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.
All our endpoints are now properly documented to help SaaS makers quickly find what they need to build the custom integrations they envision.
Additionally, we’ve added detailed documentation on Deployments — perfect for WordPress makers looking to tap into the full power of the Freemius API for advanced automation.
Our API is fully documented using the OpenAPI v3 specification, so you can easily download the raw schema and use it with your preferred tools — whether it’s to generate client libraries, test requests, or integrate with Postman or Swagger UI.
This week we’re rolling out several SaaS-friendly improvements to our Checkout.
Smarter Discount Calculation
Previously, our discount calculation was limited to 2 or 3 decimal places — sufficient for the WordPress ecosystem but limiting for SaaS products where pricing often involves high precision (e.g., bulk credit purchases where each unit costs less than 0.0001).
Our Checkout is now smart enough to detect such cases and display the correct level of precision. Additionally, large numbers in the license unit section are now formatted for better readability.
Improved Line Item to Show Renewal Price
Based on feedback from our maker community, we’ve added more clarity to the renewal pricing. Specifically, when there’s a discount involved (e.g., annual or volume-based discounts), the Checkout will now display a “Renews” line item just after “Today’s total”.
You can also force this line item to always appear — even when there’s no discount — by enabling the always_show_renewals_amountconfiguration.
Responsiveness Improvements in Hosted Checkout
We’ve made layout improvements to enhance the responsiveness of the Hosted Checkout.
The Checkout now adjusts more gracefully to both vertical and horizontal screen sizes, offering a smoother and more optimized buying experience across devices.
Freemius offers a fully managed deployment solution for various WordPress products — including Plugins, Themes, Templates, Widgets, and more. Among the many features, we take care of Free and Premium version generation, license activation, and pushing updates to your buyers’ sites.
We realized that many of these features weren’t well surfaced in the deployment page UI. So, we’ve rolled out an update to better expose the most commonly used features, such as:
Deployment Automation – With our community-powered GitHub Action and other libraries.
Paid and Free Version Generation – Clearer information on how these versions are generated.
Composer Integration – Guidance on leveraging Freemius’ built-in Composer support.
We’ve also updated our documentation to reflect these enhancements. In addition, we’ve opened up the relevant API endpoints to work with your product’s Bearer Token — allowing you to create new versions directly from your CI/CD pipeline.
We hope these updates help you streamline and automate your version deployments more effectively.
Following the rollout, we identified a few edge case bugs that prevented invoice generation for a small number of makers. These issues have now been resolved and the system has been updated accordingly.
We also introduced a few improvements based on feedback and internal reviews:
For FinTech banks (e.g., Wise, Revolut, Evolve), the invoice will now use the maker’s billing address instead of the bank account address.
Freemius’ own address on the invoice is now consistent across all payout methods, regardless of whether it’s a wire transfer via Mercury or otherwise. Previously, our registered address varied based on the payout channel.
The label “Service Month” has been updated to “Service Period” to better reflect multi-month invoice coverage.
If you notice any further issues, please let us know.
This week we are releasing a few UI/UX improvements to the Checkout, aimed at enhancing accessibility and fixing a bug related to the newly introduced iDEAL flow.
Improved Accessibility of Dropdowns
We’ve enhanced the license and billing cycle selector dropdowns to be fully accessible for keyboard users. The dropdowns now behave just like native elements — users can tab into them, navigate using arrow keys, and select using space or enter. The Escape key also closes the dropdown.
This marks an important step in our ongoing push toward improved accessibility, aligning with — and aiming to exceed — the new standards set by the EU Accessibility Act.
Improved Behavior of Monthly Billing Cycle Selector
Our Checkout offers two UI approaches for the billing cycle:
Upsells – the recommended and default way to show billing cycle options as toggleable upsells:
Previously, both interfaces would only display the monthly billing cycle if:
The show_monthly_switch flag was explicitly set, or
The Checkout was loaded with the monthly billing cycle.
Following feedback from our makers, we’ve updated this behavior. Now, the monthly billing cycle will show by default if no billing cycle is explicitly passed when loading the Checkout.
To streamline configuration, we’ve introduced a new show_monthly flag for use with the Checkout JS SDK and Hosted Checkout. The older, more verbose show_monthly_switch parameter is now deprecated. With the updated billing cycle UI, the _switch suffix no longer aligns with the current design.
Fixed VAT Number Validation Issue with iDEAL Checkout Flow
We recently introduced the new iDEAL payment flow in our Hosted Checkout:
This week, we fixed an edge case where the VAT number would occasionally be lost after the redirect step in the iDEAL flow. This issue did not impact any completed transactions — we had already patched the affected cases retroactively.
We are excited to announce the immediate availability of a new payment method for buyers from the Netherlands: iDEAL. iDEAL is the most popular payment method in the Netherlands, and since we have many buyers from the NL, it has been on our radar for quite some time. Today, we are rolling out support in a gradual manner.
