A question about the freemium plugins

  • m

    (@liberl)


    2 years, 2 months ago

    Hi,
    In my plugin, I have many features in freemium, the plugin also has a premium version.

    Which means sample-lite and sample-pro plugins.

    Some features in the plugin dashboard are disabled to activate since users need to get the premium version and install that alongside the free version to activate for instance a module.

    Once the user has installed the pro version, the dashboard will display a section where the user can enter the license key.

    My question is, instead of having 2 plugins, one free and one pro, can I merge these 2 plugins into one?

    For a freemium plugin hosted on wp.org, is it allowed to have a license key section in the plugin dashboard?

    I want to put the license key field into the freemium version. And users who purchased the premium version, enter their license key, to enable some features.

    The freemium version on wp.org just prevents activating some checkboxes.

    The codes of the premium version are open-source and GPLv2

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator threadi

    (@threadi)

    2 years, 2 months ago

    You already got an answer for this question in #slack I think:

    Hi, no, that’s specifically not allowed according to the guidelines
    https://developer.ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#5-trialware-is-not-permitted

    Thread Starter m

    (@liberl)

    2 years, 2 months ago

    I understood that. I want to know how other plugins are doing this. for example Elementor, and Stackable plugins. Those are limited Some features in their free version.
    Is there a particular way? How can I do the same ways they did for my plugin?

    Moderator threadi

    (@threadi)

    2 years, 2 months ago

    There is no general or recommended way to do this. Many developers have developed their own methods. You should just make sure that the light version only has functions and methods that are actually used there.

    Elementor adds Pro widgets as PHP classes using hooks and calling light functions with additional parameters. Has grown like this historically.

    With my own plugins, I now always try to display additions from pro plugins using hooks in the light version. This means that the Light contains a hook with parameters and the Pro uses this to add further data. You can also use this to call up Pro functions.

    And of course you can also look at the source codes of the relevant plugins to see how they do it.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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