Can you prevent add-on from forcing a fee on you?

Question

Today Handy Macros Table Filter decided to start charging a fee for the free tier. I understand software publishers will change their pricing models, but the issue is that the only way to avoid paying the fee is to disable/uninstall the add-on, which causes it to no longer work on any of the pages it was on previously. I feel like I'm being extorted here. Pay up or my pages break! I know that add-ons can choose to handle this more gracefully. A different add-on told me there is a paid update available. That gave me the choice of running the old plugin until it no longer worked or upgrading to the new one. Is there any way to mitigate the risk of an add-on suddenly and forcefully changing its price?

edit: I misidentified the add-on that caused the change. The specific add-on is not relevant to the question though. The fact that any of them can do this is what I want to protect myself from.

ChinnoDog · Answer

I am on cloud. I regret I didn't take a screen shot of the app that had the paid update button to show this is possible. The fact that I had this option shows that the vendor can choose not to force a paid update if they want to. Asking a vendor for a discount on a previously free product seems useful for a large instance when talking about high dollar amounts that need approval but seems like a waste of time otherwise. It is just more hoops to jump through to delay the inevitable.

Stiltsoft support · Answer

Hi @ChinnoDog ,

Indeed as @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- has kindly mentioned, on Cloud all the updates reach the customers automatically, you don't update the apps manually.

But no matter if you are on Cloud/Server/DC (if your tags are wrong), there was an email that was sent beforehand to your Confluence administrator that the 1-10 tier wouldn't be free any more. So, you are supposed to have a month to decide if you need the paid version of the app or no.

You data is not lost, you just copy your tables out of our macros and continue working.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

No, you can not.  You are subscribed to a service that has decided to charge.  If you do not want to pay, then your only choice is to stop using it.

However, there are a couple of things here.

* You flagged this as Cloud, but it sounds like it is a Server/DC app from your wording around "paid update" - on Server/DC if an app flips to paid, it can only do it when you upgrade it to a paid version.  So you can remain on the free version.
* It is worth asking the vendor - a lot of us do discounts or extended free licences to try to persuade you to stay!  Or even just give you some time to identify alternatives.