A few weeks ago, the creators of the Social Signup Plugin contacted me about doing a review of their plugin. While I don’t normally do review requests, the plugin actually sounded like something one of my clients needed, so I decided to check it out.
From their website, they describe their plugin as:
We decided to make the Social Signup Plugin for WordPress out of our personal needs for such a solution. We love WordPress, so any solution needed to work with self-hosted sites. And we want to offer something versatile that could be used for a variety of purposes: not just viral launch pages but also any kind of socially driven signup process including everything contests, promotions and giveaways to games, groups and charities.
We also wanted to launch something quickly…a true MVP (Minimal Viable Product). Our goal is for our users to drive future development based on their feedback and our ability to quickly integrate desired features. We plan to continually update the Social Signup Plug-In for WordPress and to potentially release the software for other platforms…again all pending user feedback.
Basically, (as this was somewhat a confusing description) you set up the plugin to allow people to signup and get referral codes. They use these codes to get others to signup, and in return, they get whatever you’re offering. For example. Refer 5 friends and get a free e-book. It allows users to signup via Facebook or their regular email address.
I set up the plugin on a fresh WordPress install to test it out. I was a bit confused as to how to proceed, until I stumbled on their helpful step-by-step instructions. Set up was quick and easy.
My Thoughts
I love the fact they show every user who’s signed up, their referral code, and who they’ve referred. You can pretty much customize everything, from the messages they get emailed, to the type of giveaway you want to do.
However, I don’t love that when someone signs up, it takes them back to the homepage and only displays the referral address in the browser’s URL bar. I don’t think most people will notice this or what to do with it. Their messages setting section showed a custom message with the URL, but I didn’t get that in an email or on the WordPress page, in fact it sent me a blank email.
I think this plugin is a great idea and can be quite useful with a couple of minor fixes:
- Use a default email message if the user doesn’t want to specify one, so people don’t get blank emails
- Instead of taking the user to the homepage with the referral code in the browser bar, take them to a thank you page explaining and showing the referral code.
- Allow it to be used on posts for specials (I wanted to use it on this post alone!)
I have a couple of questions I wasn’t able to figure out, since I was doing a try test and ran out of emails (lol!). I’m not sure what happens when the user does fulfill all of the referrals. Does it automatically send the item to them? (Didn’t see this option in the settings), or do you have to do it manually? Does it at least notify you?
Getting the Plugin
The plugin was created by independent developers and I love the fact they use their own plugin on the site. To get it for free, refer 5 friends, or you can purchase it for $10. Let me know what you think about it.