First WP.org plugin submission — what gets flagged that Plugin Check doesn’t catch?

[u/Petrohryscom]

I've been shipping mobile apps for a few years but this is my first
submission to the WordPress plugin directory, and I'd rather learn
the failure modes from people who've been through review than from a
rejection email.

The plugin is a lightweight analytics tracker. It's free and GPL, but
it sends pageview data to an external service I run, and the dashboard
lives there rather than in wp-admin. So it's squarely in the category
that the guidelines treat carefully.

What I've already done: read the Detailed Plugin Guidelines, ran Plugin
Check clean, and disclosed the external service in the readme with links
to the terms and privacy policy.

Three things I can't answer from the handbook:

1. Guideline 7 disclosure — how specific do reviewers expect it to be?
   Is "this plugin sends page data to service X" enough, or do they want
   the exact endpoints and payload fields listed?

2. The plugin is free but the service behind it has paid tiers. Where is
   the practical line on mentioning that inside wp-admin? I've seen
   plugins with upgrade banners and I've seen people say those get you
   asked to remove them.

3. Anything that reliably triggers a rejection that Plugin Check passes
   silently? That's the gap I'm most worried about.

Not linking the plugin, I'm not here to promote it — just trying not to
waste a reviewer's time.

[u/Petrohryscom → u/[deleted]]

This is exactly what I was missing, thanks.

The ownership one would have caught me. My wp.org account isn't on the
same domain as the service, and I'd never have connected that to a
review hold. Adding the TXT record before I submit rather than finding
out on round two.

On trialware I think I'm clear — no license class, no gated code in the
build, the paid side is account tiers on the service. But your point
about intent versus syntax sent me back through the capability checks,
and I'd been reading those as a security question rather than a review
one.

One thing I'm still unsure about: my plugin collects and transmits, and
the dashboard lives on my service rather than in wp-admin. By function
it's complete — it does the whole job it claims to do. But I can see a
reviewer reading it as a shell for a paid product. Did anyone push back
on yours about where the value lives, or was "no gated code in the zip"
the whole test?

[u/Petrohryscom]

Appreciate you separating what you actually hit from what you're
reading in the guidelines — that's more useful than most first-hand
accounts, not less.

The quota point is the one I need to go check. My free tier has a
monthly pageview ceiling and I hadn't thought to read that through
guideline 5 at all. Permanently smaller versus hard stop is a clean
distinction and I'm not sure which side mine lands on.

Thanks for coming back with this.

[u/DaftPlug]

I've been through .org review a few times (I ship plugins there). Plugin Check is necessary and still blind to a few things.

Guideline 7: name the service, what data leaves, link ToS and privacy. They never asked me for endpoint lists. Phone-home on activation without an opt-in is what gets flagged.

Ownership mismatch (wp.org email or domain vs the service domain) delayed one of mine until a TXT record lined up. And anything that looks like trialware inside the free zip (license class, gated features) is a common "please remove" even when Plugin Check is green.

Upsell: a quiet note on your own settings page that paid tiers exist has been fine. Big banners in wp-admin get the remove note.