Sell license keys for your software and digital products.

Software Licensing for Easy Digital Downloads provides a complete license key generation, activation, and checking system. It allows you to provide license keys along with your digital products that can then be used to properly license and activate the buyer’s copy of the software. Whether you are selling WordPress plugins, themes, or any other kind of software, including video games and desktop applications, the Software Licensing add-on will become a huge asset for you that also helps to take your business to the next level.

License key management

Through simple, intuitive interfaces Software Licensing allows site admins to easily view and manage customer license keys.

Each individual license key includes a complete details screen that makes all relevant purchase and customer data easily accessible.

License key generation can be enabled on each product in your store separately and every product gets its own settings, allowing you to easily sell many different product variations and non-software products at the same time.

Licensing API

Software Licensing includes a complete and easy to use JSON API that can be used for activating, checking, and validating license keys. This provides software developers a way to remotely activate and validate license keys within software applications.

The API includes methods for the following requests:

• license activation
• license deactivation
• license validation
• latest version / update details

See the API documentation for examples.

License renewals

Included with Software Licensing is a complete renewal system to allow customers to renew their license keys when they are nearing expiration. The renewal system provides automated email reminders that can be sent to customers when a license is about to expire, and from the email customers can, with a single click, go directly to your store and renew their license key.

Renewal discounts can be configured by site administrators to help incentivize customers to renew their license keys.

Site administrators can also manually renew license keys on behalf of customers at anytime, or manually email renewal notices to customers.

Software Licensing also provides a complete reporting view that displays a graph of license renewals and earnings from those renewals over time so you can better understand how many customers renew their licenses.

The renewal system is also fully integrated with our Recurring Payments plugin, allowing you to set up automatic renewals with recurring subscriptions.

License upgrade paths

For sites that sell multiple versions of their software, allowing customers to upgrade from one level to the next is important. Software Licensing provides a complete system for creating upgrade paths for customers to upgrade between license levels.

Upgrade purchases can be prorated based on the customer’s existing purchase and can even include additional discounts. Upgrade paths can be configured to allow customers to upgrade between license levels of a single product or even to entirely different products.

Add one-click updates to your WordPress plugins and themes

With the complete API for providing automatic updates for WordPress plugins and themes to valid license key holders, this add-on will not only make your life as a distributor of products easier, but it will also thrill your customers by allowing them to update their themes and plugins to the latest version with a single click.

The automatic update system included with the add-on for both themes and plugins follows all of the core WordPress UI standards, so users won’t even know the difference.

Implementing the automatic upgrades into your theme or plugin is as easy as including a couple lines of code (all provided) in your theme or plugin files.

Software Licensing includes full support for parsing the readme.txt files for WordPress plugins, allowing you to include the same information in plugin update dialogs as plugins hosted on WordPress.org.

If you manage your plugin and/or theme development in GitHub or BitBucket, version releases can be distributed through git with our Git Download Updater extension.

For WordPress and non-WordPress Products

Software Licensing has been built specifically with WordPress theme and plugin developers in mind, but can be used for any kind of software licensing through the included API. Included with the add-on are complete samples that illustrate how to implement license activation and checking in your theme or plugin, and how to setup automatic upgrades for your theme or plugin that are delivered through the licensing system.

Complete documentation for both WordPress and non-WordPressimplementations are available. View documentation.

Beta versions

Successful software releases require testing and to properly test new versions developers need to release beta versions. Software Licensing includes support for releasing beta versions of of your software so you can better test your releases before making them available to everyone.

Complete screenshots