Hi Envato Team,
I have just tried download the Wordpress Plugins “Facebook Live Chat for WordPress” from Elements, as in the description, “Updates included” for this Plugins, I thought it should be “up to date”.
But I saw that the update date of the files from Elements is 2017-06-20, and in the codecanyon page the same plugins’s last update is 23 September 17.
As I wrote in another post, one important problem by Elements from begin is that, as you can’t guarantee that all items in elements are “100% up to date”, you should display the “Last Update” and “Created Date” informations in the elements item’s description! Without “Last Update Date”, if I want to know one theme has beed updated or not, I have to download it again, it is not good for us, and not good for authors too!
And the second problem is, I want to know, how many Plugins or items are outdated, just like this one?
We paid annual plan for the wordpress plugins, or paid monthly for other templates , we know that we can’t get everything from themeforest or codecanyon, but at least, we thought for the same templates or plugins, we can get the same code.
If you can’t offer fresh items or you can only offer the outdated version, you should clearly tell us!
It is just like you told us, if we buy the annual plan, we can always get a free iPhone, and “Updates included”, OK, we thought we can get an iPhone X or iPhone 8, we paid, but when we open the box, it is a iPhone 6!!!
It is not honest, agree?
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I fully understood when I enrolled in Elements that there was no Wordpress theme support from authors. That was clear.
But I stupidly did not think that “no support” also meant no theme updates. Ever. While this might seem plain and obvious on the Envato and author side, this might not seem as obvious to prospective or new Elements subscribers like me.
The practicality of using Wordpress themes from Elements then becomes limited to the opportunity to try them out, or to keep using them in a registered project indefinitely (without theme upgrade capability).
A disclaimer of NO THEME UPDATES needs to be much better and explicitly stated, rather than vaguely falling under the umbrella of “no support.”
It may not have been intentional by Envato, but it does show a lack of understanding customer perspectives or assumptions.
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If themes and plugins do not include automatic updates ie purchase code I will not renew my subscription. This is a security and maintenance nightmare and encourages terrible practices by web developers!
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Hi @jeffreyrbk. You definitely do have access to theme (and plugin) updates, though the process is currently a little different to that used by CodeCanyon and ThemeForest. The Elements item page will always contain the most current version of the relevant files, so you can update items manually by downloading new versions as they become available.
@DeutschXP Once our developers are back in the office after the Christmas break, they’ll be working on a change log for the item pages (to record and display version changes). You’ll also see other changes rolled out throughout the year, as Elements is continually evolving.
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Thank you very much for that information about the latest version of a theme being available on that product’s WordPress Elements theme page. I obviously was not aware of that. Perhaps other people are not, either.
[Hint: Add that information somewhere within a user’s Elements backend – like in the middle or bottom of the “WordPress Themes & Website Templates” page, or in the “Licensing Terms” page, or under a user’s “My Subscription” page or somewhere that is more easily seen.]
Yes, that is a different process than with CodeCanyon and ThemeForest, but for the great value of Elements, I don’t mind doing a little manual work for the cost tradeoff. 
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Hi we just signed up to elements to get access to a theme. Installed it and found it breaks Wordpress 5.3. Had a look and found the elements offering supports wordpress 4.9 and the not-elements version supports 5.3. Can we get a refund from elements -it is not a good idea for people to run old wordpress I think. Great for photos / music etc but selling out of date themes is not sensible.
Elements is not a good purchase area for Plugins and Themes. Most of them are already outdated with no inclusion of updates, nor being updated by the authors. Been a member in and out for a long time and don’t see any progress in regards to this. I think Envato is batting an eye about it.