Automatic Software Updates for WordPress Plugins and WordPress Themes
Updating premium WordPress plugins and themes is a multi-step process that can be quite annoying and time-consuming for WordPress site owners.
Those who use your WordPress plugin or WordPress theme must be prompted each time you release a new version and are required to perform the software update process on their website admin, in some cases even having to upload the downloaded files onto their site using an FTP connection! Oh my..
WordPress has substantially improved and automated the process in which it runs plugin and theme updates, but when it comes to premium WordPress software and products – the user experience is still not satisfactory, when compared with the way most software is updated outside of the WordPress sphere.
If you’ve ever heard of the term ‘conversion rate’ you know that this sort of manual & poor user-experience – will hurt yours.
Don’t let the limitations of premium WordPress software updates drag your conversion rate down!
Automatic Software Updates with Freemius
There’s definitely something you can do to automate this process and make it painless for your premium plugin or theme users!
Software updates for your premium WordPress plugins and themes are easy & smooth when you deploy your WordPress product with Freemius.
1-Click Updates
The new software version is automatically populated on the user’s WordPress admin dashboard with a push notification and a 1-click update option:
Mimicking WordPress’ smooth automated software update for plugins and themes hosted in the official WordPress.org repository, Freemius enables the same seamless update process for your premium WordPress products.
A Private & Secure Repository for Premium Versions
When selling premium WordPress products you’re going to need to find a secure repository, that is connected to your licensing engine, to serve your product from.
When you use Freemius to monetize your WordPress products access to your paid plugin or theme version is done via our secure API, as a gatekeeper to our secure and scalable Amazon S3 storage. Only customers with a valid license key will get automatic software updates or will be able to access the secure links!
Automatic Software Updates Comparison
There are several popular systems that enable automatic software updates for your WordPress products, be it themes or plugins. Here’s a quick comparison between the different capabilities of:
The Freemius software updates mechanism
The Easy Digital Downloads software Licensing extension
The WooCommerce software updates extension
| Price | Free | Free | $129 / year (for 1 website) |
| REST API | |||
| Secure repository | Free | Your hosting | Your hosting |
| Integrated with licensing | |||
| Integrated with recurring payments | |||
| Integrated with software licensing | |||
| Customer email notifications | |||
| Subscriptions management |
| Price | ||
| Free | Free | $129 / year (for 1 website) |
| REST API | ||
| Secure repository | ||
| Free | Your hosting | Your hosting |
| Integrated with licensing | ||
| Integrated with recurring payments | ||
| Integrated with software licensing | ||
| Customer email notifications | ||
| Subscriptions management | ||
