Hi @silkroaddog,
This forum is premium support for pro themes. If you want email support, we can provide that too for pro theme users. What we do is use emails for sensitive information and use public forum for common issues, which might be helpful for other users as well.
Yo do not need to buy that option. That option will let you access our email support and for free users.
For buttons, can you post in your site url, and also HTML for custom button. I will check and see if that will be compatible or not.
Shortcodes can be allowed. But for that, you will need to create a child theme and make a bit of modification. First, make a child theme following out tutorial here: http://catchthemes.com/blog/create-child-theme-wordpress/.
Then, I will provide you code to allow shortcode.
Let me know if you have issues while following above direction, and I will help you further.
Regard,
Pratik