Lately we have locked down some of the forums to users with a valid subscription and it seems like it has raised some questions amongst our users.
The primary reason for doing this is to protect customers with a valid subscription and to ensure that customers with a valid subscription get's the best out of our priority support. Apart from that, it has to be done to avoid any misunderstanding in the future where users with an expired subscription is asking us to perform minor customizations for them (We don't really like to say No all the time).
What if you think that you encountered a bug and you definitely wouldn't want to pay for these bug fixes. I probably think I would feel the same too. However, based on our experience almost 95% of the time, these issues are user or server configuration issues and it has never been a bug or an issue with the extension. Our exceptional support team would have to spend hours of time just to wade through your servers / files / cpanel / site just to realize that it's a misconfiguration and it would be unfair to us if this was just your server setup issues. We wouldn't want to just send a bill you because it wasn't an issue with the software and it's also definitely unfair to you.
Therefore we have taken this stance to prevent any of these confusions being raised and hope that you would understand that this is done entirely to ensure you get for what you paid for. We are being transparent here and if there's any suggestion / feedback that you think could help improve the situation, let me know and as always, we do listen :)
Unlike open source non for profit organizations, to my awareness, there is not a single software company that actually offers lifetime support for free as that is just plain suicidal and it's business model will only ensure that you get crappy support at the end of the day simply because they can't afford to get the best support team or developers.
Thank you for understanding and let's build a better ecosystem together!