Reasons to avoid using nulled themes and plugins

WordPress is considered the world’s most popular and used CMS. It also has the largest open-source community. Among all the websites built with CMS, 59% of them are built with WordPress. That is about 40% of all websites in the world! WordPress is greatly welcomed because of the GPL laws and helps to spread knowledge all over the world.

Although WordPress provides so many resources and support, there are still unethical activities going on in the community. The availability of nulled WordPress themes and plugins is a major concern now.

Most of the beginners are tricked into using nulled themes and plugins. Because there are many websites floating on the internet that offer nulled themes at little or free of cost.

What are nulled themes and plugins?

Basically, nulled themes and plugins are hacked and cracked versions of premium WordPress themes and plugins. Although it sounds like a good deal to hear that most of them are free this hampers the community in many ways.

It is rather dangerous to use these due to major drawbacks. There are many users who suffered in the long term after using nulled themes and plugins. Many had completed messed-up sites that were impossible to fix and valuable information was hacked.

Eventually, every free stuff comes with consequences that are irreversible in most cases. Also, the developers distributing these nulled plugins may make alterations to the scripts and codings. Thus, it makes your websites more vulnerable

No support available

All WordPress plugin and theme users require support from the developers from time to time. You won’t be eligible to receive any support from real developers when you start using a nulled theme or plugin.

You will be lost in a deep ocean when you face any issue with those. Because there won’t be any real-time support to troubleshoot your issue. Resulting in a messed-up system on your WordPress website.

You will be able to hire other developers to fix the issues but it would cost you a good amount of money. Why spend more when you can expect real-time support just by buying the legit resources?

Effects the SEO

The developers of nulled themes and plugins have the ability to insert nullifying codes and scripts. These scripts can come with unwanted advertisements and pop-ups. They can also add excess resources to make the server crash every now and then.
Search engines notice all these issues and this causes the site’s ranking to fall. Also, the scripts can be set up to completely destroy SEO rankings.

Makes your website vulnerable

Nulled plugins and themes are very risky to use and they can compromise your site security. The developers behind these might have dangerous purposes that you can not even think of.

They can add any type of malware or spyware to steal your information. The biggest risk is that they can become the admin of your sites and you won’t even notice. Experienced hackers are able to track your sites for years and can even divert transactions of your sales.

Once a hacker has admin access to your sites he or she can do almost anything they want to. They can even take total control of your website and hosting panel or Cpanel. This is a great threat that can destroy your online business in seconds.

If your website stores the personal information of your customers, it can also become a threat to them.

Doesn’t receive latest updates

Developers invest their precious time constantly and work hard to improve their plugins and themes regularly. It is essential to add new features and keep them bug-free. But when the plugins and themes are nulled they don’t support the automatic updates anymore.

Also, if the scripts are altered manually updating those nulled plugins and themes can cause major issues on your site. The bug fixes and new features won’t be available. This will make it full of bugs and errors. Thus, your website will become backdated with time.

An unethical approach towards the community

WordPress community strictly abides by the GPL rules and regulations. Our community always welcomes new innovations and creativity. Also, contributors are respected throughout the world.

Those who promote, create, and sell nulled themes and plugins are the culprits that disrespect our community. They are greatly disliked by us due to their unethical approach.

Real developers spend a lot of time and money while developing these themes and plugins. So, stealing these resources and selling them without proper consent is unethical.

Most of the real developers hold the copyright authority of these plugins and themes. So, creating and using a nulled version of these are also illegal. Distributing the nulled version of copyrighted themes and plugins is completely illegal according to GPL law.

In order to make changes, permission needs to be taken from the original developers. But the nulled plugins and themes don’t have this authorization at all. Thus, the main developers and distributors have the authority to take legal action against anyone using these nulled plugins and themes.

Have respect towards the community

There are some developers who provide nulled plugins but they don’t have any bad intentions. But they need to make sure that the original developers get the credit. All of us should have mutual respect for each other. It is disrespectful and unethical when someone steals and uses the creation of others without giving the proper credit.

There are many companies that have developers working hard to create wonderful themes and plugins. These companies invest a lot of time and money in this. But all of their efforts go in vain when those plugins are nulled by others and available for free throughout the internet. It is also really frustrating for those company owners and coworkers.

We have a great community where everyone is eager to help each other. Always try to bear mutual respect for each other to maintain a friendly and mindful environment. Also, we should cheer up and appraise the new inventions and prohibit others from unethical attempts.