GrootMade Themes & Plugins Arvostelua 137

Disclaimer: This review was directly requested by the founder. Despite the tag, this review is not "unprompted".

My "lifetime" account from Grootmade has been revoked or made inactive three times so far, the latest time, today, the revocation came with invoices totaling $57 for the month of April, three times the standard Pro monthly rate.

Every time there's an access issue, it takes a week or more to solve it. DMs to the owner go unanswered and support tickets are regularly purged without response.

For the record I have already sent the owner a DM, opened a ticket, and sent an email.

The only response I received to any of these was a DM from Martin asking me to leave a Trustpilot review, so here I am...

Update 4/2/2026:
Access to Grootmade was never implied to be "temporary", and the community post today explicitly says that the decision was "reversed", there is no indication that it was ever meant to be temporary access.

Furthermore, as a result of sending a PRIVATE DM and opening a PRIVATE ticket, my account has now been suspended on grounds of: "No constructive purpose to their actions other than creating dissent within the community".

Given that the old domain mentioned by the company redirects to grootmade, I am effectively banned from both platforms despite my "lifetime" account purchase.

This review has now been challenged by the company as fraudulent, which I dispute.

Update: 4/4/2026:

"If you would like the matter reviewed properly, please continue through direct support."

Unfortunately this is not possible, my account has been banned from both platforms. When attempting to log in, I receive the message:

"Account suspended: No constructive purpose to their actions other than creating dissent within the community."

Regarding the statement that this review is linked to a "third-party competitor network", If there is any evidence, I welcome Trustpilot’s review of it. I am simply sharing my own verified experience as a customer, based on the account, invoices, and communications I personally received.

For transparency, I have already submitted my invoice numbers and supporting documentation to Trustpilot for review. I have also completed Trustpilot’s identity verification.

And as per your email sent March 14 2026:
"GrootMade is officially live, and every Festinger Vault license key has been transported to the new platform, so your access comes with you."

This service has been rebranded from Festinger Vault.

Many people, including myself, were billed outside of our contract.

Apparently, looking at all the negative reviews, I'm not the only one.

These people are the same scammers from festingervault. They ignored all of my emails that were an honest attempt at correcting unauthorized charges for already cancelled subscriptions. They continue to charge my card twice a month. They are hiding in the netherlands comfortably outside of the jurisdiction of the US where they can get away with this. I also made posts on reddit, and they repeatedly removed them. People who are honest and want to make things right do not do this.

Update 4/3/2026

Ill set the record straight. I tried multiple times to reach out when they identified as festingervault. This is their first response to me in all of those attempts. Strange how when it's out in the open, suddenly they are able to respond. I am not hiding any context, I have the emails, I have all of my outreach attempts, and nothing is being misrepresented. Get that fact right before trying to represent my comments as a deliberate attack on your company(s), I'm just telling things as they happened.

If you really do reject how I've represented things, make things right. Check your festingervault emails, and check your stripe. The money is there, and you're gladly taking it from me. I'll correct the record if you do attempt to address those attempts to reach out. You could have done that months ago and it didn't have to become a post like this but you allowed that to happen by saying nothing. I search for your company in my emails, 0 replies, 2 sent from me. That is a fact. This is "proper channels", is it not?

The issue is being handled by my bank right now because of the lack of response on the matter, and I've given them everything they need to know. I'll gladly call them and say that the vendor is actively trying to correct their mistake, but only if there is some attempt to rectify things. If you would have responded in those mentioned efforts, I wouldn't have had to call the bank to let them them know what is going on. There's money coming out of my account that shouldn't be and attempts have already been made to settle it amicably. It's really that simple.

Update 4/3/2026 (Amendment)

They notified trust pilot that I reviewed the wrong domain in an effort to hide my post. They are the same company, just a different name now. Hence the title. They did this because of their drama with automattic. See their GitHub page for the FestingerVault plugin if there is any doubt that they are the same entity, though I wouldn't put it past them to try and make the repo private as they are getting similar complaints to this one.

I'll give another chance. If you lost those emails, I will forward them to prove that I already attempted to do this. Give me the email for your new company and I will forward them, let's see if you respond and try to make it right. If you do, I'll do my part.

