A nulled themes and plugins for WordPress is a pirated version of a premium theme or plugin. This pirated edition is offered for free or at a steep discount after being altered to remove any official branding.
You should be aware that other unauthorized goods are prohibited if you are familiar with them. Here, that isn’t really the case (in certain cases).
You see, they’re kind of legal because of this loophole. The General Public License (GPL), which allows for unlimited and free distribution, is used by the majority of plugins and themes. This allows you to modify and re-distribute a plugin.
Because of this, the pirates will just take out the copyrighted content, add their own, and either give it out or sell it to their own clients.
So, even if employing these won’t always land you in legal hot water, there are a number of reasons why it might not be a good idea.
Updates for themes and plugins are not accessible for versions that have been pirated. Security flaws are fixed on a regular basis. This implies that you might be utilizing a version of the plugin that has a serious vulnerability since the time it was pirated.
Even though this is a major issue on its own, the real cause is much worse. Malware is frequently purposefully inserted into the code by pirates.
A offer is probably too good to be true, as I have stated before. Furthermore, obtaining premium plugins at no cost is a prime example. In an attempt to access the websites that employ it, these pirates disseminate it.
Malware detectors may miss these files since they are a component of the plugin or theme you are installing. This spyware is capable of doing anything, including data theft and user redirection to malicious websites.
Naturally, there are instances where the malware isn’t made for the website that hosts it. Rather, it spreads that infection to the users, which can eliminate any possibility of your website becoming profitable.
Because of this, a lot of websites continue to be unaware that they are infected with malware. Typically, it takes several grievances from real people for them to become aware of the issue.
You’ve already done significant damage to your brand by that point. Even if you fix the security flaw, you will not regain a user’s trust.
If there’s one thing that every website has in common, it’s a desire to improve SEO and thus climb the search rankings.
This takes months, if not years, to complete, and installing one of these plugins can undo all of your hard work in a matter of days.
Remember how I said that these plugins could infect visitors with malware or redirect them to malicious websites? That is not only bad for their computer’s health.
That is not acceptable to Google or any other search engine. If your website contains malware, the search engine will remove it from the results page.
This is a death sentence for any website because it completely unranks your site, removing the possibility of organic clicks.
Of course, not all of the links they include are malicious. Instead, they will be of very low quality. And if you have links to low-quality websites, Google assumes your website is low-quality as well.
Your SEO performance will suffer greatly in either case.
Nulled plugins, unlike official plugins, will not receive regular updates.
This means that your website will miss out on bug fixes, enhancements to existing features, and even new features entirely. This can also result in the security flaws mentioned earlier.
Simply put, when you install a nulled plugin in WordPress, the day it was pirated is effectively frozen. And this is not only inconvenient; it can be disastrous.
Many plugins, you see, need to be updated in order to work with the most recent WordPress core files or even other plugins. Failure to do so may cause your website to stop working or brick entirely.
The same can be said for nulled WordPress themes.
There are some websites that purposefully use older versions of WordPress. In those cases, this becomes less of an issue, but creating and maintaining a website on older versions of WordPress is not recommended.
Bottom line: If you continue to update other aspects of your website but fail to update a theme or plugin, your website will eventually stop working.
While using nulled plugins and themes is legal due to the licensing loophole, you may still face legal consequences in some cases.
It is entirely dependent on the plugin you are using. You see, plugin and theme developers have become very astute and have devised alternative methods of preventing their products from being distributed for free via the GPL loophole.
And that is copyleft code.
You see, the license you purchase grants you permission to use this code, but not to the person to whom you distribute it.
As a result, it is a violation of copyright laws. If these developers so desire, they have the legal right to go after your website.
This also applies to copyrighted images and logos, which is why these plugins must be heavily modified because they must replace nearly every image in the plugin or theme.
As you might expect, this is a major hassle that will cost you far more than any plugin or theme. Your entire website could be shut down in the worst-case scenario.
Not to mention any legal fees and fines that may apply depending on where you live.
Having access to assistance is one of the most significant benefits of purchasing a premium plugin or theme.
In many cases, the plugin creators will respond to almost any query you could have and even supply comprehensive code to get things functioning precisely how you want them to.
This is not true of nulled themes or plugins.
In many cases, you even lose access to the documentation that describes how to use the plugin in the first place.
While you may believe that you can utilize other web tools to sort things out, the fact is that it is a lot more work. The information may simply not exist in its whole. At the very least, you’ll waste hours looking.
It’s critical to understand that even if you get these resources for free online, the nulled version is not the same.
The majority of commercial plugins and themes contain hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code. These pirates must change it in order to remove custom branding and maybe inject other undesired code.
Not to mention the fact that you won’t know which version you have. Because the plugin or theme is not updated, the most recent documentation may not even be applicable to your needs. You’d need to find the document for the specific version you’re using.
Working in the dark like that is ultimately not worth the effort.
While this is comparable to security, privacy has grown to be a significant enough concern to warrant its own discussion.
To steal information, hackers do not need to take control of a website. Certain viruses can steal user data and transport it elsewhere undetected.
This means that your customer’s information might be stolen.
This may sometimes be as innocuous as collecting their email address and registering them up for email newsletters. It’s annoying, but it’s hardly the end of the world.
What about their home address, credit card information, or social security number, on the other hand?
Depending on the type of information gathered, things might swiftly deteriorate. This might result in identity theft and chargebacks, which can completely devastate a person’s life.
This has its own set of legal ramifications for your website.
If an inquiry is conducted and it is shown that your website purposefully used pirated versions of software that contained malware, you may expect fines that will put any small firm out of business.
Data breach rules have only gotten harsher over the years, therefore your website must exercise extreme caution while collecting user data. It is also a GDPR infringement if your firm does not.
When someone steals a product from a billion-dollar enterprise, most consumers don’t notice. While this isn’t necessarily correct, you can understand where they’re coming from.
Things are different in the WordPress world.
Many plugins and themes begin as side projects that developers decide to include in the directory. The project expands from there, and they begin selling it out of necessity.
The fact is that maintaining and improving plugins and themes takes time, and developers must eat.
A plugin is frequently abandoned if it is not financially viable to maintain it. Piracy of some of these products simply intensifies the situation and can have a significant influence on the area when a high-quality tool is lost permanently.
This behavior also deters developers from ever developing a tool in the first place. Consider this: would you ever invest effort creating tools that you know will be stolen? Most likely not, which stifles creativity for the platform as a whole.
Piracy not only harms plugin and theme makers, but also ordinary users like you and me.
You should not utilize nulled plugins and themes, as you can see from the vast list of reasons. Using a free version of the plugin or a comparable alternative is a far better option.
Even simply purchasing the plugin is a better alternative. It is considered a business cost, and most are rather inexpensive. A premium plugin will not cost you a fortune.
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