@Bill - Reading your lastost I must point out a few things...

Better get that calculator and recalculate then. Justin Tadlock apparently supports 10,000 users all by himself, just one guy.

This quote right here tells me you are in way over your head in this discussion. Comparing what Justin Tadlock does to the support involved in supporting a product like WooCommerce is like comparing supporting tic-tac-toe vs. the latest next generation console game.

I can tell you from 4 years of experience developing and supporting Gravity Forms that support involved in supporting an APPLICATION (because that's what it is,mtge term "plugin" marginalized what products such as WooCommerce and Gravity Forms really are) such as WooCommerce and its vst array of extensions is orders of magnitude harder and more time consuming than anything Justin Tadlock creates.

It's clear that people simply don't realize just how complex and advanced some of these plugins are and the support involved in maintaining them.

To make matters worse, I can tell you from supporting Gravity Forms for 4 years that the vast majority of support requests we assist customers with are NOT bugs or issues with Gravity Forms itself. It's problems caused by theme and plugin conflicts introduced by poorly coded themes or a poorly coded plugin. It's server and DNS issues related to sending email notifications. It's server related issues with URL rewriting, file permissions, etc.

I have a background in ecommerce and I can tell you that ecommerce is an even bigger beast than forms from a support standpoint because it requires more handholding PLUS they encounter the same issues that we do where most support isn't actually an issue with the product itself.

You greatly underestimate the support burden that comes with supporting a product like WooCommerce and the wide array of extensions they offer. And I didn't even mention themes which they also do.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about and I have no horse in Woo's policy change race because we already have a similar policy and have for years. So I'm not saying this as some sort of Woo fanboy, I'm saying this because I know what I'm talking about and it's the truth.

Why do some people believe that the first line of support should be a paid person doing one-on-one support for every issue, no matter how small and trivial? That’s very inefficient and very expensive.

Why? Simple. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE PAYING YOU FOR. Relying on other users to provide support to your customers isn't good business. Sure it works with free open source products, but that's not what Woo does and it's not what my company does.

People pay us to provide them a product AND forus to support that product. We have a responsibility to provide our customers with support.

What do you do when you have a problem with your iPhone? Take it to the Apple Store and get help. What do you do when you have a problem with your new car? Take it to the dealership and have them fix it.

Users don't pay us to provide other users with support. Users pay us for us to support them and that is what we do.

That is why WooThemes does the same thing. Because when you sell a product you have an obligation to your customers to provide them with support if it is included with ther purchase.

You keep making comparisons to Justin Tadlock and his model, which no offense to Justin - I love Justin - but comparing what he does with what some of the major plugin and theme providers and the difference in volume and scale is simply a greatly flawed comparison.

Based on your many comments on this post it's very clear that you know very VERY little about what it takes to run a successful WordPress plugin or theme business. Take it from someone who does. Read my comments and maybe you'll learn something because its clear you are in over your head when it comes to discussing viable commercial plugin and theme business models.

Since you chose to engage me, why don’t you respond to this issue. Custom Post Types have been around for a while now. Why is it that Gravity forms relies on a third party plugin to post to a custom post type?

And why do customers get such a poor response to this very valid question when they post about it on your forum? You seem very defensive about it? Why not just add it and be done with the issue?

Why? Simple. Priorities. If you think it's as simple as just "add it and be done with the issue" then you greatly underestimate how to properly manage a successful software product. We aren't in a feature war.

We could add custom post types tomorrow, and we old XYZ apt he next day and the day after that. But that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to creating a REAL sustainable software product.

User feedback is great, but what is your priority may not be our priority nor the priority of the vast numbers of other GF users. Once you start letting users dictate your development plans, you will lose control of your product and ultimately fail as a business. Trust me. I've seen it play out many times. Not just in WordPress.

We do plan on adding custom post type support. But when we do so its going to be part of a complete overhaul of how post creation is done in Gravity Forms and its going to kick ass. It's not going to be some simple feature we just throw in. We know exactly what we are doing and where we are going and that includes how we plan on introducing support for custom post types.

We don't just add features willy nilly. We plan things and do things very methodically. It's why we have one of the most successful commercial WordPress plugin available.

Again, I respect that as a user you have needs. But you must keep in mind that its clear you know absolutely nothing abut the business end and what is involved in properly developing and supporting a WordPress software solution successfully. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. As I mentioned above. Read what I've said and it will help you to understand things a bit more.