If you are an RSS feed user, you’d know Feedly. Well, today is the day I migrate all my QuiteRSS feeds into Feedly. I needed a solution to store all my feeds in one place, so I can also view them on my phone.

According to their free plan, Feedly only allows 100 sources and 3 feeds max (A feed in Feedly terms is a collection of RSS sources). I have 13 sources so I need to buy premium 😭 (so I thought).

Here is where things get interesting. Even though it claims that I am only allowed up to 3 feeds. When I imported my OPML file, it bypassed that limit. Here is my bug report for the day.

Title: Free plan of 3 feeds can be bypassed when importing an OPML file. Nah, this title does not pack a punch for business impact, how about this? Losing $X cash if premium users switch to use Free Plan feed limit exploit

Steps to reproduce

  1. Register for a free Feedly account
  2. Create an OPML file which includes more than 3 feeds (I have 13 feeds)
  3. Import that into Feedly

Expected Results

Feedly claims that people with a free plan can only have up to 3 feeds.

Actual Results

Feedly accepts an OPML file for a free plan which includes 13 feeds. This is inconsistency with the claims.

Notes

Follow up testing may be required to find out what other features this affects. For example, this investigation of this bug did not include checking if people can bypass the free limit of 100 feeds.

How could they have avoided this bug?

The solution may be a gap in flow/boundary testing. If they modelled all the ways that feeds could get added, they may have spotted this earlier.

Hope you enjoyed today’s blog. I reported this bug to them, let’s see what they say.