Is the CM Free Pass Plugin Suite Worth It?

When it comes to WordPress resources there are seemingly endless options. If you’re looking for a notification bar, a membership manager, social links, RSS importer, FAQs or quite literally anything else there is sure to be a plugin for the feature you need. But in most cases you’ll find many plugin options from a number of marketplaces or independent developers to choose from. Which is great.

Here at WPExplorer we typically recommend keeping the number of plugins installed on your WordPress site to a minimum. There are a few reasons we say this, but one of the major ones is to avoid plugin conflicts. The more plugins you have from a variety of sources, the more potential there is for duplicate functionality and problems.

But what if you could get all the plugins you need from a single developer? This would mean that the plugins you’re using are designed to be used together, so the risk of conflicts or duplicate functionality would be pretty much zero. Plus if you have any integration questions you’d be able to easily ask the developer for assistance, since it’s all their products. Which brings us to today’s showcase – the 99+ Free Pass Plugins Suite from Creative Minds.

What is the CM 99+ Free Pass Plugin Suite?

This bundle from Creative Minds gives you access to their entire suite of plugins – as in all of them. Unlike other developers, all membership tiers include access to the same features which are:

Full catalog of current and upcoming plugins
One year of plugin and addon updates
Helpful email support from WordPress experts
On-site assistance with plugin issues

How Much Does the CM Free Pass Plugin Suite Cost?

The CM Free Pass Plugin Suite is available at three levels. They offer the same set of 99+ CM premium plugins plus addons (as we mentioned) but each tier offers an increasing amount of licenses:

2 Licenses for $249
5 Licenses offered at $449
10 Licenses priced at $649

As a reminder, one year of support and updates is included. And when it comes time to renew you an expect a custom 40% renewal discount sent right to your inbox. This drops the price for the plugin suite to as little as $150 per year if you continue to subscribe.

We’ve mentioned that the suite is comprised of many plugins, but what exactly does that include?

Which Premium Creative Minds Plugins Are Included?

There are a lot of plugins in the CM Free Pass Suite. 99+ of them in fact. The plugins cover a variety of website features for many different niches. This includes general categories like SEO, Security, Content, Publishing, Community, Monetization, Directories and Courses. But there are also specific add-on collections included for popular CM plugins like Tooltip Glossary, Download Manager, Answers, Booking Calendar, FAQ Manage and more. Plus most CM plugins offer payment support and integrate smoothly with WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads cart systems to process the payments.

That said, let’s take a look at some of the included plugins that really stand out to us.

Tooltip Glossary (plus Addons)

One of the most well known plugins from Creative Minds would have to be their Tooltip Glossary that adds helpful tooltips on hover to selected words. If you’ve tried the free CM Tooltip Glossary and are considering upgrading to Pro then the CM Free Pass Plugin Suite is a great option. This way you’ll not only get premium features for tooltip custom styling, index templates, an a-z glossary for tooltip words, ajax search, multi-site support and shortcodes – but you’ll also have access to all of the Tooltip Glossary addons. At the time of writing this includes:

Glossary Log & Statistics
Glossary Community Terms
Glossary Remote Import
Glossary Visual Widgets
Glossary Search Console
Glossary Custom Taxonomies
Glossary PeepSo Integration
Glossary Editor Tooltip

That’s 8 add-ons in addition to the core pro plugin, meaning even if you only use the set of Tooltip Glossary plugins you’re already saving money.

General Site Operation & Maintenance Plugins

Adding tooltips is a bit of a niche feature, but with more than 99+ plugins to choose from it should be no surprise that there are a number of more general plugins that appeal to a wide variety of websites.

For example, for day to day operations of a WordPress site you might consider the following set of plugins:

Now these alone might not add up to the cost of a plugin suite membership – unless you own multiple websites or you’re doing client work.

Let’s say you have a web design and on going maintenance contract with 10 clients. Individually purchasing licenses for the above plugins would run you well over $1500. But a CM Free Pass Plugin Suite 10 license membership comes in at less than half that.

Monetization Plugins

Leverage an established website to generate passive income, or setup a whole new money making site with the CM Free Pass Plugin Suite. There are a number of monetization plugins included that can be used in a variety of ways. Here are a few ideas:

Paid Guest Posts: Use the Frontend User Submitted Posts to accept guest posts easily with a frontend submission form as well as options for attachments, excerpt, custom post types support and more. Then monetize submissions with the Frontend Submitted Posts Payment addon – or instead charge site visitors to view content with the Pay Per Post plugin (this is a great way to monetize, especially if you have experts guest posting).
Ad Network: Setup your own ad system for your networks of blogs with the CM Ad Manager. In this case you would use the Ad Manager Server on your main ad site to create your ad campaigns, manage your network and track aggregated statistics. Then install the Ad Manager Remote Client on each of your sites where you want ads displayed (and optionally install the Ad Manager Customer Dashboard as well so the individual sites can see their own ad data).
Premium Directory: Create your own business directory like Yelp with CM Business Directory. Then with the Payments and Levels add-ons you can create various membership tiers and charge a premium for services, like boosting listing exposure.
Members Only Content: Whether you want to restrict specific posts or your entire website, you can use a combination of User Registration & Invite Codes, Registration Payment Support or the Pay Per Post plugins to charge visitors. This is an effective way to share exclusive content, create a private site for customers or offer other resources (like tutorials) at a premium.

Those are just a handful of examples and a few of the many plugins included in the bundle. There are tons of other plugins for quizzes, sliders, live search, Q&A and FAQs, booking calendars, popups, product recommendations, notification bars, 404 management, courses and much more. You can view the complete list of included plugins on the plugin suite landing page.

Here is a table summarizing some major topics the plugins cover within the 99+ Free Pass Plugin Suite:

Site Security
More than 5 plugins in the bundle
Content Publishing
More than 10 plugins in the bundle (including addons)
WordPress Administration
More than 6 plugins in the bundle
SEO Related Plugins Plugins
More than 2  plugins in the bundle
Payment Support
More than 10 plugins in the bundle support payment using WooCommerce or EDD
WordPress Registration
More than 6 plugins in the bundle (including addons)
RSS Support
More than 3 plugins in the bundle
Invitation Codes Management
More than 2 plugins in the bundle
LMS Related
More than 10 plugins in the bundle
Mapping Related Plugins
More than 10 plugins in the bundle (including addons)
Content Curation
More than 3 plugins in the bundle
Download Management
More than 6 plugins in the bundle (including addons)
Forum Management
More than 6 plugins in the bundle (including addons)

Is it Worth Purchasing?

The CM Free Pass Plugin Suite starts at $249 per year, and depending on your budget that may be a significant investment. So, should you spend your money on the plugin suite?

Creative Minds individual plugins start at $29 for a single site license and go all the way up to $119. So, if you plan on using 5+ plugins on a single site, or 3+ plugins on multiple sites, then yes. Get the bundle. It’s a great deal (especially when factoring in the renewal discount), and it gives you the option to easily add more features to your site in the future (since you know, 99+ plugins are included).

That being said, if you only need one plugin right now, then we’d say stick to what you need. But you might want to also check out the collection of free CM plugins on WordPress.org. And you can always keep the CM Free Pass Plugin Suite in mind for the future if your site’s needs change.

Those are our thoughts on the CM 99+ Free Pass Plugin Suite, and we’d love to hear yours. What do you think of this plugin bundle? Or do you have any questions about it? We’d be happy to help answer them!