Changelog

Welcome to the changelog section of Freemius, here you'll find our weekly technical update notes. You can subscribe to all posts via Newsletter or follow us on Twitter to stay updated.

Refined Customer Invoices with Discount Accuracy and Better Readability

In another round of polishing the customer invoice, we’re glad to announce the following improvements:

Freemius Customer Invoice with many discounts and support email

Discount Rows

Invoices will now properly display discounts, even when the plan or coupon configuration changes. This not only makes the breakdown easier to understand but also ensures there are no discrepancies in the calculated amounts.

Support Email Fix

We identified and fixed an issue where, in some cases, the maker’s email was incorrectly shown as the support email. The invoice will now correctly use the support email configured either from the product itself or from the store of the product.

Improved Number Alignment

We’ve updated the number rendering to use our branded monospace font. This improves visual alignment of all amounts on the invoice, making it easier to read and verify.

Better Events Filtering and Mobile UI for the Developer Dashboard

We are releasing a few minor yet impactful enhancements to our Developer Dashboard this week.

Events Table Filtering

Freemius events and webhooks are a powerful way to build seamless SaaS integrations — for example, listening to the license.created event and responding to it within your app.

Filtering event logs from the Freemius Developer Dashboard

The Developer Dashboard already includes a UI to view these events and even resend them for testing or debugging. However, we found a bug that prevented filtering events by webhook status. This has now been fixed, and the status filter works as expected.

Responsiveness improvements

Some pages — such as the Earnings page — weren’t fully optimized for mobile viewing.

Freemius Earnings page, as viewed from mobile devices

We’ve addressed this, ensuring those pages are now responsive and easier to use on-the-go.

Other Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed an edge case in the License Creation UI where associated sites were not displayed correctly.
  • Fixed an issue where a newly created Plan for a new product wouldn’t immediately show up in the UI.

License Creation UI Enhancement and Customer Portal Login Fixes

We are excited to announce the following updates in the Developer Dashboard and Customer Portal:

License Creation UI Enhancement

The license creation feature is a great way to manually create licenses for your affiliates or partners.

Freemius Developer Dashbaord Create License UI

With this new update, when you enter an email address during license creation, if the user has already activated your product, the associated sites will now be displayed. This makes it easier to auto-activate the license to the correct site.

Whether you’re creating licenses for existing users or for potential affiliates testing your product, this new flow simplifies the experience for both you and your users. You no longer need to share the license key manually — it will just work.

Customer Portal Login Remember Me Option

We identified a bug where the “Remember Me” option in the Customer Portal login was not always respected. This has been addressed, and the option should now work as expected.

Rebranding Continued – Customer Invoice & Makers Emails

Continuing with our rebranding project, this week we are releasing the following two updates:

Customer Invoice Alignment Fix

Rebranded customer invoice generated by Freemius

Following our recent release of rebranded customer invoices, we have addressed some UI alignment issues. Certain elements, such as the “PAID” badge, were not properly aligned. These issues have now been fixed.

More Rebranded Makers Emails

We have released another set of makers emails with the new rebranded design.

Freemius review email sent to makers

These emails are sent by Freemius when certain events occur, such as when a new purchase is made or when a review is submitted etc. Please stay tuned as we roll out the update to more parts of the system.

Checkout Card Icon Localization

At Freemius, we care deeply about optimizing Checkout conversions. Whether it’s the billing form, upsells, or the cart, every part of our Checkout experience is built with conversion in mind. This week, we’re rolling out another small but impactful optimization.

The card brand icons shown during Checkout are now localized based on the selected billing country. For example, buyers in the Netherlands will only see VISA, Mastercard, and AMEX — while less relevant options like JCB or Discover are hidden. This change reduces visual clutter and helps buyers quickly recognize and select their preferred payment method.

API Documentation Update

This week, we are rolling out the final batch of our API endpoints that were pending documentation. You can access them directly from our API documentation website. This batch primarily focuses on Reviews and Licensing, making app integration significantly easier.

