Curious, has the crowdrender team, thought about using an updater for the addon?
https://github.com/CGCookie/blender-addon-updater
It would make updates alot easier, as the end user may be on the go. Sometimes, easy to forget to check the site for updates, while in your work mode grind.
This requires the code to be published on github, which we're working towards. So maybe. Thanks for pointing this out :) Also sorry for the delay in response, its been a killer 2019/2020 transition period for us in trying to maintain our project, we are still now getting to the bottom of our inboxes and lists of notifications :)