Update 4/4/2026

A competitor network? Did you just make that up? You "identified" evidence? How is that possible when that isn't true? I'm just a guy who bought your product way back in the day because of my work creating wordpress websites. Mind you, I used to love your product, until you started engaging in this behavior. I used the festingervault plugin on many websites until I cancelled in 2023. I will keep setting the record straight because you're just proving my point. You want to hide this review because you don't like what I have to say. If trust pilot reaches out to validate your claim, I think your claim that I am part of a competitor network will fall apart quickly.

The fact is my emails and the charges are there and you are being deliberately dishonest. I already offered to re-forward my outreach attempts in the event that you lost them after closing festingervault. What have you offered? You made false claims against a genuine complaint with intent on silencing me. We both know you didn't "identify" anything.

I contacted trust pilot and let them know that I am happy to work with them so they know what you are saying is false (with concrete documentation of charges and outreach attempts). I am a web developer with plenty of motive to be disappointed by the conduct of people that I used to trust to provide a service that benefited my dev work. We could have figured something out and I would have retracted this review.

But, you are clearly intent on denying everything. I am still willing to work with you on this, all you have to do is make an honest effort. If you had, you would have found my name and the money that you happily accepted.

Potential customers of grootmade, how does this look to you? At this point, I don't care about recovering funds, I just don't want people getting ripped off like I did.

4/19/26:
More fraud charges were made after I sent more emails. Their login says I'm banned (the browser console reveals this with no ui messaging). They claimed my "customer record" didn't exist! Weird huh?

They finally came back. Many saas abandons life timer when investors or management change. Not grootmade formerly festingervault.

Thanks for coming back.

At first the site was getting down a lot however over the past weeks everything is working nice an smooth. The only problem right now is that the plugins are outdated however i exprect this will be resolved next weeks.

Been using them since 2023, there are hiccups along the way but the owner always pulls through and when he could've just left everyone in the lurch, he chose to continue maintenance. Highly recommend.

Unfortunately, Festigervault (now Grootmade) has become highly unreliable. While their service was functional in the past, the quality plummeted during their recent legal issues.

My biggest concern is their billing: despite repeatedly cancelling my subscription, they have randomly restarted charges months later without my consent. They have recently switched from Paddle to Stripe, but the predatory billing persists. Management often replies to negative reviews by claiming customers are "confused" about their terms—I can assure you I am not. I cancelled correctly, yet the charges continue. Save yourself the headache and avoid this company.

They renamed the company, it seems their old domain is already listed as spam/scam everywhere, so they had to. It's not possible to unsubscribe from their mailing lists, even if you never subscribed in the first place, they don't care about privacy regulations.

Great for managing multiple wordpress sites. whitelabel options are decent for the price. sometimes the support takes a bit to reply but overall its a good deal for an agency.

Then they randomly started charging my credit card without consent.
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Hey, what did you replied about refund? "Gaat niet gebeuren mannetje". You know who am I, and that review and another will stay here. Enjoy

They have pulled off most of their plugins that were useful on the website. Then they randomly started charging my credit card without consent. I would not trust this company with my details anymore. Can't recommend.

I have canceled my subscription with Festinger Vault (now Groot Made) five separate times, yet my canceled packages continue to reappear after site updates, followed by repeated attempted charges, sometimes twice a day for two different plans I have already canceled multiple times. I have screenshots from four separate dates clearly showing my accounts marked as canceled, along with records of the attempted billing attempts to prove it.

What is most concerning is that this does not appear to be an isolated issue. Multiple other customers are reporting the same pattern: subscriptions being reactivated after site resets, inability to cancel, broken billing pages, 404 help sections, and zero response from support. That points to a systemic billing and account management failure.

There is no clear, reliable method to permanently cancel. The site continues to be redesigned and rebranded, yet the most basic function, allowing customers to control their own subscriptions, does not work consistently.

At this point, I am formally escalating this matter to Paddle, their payment processor, and will be submitting full documentation of repeated cancellations and attempted charges. If this is not resolved immediately and permanently, I will continue pursuing this through appropriate payment and regulatory channels.

Customers should monitor their billing very carefully.

Terrible customer service. Would not recommend using this site.