With this, we’re wrapping up our commitment to fully documenting the entire API using the OpenAPI specification. Going forward, any new endpoints or changes will be documented on an ad-hoc basis as part of our regular changelog updates.

If you’re a software maker looking for a rich, OpenAPI-compliant integration API, be sure to explore our documentation and developer resources.

Freemius Checkout is Now EU Accessibility Compliant

We’re excited to announce that the Freemius Checkout is now fully compliant with the EU Accessibility Act, which comes into enforcement on June 28th. This means that by using Freemius Checkout, your website remains compliant with EU law.

Freemius Checkout fully EU accessibility act compliant

But we didn’t stop at just the legal requirements. We’ve gone a few steps further by also implementing recommended accessibility best practices, making sure our Checkout delivers an inclusive and user-friendly experience for everyone.

Here are some of the key improvements we’ve made:

Better Contrast Ratio & Focus States

We updated color schemes and font sizes to ensure compliance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

Checkout contrast and focus

Additionally, all interactive elements like buttons and links now have clear focus states, supporting both keyboard and assistive tech navigation.

Best Possible Keyboard Navigation

We audited and improved keyboard navigation across the entire Checkout experience.  There are no keyboard focus traps, and every component is now fully navigable using the keyboard, with relevant focus states clearly visible at all times.

Proper ARIA Live Regions

Freemius Checkout is dynamic. Price calculations and form updates happen in real-time.  

Checkout live region with dynamic text

We’ve added ARIA live regions to ensure screen readers can detect and announce content changes appropriately.

Checkout form validation with descriptive text

All form validation errors are now descriptive, with appropriate ARIA roles applied.

Accessible Form Components

Accessible form component

We’ve audited all form elements, both native and custom, to ensure:

  1. Proper use of labels and descriptions
  2. Clear visual states for hover, focus, and errors
  3. Conformance with WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (WAI-APG) for components like listboxes, landmarks, and buttons

Updated Checkout JS SDK

Accessible Checkout Overlay with Freemius JS SDK

Our JavaScript SDK has also received accessibility enhancements:

  1.  The close (×) button is now always visible, not just on hover 
  2. The modal overlay and iFrame includes appropriate `role` and `title` attributes
  3. The active element is now focused back when the modal closes

If you are using the hosted version of the SDK (https://checkout.freemius.com/js/v1/) then no action is necessary from your side. If you’re using the npm package, then we urge that you update as soon as possible.

With these improvements wrapped up for the Checkout, our next focus is the Customer Portal.  

Stay tuned for further updates and if you notice any accessibility issues or have suggestions, reach out to our support team. We’d love to hear from you!

Rebranded Customer Invoices are Live

Following up on our rebranding project, we are super stoked to announce the availability of rebranded customer invoices as well.

New invoice design - Freemius

All invoices generated by Freemius now come with a fresh, modern design. Customer invoices can be accessed from two places:

This sleek new look isn’t just a facelift, it signals to your buyers that they’re dealing with a modern, reliable, and forward-thinking platform.

Addition of Masked License Key & ID

If you take a closer look, you’ll notice the invoice now includes a masked license key and the ID. This helps buyers quickly identify the purchase they’re looking for. It also improves support workflows — when buyers share invoices with you, you can easily cross-reference them with license keys in the Developer Dashboard.

Stay tuned as we continue rolling out more rebranded components across the platform.

UI/UX and Internal Links Improvement of the Developer Dashboard

This week, we’re releasing a few minor but helpful UI/UX and internal link improvements to the Developer Dashboard.

  1. The API documentation links now point to the correct updated documentation site.
  2. Under Plans → Code/Link, we’ve added direct links to our documentation. This should help new makers better understand how to implement the overlay code and no-code links of our Checkout.
  3. We also fixed a UI issue with popovers, where multiple popovers could stay open at the same time. This has now been resolved.

Kickstarting Email Rebranding

As part of our ongoing rebranding project—where we’re modernizing every aspect of our platform and product—we’re excited to announce the next phase: emails.

