Changelog

Recently, we released iDEAL support for our Checkout to ease payments from buyers in the Netherlands.

This week, we’re continuing to strengthen that support with a few enhancements and bug fixes:

• Fixed an edge case issue related to license renewals via iDEAL.
• Payment method updates now work seamlessly both to and from iDEAL.
• Improved error handling for broken or interrupted payment flows.

To enable iDEAL as a payment method in your Checkout, simply configure your product pricing in EUR. Once set, buyers from the Netherlands will automatically see iDEAL as one of the supported payment methods.

Our rebranding project continues to roll out across the platform. This week, we’re releasing another batch of emails sent by Freemius to our makers.

If you’re signing up or enabling 2FA, you’ll notice the updated design. We’re getting close to our rebranding milestone — and up next, we’ll begin rebranding customer-facing emails, including support for customization.

We are happy to announce that Freemius now supports a new coupon configuration designed to help you migrate your legacy subscriptions while offering first-time discounts to your buyers.

For example, you can create a coupon restricted to “Migrated customers”, and under the same coupon, configure it to apply a discount on the First payment only.

When your buyer chooses to migrate their subscription, they’ll not only receive the usual proration discount, but also this new one-time discount. This creates an extra incentive for your buyers to move to the new billing system powered by Freemius — ultimately benefitting both them and you.

As shown in the example above, the discount applies only to the first payment Freemius collects, and not to subsequent renewal payments.

Until now, coupons used for migration had to support both the first payment and renewals. With this update, our coupon system is far more flexible — giving you finer control over how and when discounts are applied.

Please note that the coupon discount is calculated relative to the non-prorated period. For example, if for an annual subscription 5 months have already been used and are prorated, then the coupon applies only to the remaining 7 months — ensuring that discounts are not compounded unintentionally.

If your coupon also supports renewal discounts, the UI will display a tooltip explaining the discount breakdown — both for the current payment and for the renewal.

Why We Built This

Freemius not only helps you sell your software with ease, but also makes it simple to migrate your existing subscriptions and licenses from a legacy system. Our migration process is non-breaking by design — you don’t need to cancel everything immediately or force your buyers to resubscribe. Freemius keeps itself in sync with your legacy system, allowing you to centralize licensing in a single source of truth while gradually moving subscriptions over.

Of course, migrating to Freemius comes with multiple benefits: global sales tax handling like EU VAT or US Sales Tax, automated invoicing, email marketing automation, and more.

To support this migration path, we also offer features like renewal reminder emails and coupons to help encourage users to move over.

With this newly added flexibility, you can now offer a one-time discount during migration to further motivate buyers to switch — helping you increase adoption of the Freemius billing system.

As part of our ongoing rebranding initiative, we’ve rolled out another batch of rebranded system emails this week.

For example, if you’ve recently received cart recovery or trial-related emails, you may have already noticed the fresh new design.

Please stay tuned as we soon bring the changes to more of the system.

We recently released a major update to our Checkout, making it fully compliant with the upcoming EU accessibility law. Today, we’re excited to share that the Freemius Customer Portal is now also compliant.

The Customer Portal now adheres to the WAI accessibility guidelines, covering both mandatory requirements and best practices. We’ve ensured proper contrast ratios, clear focus states, and fully accessible interactive elements for all users.

This update ensures your buyers can seamlessly access their order history and license details, regardless of their device or assistive technology. If you’re embedding the Customer Portal on your own website, this also helps you remain compliant with the EU accessibility law coming into effect on June 28th, 2025.

Soft Rebranding with Accessibility in Mind

Alongside these changes, we’ve introduced a soft rebranding of the Customer Portal using our new color palette. These updates have been implemented carefully to avoid breaking any of your existing custom CSS overrides.

This rebranding is just the beginning. Stay tuned as we continue modernizing the Customer Portal with more improvements in the coming months.

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

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 Tax Rounding

We noticed a glitch in rare edge case scenarios where the tax percentage values could appear slightly off. This issue has now been resolved, and the tax amounts will be correctly rounded and displayed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Customer Invoice Alignment Fix

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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

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

Accessible Form Components

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

Manual Audits and Support for Screen Readers

We’ve manually audited and optimized our Checkout experience to ensure it works seamlessly with screen readers including VoiceOver (macOS/iOS), NVDA, and JAWS. You can watch a demonstration in the video below.

This update reflects our continued commitment to accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their browsing method, can interact with Freemius Checkout with confidence.

Updated Checkout 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!

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

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

• For Makers – Go to the Developer Dashboard → Payments and click on the Invoice icon.
• For Buyers – Go to the Customer Portal → Order History and click on the Invoice button.

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.

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.

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.

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.