WordPress

Is Freemius a WordPress.org Compliant?

Mos-def! If you are familiar with the guidelines, you already know that “phoning home” is not allowed without the user's consent. Therefore, we don't capture any information without user opt-in. We probably have the most strict opt-in form in the wp.org repo.

What makes Freemius WordPress.org compliant?

We've built a special PHP preprocessor that looks into your project's PHP files and uses the SDK calls in your code as annotations to understand what parts of it should be excluded from the free product version. Then, the preprocessor automatically generates a free version of your plugin by striping away all of its premium code. The free version is the version that should be uploaded to WordPress.org, in order to comply with the WordPress.org guidelines.

Can I use Freemius Insights with EDD or WooCommerce?

Absolutely YES! There's no collision nor interaction between Freemius Insights and other eCommerce solutions. Freemius Insights does not depend on on our monetization solutions. You can add Freemius Insights to both your free and premium plugin versions.

Can I use Freemius Insights on CodeCanyon and ThemeForest?

Yes! It's compliant with the marketplace rules. In fact, a similar analytics product, called PressTrends, was widely adapted by ThemeForest and CodeCanyon developers in early 2014.

Can I use Insights in my Premium only plugin or theme?

Yes, you can! In addition, since you are not obligated to any guidelines, you can capture all the information and skip the opt-in screen. If you do so, you would need to explicitly mention that part in your privacy and terms of use. Having said that, since no one actually reads the privacy and terms, we recommend using the opt-in screen as an ethical transparency act.

Can I use Freemius with my theme?

Yes! Freemius is now fully integrated with themes!

Can I customize the opt-in screen?

We have crafted special filters to customize the messaging and buttons of the opt-in screen. You can also completely edit the PHP template file in the SDK. Make sure you keep it clear about what information is being captured and that it's sent to Freemius. Otherwise, it won't be compliant with the WordPress.org guidelines.

Can I customize the in-dashboard pricing and checkout pages?

The pricing page is automatically generated and styled by Freemius, following WordPress admin dashboard design practices. We make sure it looks natural and optimized for best conversation results.

We have years of experience optimizing conversion, and we use data to continuously improve on the pricing page.

We do provide an option to add custom CSS stylesheets to enable personalization.

You can add those stylesheets in Plans -> Customization:

Note: For now, we do not recommend using custom CSS since changes in the page HTML structure might break your styles. We'll try to communicate any changes in the HTML DOM. Having said that, and for the sake of agile development, we do not guarantee notifying you about any changes – it's up to you to monitor changes.

Do you support coupons?

Yes – we support absolute amounts and percentage based coupons. You can set up the effective date range of a coupon's validity, whether the discount should apply for all payments or only for the initial payment, and multiple customization options.

How do you handle downloads and file hosting?

We securely deliver reliable downloads to valid license holders through our API, utilizing S3 hosting on AWS.

How do trials work if I have a free version on WordPress.org?

If you have a free version, after 24 hours, a dismissable admin notice with a trial offer will automatically appear in the WP admin dashboard.

Clicking on the “Start free trial” button will redirect the user to the plugin's in-dashboard pricing page with the option to start a trial with any of the plans. Once the user selects a plan and starts the trial, the premium version is securely accessible through a download link which will appear in an admin notice and in an automated email.

Is your SDK RTL compliant?

Yes, it is.

Will selecting “deactivate license” under user account in WordPress cancel the billing / subscription?

Deactivating the license will not cancel the subscription. It's there for cases in which the customer wants to migrate a license to a different installation (for example, when migrating to a different host or domain).

What languages is your WordPress SDK translated to?

You can check out all of the supported languages and help us translate the SDK (we know you want to be on our hall of fame 😉 ) on our Transifex translations manager.

Can I protect my premium offering if the user cancels the trial or if the trial is over and the user didn't upgrade?

If a user got your premium code via a trial but never paid for a license, you can block the premium logic and protect yourself from trial abuse by using the following code:

If ( my_fs()->can_use_premium_code() ) {
    // … premium code ...
}

By default, all trials are “blocking” to prevent trial abuse. So if the trial is over/expired and the user didn't upgrade (or canceled the trial), the premium features will be blocked even if you set your plan to keep the features and only block updates and support:

Can I offer a discount on license renewals?

Yes, you can. Keep in mind though, that our annual and monthly plans renew automatically. This means that customers don't have to take any proactive action to renew the license. In other words, you don't need to convince the customer to renew. The decision is whether to cancel the license or continue. Unless a customer is unhappy with your plugin or has stopped using it, a renewal discount has no significant effect on that decision.

Therefore, as a rule of thumb, we do not recommend setting a discount for renewals unless your plugin does not provide a continued value (e.g. a migration plugin, or any one-time action plugin). In that case, maybe it is worth setting up a lifetime price.

Why is the active installs metric on WordPress.org different than the one on Freemius?

There's a fundamental difference in the way WordPress.org and Freemius count active installs.

Based on publicly available responses from key people in the WordPress meta team, the WordPress.org active installs counter relies on the WordPress.org updates mechanism, which is sampled on a weekly basis. Updates are triggered only when there's traffic to the site, so if a site installed your plugin or theme and did not get any traffic during that sampling period OR, if the updates mechanism is blocked (or turned off), this site will not get counted. Also, we suspect that the WordPress.org sampling relies on domains and not on IPs. In that case, for example, all of the VVV installs that installed your product will only be counted as a single site.

On the other hand, Freemius uses real actions such as an explicit opt-in or deactivation/uninstall events. One fallback of that tracking methodology is if a user hard-deletes the product from the filesystem, using FTP/SSH, it is still considered active.