diff --git a/app/Models/Plugin.php b/app/Models/Plugin.php
index 3c279d7..d21f498 100644
--- a/app/Models/Plugin.php
+++ b/app/Models/Plugin.php
@@ -235,9 +235,15 @@ class Plugin extends Model
             }
         }
 
-        // Default to JSON parsing
         try {
-            return $httpResponse->json() ?? [];
+            // Attempt to parse it into JSON
+            $json = $httpResponse->json();
+            if($json !== null) {
+                return $json;
+            }
+            
+            // Response doesn't seem to be JSON, wrap the response body text as a JSON object
+            return ['text' => $httpResponse->body()];
         } catch (Exception $e) {
             Log::warning('Failed to parse JSON response: '.$e->getMessage());
 
diff --git a/tests/Feature/PluginXmlResponseTest.php b/tests/Feature/PluginXmlResponseTest.php
index 308d914..9717d8d 100644
--- a/tests/Feature/PluginXmlResponseTest.php
+++ b/tests/Feature/PluginXmlResponseTest.php
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ test('plugin parses XML responses and wraps under rss key', function (): void {
     expect($plugin->data_payload['rss']['channel']['item'])->toHaveCount(2);
 });
 
-test('plugin handles non-XML content-type as JSON', function (): void {
+test('plugin parses JSON-parsable response body as JSON', function (): void {
     $jsonContent = '{"title": "Test Data", "items": [1, 2, 3]}';
 
     Http::fake([
@@ -95,6 +95,28 @@ test('plugin handles non-XML content-type as JSON', function (): void {
     ]);
 });
 
+test('plugin wraps plain text response body as JSON', function (): void {
+    $jsonContent = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet';
+
+    Http::fake([
+        'example.com/data' => Http::response($jsonContent, 200, ['Content-Type' => 'text/plain']),
+    ]);
+
+    $plugin = Plugin::factory()->create([
+        'data_strategy' => 'polling',
+        'polling_url' => 'https://example.com/data',
+        'polling_verb' => 'get',
+    ]);
+
+    $plugin->updateDataPayload();
+
+    $plugin->refresh();
+
+    expect($plugin->data_payload)->toBe([
+        'text' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet',
+    ]);
+});
+
 test('plugin handles invalid XML gracefully', function (): void {
     $invalidXml = '<root><item>unclosed tag';