that doesn't show the modal (which in turn means people who report bugs might be reporting things fixed but the forked version hasn't merged upstream).

You literally have just put an intrusive ad in an open source editor. Don't do that. I've deleted other addons simply because they steal focus from the inbuilt terminal.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is TOS on the vscode extension store about this.

[skuester]

@bmewburn Similarly to your assumption that other developers work like you, I think you are also missing a similar assumption that developers only have a few plugins installed, and that your plugin is the only one nagging people for paid licenses.

But have you considered what using VSCode will be like when we all have 20 different extensions, all nagging us for money each time we open our editor? Is that the kind of world you want to live in?

What do you imagine YOU would do in that scenario? Would you fork out 20 different license fees? Or would you simply uninstall the plugins and move on?

I suggest you offer an opt-in premium plugin, and find a better advertising venue than your fellow developer's workspaces. It's not going to endear very many into buying your product.

[simonl65]

@bmewburn Thank you for this extension, it's nice to have it.

For those who don't (yet) want to pay the 10 GBP perhaps you could implement a "Don't nag me unti the next version" setting?

[marvinhosea]

This is pissing, you cannot use the popup notification as bait for developers to pay. Any good alternative plugin to this??

[skuester]

This is pissing, you cannot use the popup notification as bait for developers to pay. Any good alternative plugin to this??

@marvinhosea You can install v1.1.6 which does not include the nag screen.

[bmewburn]

I like @simonl65 's idea. Though I'll get grief over the default value.

It's clear that some feel this is some sort of punishment. The goal has been to give users extra features in return for support, not to punish those that won't or can't. So in 1.2.2 the notification will only show when the extension has been updated.

[ksidibe]

I like @simonl65 's idea. Though I'll get grief over the default value.

It's clear that some feel this is some sort of punishment. The goal has been to give users extra features in return for support, not to punish those that won't or can't. So in 1.2.2 the notification will only show when the extension has been updated.

@bmewburn what you did is just amazing. You've just provided and amazing value to me and all the others who have upgraded to premium.
Thank you.