Currently, if you’re using the hosted Checkout from Freemius and your product is set to the EUR currency, you will notice that iDEAL is both enabled and selected by default for buyers coming from the Netherlands. Buyers can, of course, still choose between Credit Card and PayPal payment options.
To boost conversions from the Netherlands, we suggest that you set up your product pricing in EUR currency. Once you do that, Freemius will handle the rest — automatically displaying the iDEAL payment option and selecting EUR as the default currency based on the buyer’s geo-location.
Please give this feature a try and let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions!
Depending on demand, we will soon roll out support for modal Checkout and other areas, such as payment method updates and our WordPress SDK embedded Checkout. Stay tuned.
Recently, we released the Reverse Invoice feature and made it available from the Earnings page. This week, we are rolling it out to the Payouts emails as well.
Starting next month, if your billing information is properly set, you will notice that we no longer ask you to send invoices to us. Instead, we generate the invoice ourselves (on your behalf — hence, reverse invoice) and include a link in the email for you to download it. You can then use the invoice for your own accounting needs.
Please stay tuned, as we’ll soon start sending you pro-forma invoices at the beginning of each month — so you won’t have to wait until the actual payout to know your current month’s earnings!
Not too long ago, we revamped our pricing model to better serve SaaS and App makers. Today, we’re rolling out a fresh new UI in the Developer Dashboard to reflect those changes.
When you visit the Earnings page, you’ll now see a new graph that clearly explains the different commission rates Freemius applies based on product type.
These updated commission rates have already been factored into your earnings calculations since the announcement. This UI update is aimed at making things more transparent.
Additionally, the Payouts information section is now collapsible. If you choose to collapse it, your browser will remember the preference—freeing up vertical space and allowing you to instantly focus on your earnings when opening the page.
If you have any questions about the new pricing, feel free to reach out via support.
We have rolled out the following bug fixes and improvements in the Developer Dashboard:
Once you enable the Affiliate Program, the ID of the program is now properly visible in the UI. There was a bug where it wasn’t showing up in some edge cases.
The affiliate program ID is useful when you’re accessing it from the APIs for custom integrations.
Additionally
We also noticed and fixed a few alignment issues across different parts of the UI.
The “App Update UI” has been made a little smarter — it will now be hidden on irrelevant pages to keep the interface cleaner.
For the Customer Portal
It was brought to our attention that the password reset form was missing proper validations for certain fields, causing UX issues, especially for users setting very long passwords.
We have now made all our password-related forms consistent across the platform, supporting passwords up to 100 characters in length.
At Freemius, we make it really easy (and secure) to transfer product ownership. This becomes a valuable tool when selling products or during acquisitions.
Recently, we noticed an edge case where the product transfer was failing if the new owner had not yet registered a store with Freemius.
We have now fixed this bug. If the new owner doesn’t have a store, Freemius will automatically create one for them, using the product’s name as the store name to help them get started quickly.
This week, we’re rolling out a series of backend and frontend upgrades to make the Freemius Checkout even smoother and more robust. Here are the highlights:
Smarter PayPal Dunning
Freemius already retries failed PayPal payments automatically. With this update, our dunning mechanism gets even tougher — now more resilient against PayPal’s downtime or server hiccups.
Free Plan Checkout: Polished and Perfected
Freemius Checkout isn’t just for paid plans — it also powers Free Plans, helping you collect leads and marketing consent.
After our recent design revamp, a few UI glitches crept into the Free Plan checkout. Those are now fully fixed, and everything looks spot-on, both in hosted and modal modes.
Additionally, we noticed that translations were not working properly.
This has also been fixed. You can now load the Free Plan checkout in a pre-selected language, and your buyers will be able to switch languages seamlessly.
Better Error Handling
The Checkout will now bail early and display a relevant message in case of an invalid pricing configuration (licenses, currency, etc.) instead of failing silently.
We recently introduced the Reverse Invoice feature, where Freemius generates the payout invoice on your behalf.
We identified a minor bug where, in some cases, the business name on the invoice wasn’t pulled from your bank wire configuration. This issue has now been fixed.
In line with our recent rebranding efforts, we’ve renamed the User Dashboard to Customer Portal.
The Customer Portal is a hosted solution from Freemius where your buyers (Customers) can log in to manage their subscriptions, access payment history, upgrade plans, retrieve license keys, download products, and more.
This rebranding is just the first step—more updates are on the way. For now, we’ve updated the logo and refreshed a few outdated phrases. Stay tuned for more exciting changes coming soon!
Freemius allows you to set up special coupons to boost your sales and marketing efforts. Simply head over to Coupons → Special Coupons in the Developer Dashboard to get started.
We recently discovered a UI bug where clicking the Remove button to reset a special coupon would break the interface, requiring a page reload to recover. This issue has now been fixed.
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