Freemius rebranded email

We’ve redesigned our email templates and have begun rolling them out gradually. Starting today, you’ll see the new modern look for several purchase-related emails.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out more transactional emails, including those sent to your customers and users.

These changes are non-breaking. Any existing customizations will remain intact. For customer and user emails, you’ll need to opt in to the new system. Stay tuned—more details coming soon.

Feature Unlocked: Checkout Success Redirection for All Product Types

A while ago, we announced a new feature for the Checkout allowing you to set a redirection URL after a successful purchase. Initially, this was limited only to SaaS products.

However, based on feedback from our makers community, we’re now unlocking this feature for all product types supported by Freemius.

A post-checkout thank you or “purchase completed” page can be useful in many scenarios, especially when the Hosted Checkout link is shared via email, social media, or other marketing channels.

Freemius Developer Dashboard showing configuration option to redirect to specific URL after successful Checkout

To get started, head over to the Plans → Customization section and enable the Checkout Success Redirection switch. More details are available in our documentation.

Additional Improvements

  • The redirection URL now includes amount, tax, and currency as query parameters.
  • To improve clarity the action query parameter has been extended to include:
    • payment_method_update – When the buyer has just updated the payment method without changing any plans or pricing.
    • license_update – When the buyer has updated the plan or pricing of the license.
  • Fixed an edge case where redirection data wasn’t properly populated for iDEAL checkout flows.

API Fixes for License Upgrade and Deployment Update Endpoints

Bug Fix for Checkout Upgrade Link Generation API

We’ve rolled out updates to the recently released API endpoint for generating upgrade links for licenses.

  • The links now use time-limited authorized tokens instead of license keys, improving both security and alignment with best practices.
  • We also removed the currency parameter from the payload documentation. This was mistakenly included earlier — Freemius does not support changing currency through the license renewal or upgrade flow.

Upgrade links provide a great UX for your buyers to manage their subscriptions. You can find the detailed documentation here.

Bug Fix for Deployment Update API Endpoint

We noticed an issue in the deployment update API endpoint where the limit value was incorrectly accepting negative integers and converting them to 0.

The limit value is used for staged rollouts — a great way to gradually release deployments, helping to catch bugs earlier within a tighter feedback loop. However, due to this bug, an incorrect value would essentially disable staged rollout altogether.

Staged rollout UI update for rejecting negative value - Freemius Developer Dashboard

This bug has now been fixed. Additionally, we’ve updated the UI to prevent negative values from being submitted.

Improved Error Message for Single Subscription Limitation

Previously, we released a feature that allows you to enforce a single-subscription model for your SaaS.

When this feature is enabled, our Checkout shows an error message if an already subscribed user attempts to subscribe again.

Improved error UI in the Freemius Checkout for Single Subscription model, linking to the currently active subscription management page

With this release, we’ve enhanced the UI by automatically including a link that directs users to upgrade their subscription. The link leads to the Freemius-managed Customer Portal, offering an out-of-the-box experience for your buyers to manage their purchases and licenses.

Removed Skype as Support Option from the Plans

Historically, Freemius allowed adding Skype as one of the support channels configured for a plan. This information would appear in various places such as post-purchase emails, helping your buyers easily reach out for support.

Freemius plan configuration for adding support channels.

With Skype being gradually phased out, we have now removed the functionality and the associated UI from our system. For those who had Skype set up as a support option, it has been automatically removed and will no longer appear in any relevant areas of the platform.

Fixed Authentication Issue with Tokenized Invoice URL

As Freemius now issues Reverse Invoices and includes them in Payout emails, we identified an authentication issue with the tokenized invoice links. The issue occurred when accessing the invoice link while being logged into the Developer Dashboard with a different account. This particularly impacted makers who shared the invoice URLs with team members holding accountant-level access.

Reverse Invoice link in Payout emails generated by Freemius

Previously, we recommended using an incognito window to work around the issue, but we understand this was far from ideal.

With today’s deployment, this problem has been resolved. The tokenized secure download links for invoices will now work seamlessly, regardless of the account you’re logged into.

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