Custom Localhost URL Patterns, Refunding Without Fees, Subscription Cancellation Coupon, and More

What’s new with Freemius? A few days ago, we received an email from a partner raising concerns that we haven’t published any release notes in some time. Fair enough! Truth is, we’ve been ‘heads down’ working on tons of features, and — before we knew it — our release notes were stacking up high (thanks Jose for the reminder!).

Since there are so many new updates and we don’t want to overwhelm you, we’re going to publish four release notes over the next four weeks (one per week) so you can familiarize yourself with all the cool new capabilities and features added to the platform.

This week’s release notes are focused on the Developer Dashboard enhancements. Let’s dive in 🤿

Custom Localhost URL Patterns

We already support an extensive list of localhost/development/staging TLDs and subdomains that allow customers to activate a license without the need to purchase any additional ones. That said, there’s a good chance you’ve already received support inquiries from customers who have unique URL patterns that are not on the list, which is common among larger organizations.

You can now add custom “localhost” URLs and patterns to user profiles with unexpired purchased licenses. This will allow them to activate a license without deducting from the “production activations” quota.

Users Export for Promotional Emails

We’ve added a new checkbox that filters users who opted in to marketing to make it easier for you to send promotional emails.

Once checked, the DOWNLOAD USERS button will export only the users that you can market to.

Preserving Carts’ Original Prices

Cart prices now show the original price according to when the cart was created, even after price changes. This only applies to newly created carts from the beginning of 2022.

Supporting Emojis in Reviews

Emojis are now supported in reviews. Short and sweet 🍭

Refunding Without Losing Gateway Fees

PayPal and Stripe changed their policies a while ago and no longer reimburse their gateway fee on refunds. Also, we don’t refund our rev-share on late refunds processed after 30 days due to accounting reasons.

We are happy to share that there’s a new option to process refunds excluding fees. This means you’re protected against a loss of revenue on refunded payments.

Subscription Cancellation Coupon

We are thrilled to share the launch of a new special coupon to help you fight subscription churn. The coupon offers a discount as an incentive to stay on an active subscription. You can find it in Coupons → SPECIAL COUPONS:

By setting this coupon, a discount promo will be offered to customers when they initiate a subscription cancellation process by clicking the “Cancel auto-renew” button in the User Dashboard. They can easily apply this with a single click — no need to collect the payment method again!

You can create a coupon to discount all future renewals by choosing the “First payment and renewals” option. Alternatively, you can choose to only discount the next renewal by creating the coupon with “First payment only” selected:

We strongly encourage you to utilize this coupon by setting a 10-30% discount. It only takes a minute to configure and has the potential to make a meaningful impact on your renewal rate. Please be sure to read the finer details here.

Changing License Plans

If you are selling multiple paid plans for the same product, you can now change plans for manually issued and lifetime licenses.

Test Licenses

This capability is extremely helpful for manually-created testing licenses. Instead of activating a different license to test a product’s behavior with a different plan, you can now simply change the license’s plan directly in the main Licenses section. Once adjusted, it’s a simple matter of syncing the license in the Account for the changes to apply:

Lifetime Licenses

If a customer changes their mind after purchasing a lifetime license for planX because a cheaper planY is a better fit for them, you can now process a partial refund and change their plan directly from the refund dialog box. This means you don’t have to ask them to purchase again and refund the purchase of planX thereafter: