How To Sell WordPress Plugins & Offer Automatic Plugin Updates

offer Automatic WordPress Plugin Updates
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Are you planning to sell a WordPress plugin?

Selling WordPress plugin is one profitable avenue for anyone, and there are many questions as a beginner you may have:

  • Which platform do I use to sell my WordPress plugin?
  • How do I collect user data?
  • How do I offer plugin updates?

If you are giving away a free plugin from the official WordPress plugin repo, it is easy to offer automatic updates. But, when you are selling your premium WordPress plugin or theme, things are not the same.  

More over, you don’t want to email manually users about new updates and make the upgrade process tiresome.

In this post, I will share tools by which you can offer automatic updates for your WordPress plugin or themes. This is useful for those developers, who are launching their product in the coming days.

4 Best Platform to sell Plugins & offer plugin updates (For Developers) 

1. Freemius:

Freemius sell WordPress plugins
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Freemius sell WordPress plugins

This is currently one of the top solutions to sell WordPress plugins.

Using this plugin you can offer a free version in WordPress repo and paid version. Freemius takes care of on-boarding, and upgrading from free version to paid version.

It is a complete solution for a WordPress developer to start selling WordPress plugins for profit.

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The platform also enable you to integrate an affiliate program with your WordPress plugin.

Looks promising and I suggest you check this out. You can read more about this product here & here.

2. HasThemes Elite Licenser

HasThemes Elite Licenser plugin
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HasThemes Elite Licenser is a WordPress plugin that helps you manage licenses for WordPress themes and plugins, as well as any other PHP, .net, Java, or Android applications. That is, you could also use it for other content management systems like Joomla or for your own software.

It also has third-party integrations with popular tools/marketplaces like Envato (ThemeForest and CodeCanyon), WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and Fast Spring. If you’re using it to provide licenses for WordPress plugins and themes, it can also generate the complete sample code that you’ll need to include in your extension.

You can watch this video to learn how it works:

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Elite Licenser can automatically create a license key when a shopper purchases a product. Then, you can either send the license key automatically or manually, according to your needs.

You can set up your own custom support and license expiration dates and you’ll also be able to track which websites have activated one of the license keys.

When a shopper goes to activate their product, it will connect to your server to verify the license key. If the key is valid, the customer will see a success message. If it’s not, they’ll see a failure message. You can customize both messages.

Your customers will also be able to update their plugins, themes, and apps from their dashboard panel, which creates a more user-friendly experience for them.

Finally, you’ll also get some other tools to help you manage your license keys. For example, you can:

  • View a license activation report
  • Export license key and client lists as either PDF or CSV files
  • Track license key usages, including both how many times a license has been used and on which websites
  • Automatically ban certain hosts (helpful for preventing misuse or license key sharing)

To purchase Elite Licenser, you can choose between a one-year or lifetime license. The one-year license gives you one year of support and updates while the lifetime license gives you lifetime support and updates. Here are the two plans:

  • Developer license â€“ for up to 10 products. $49 for one year or $149 for lifetime.
  • Agency license â€“ for unlimited products. $74 for one year or $249 for lifetime.

3. Software licensing by EDD:

WordPress Plugin Updates
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Easy Digital Downloads is one popular WordPress product to create your digital download store. They have an extension call Software licensing, which adds an automatic upgrade to the product. This solution is far better than any other, as updates will be rolled out to only users with the valid license. If a user license is expired, he won’t be able to update the plugin or theme until his license is renewed.

Watch this video to understand how this plugin works:

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This is a paid addon & it cost about $82 for the single site license. If you are creating a seriously paid product, this pricing is well justified.

Bonus Tip: You can integrate an affiliate program with your product using AffiliateWP.

4. WP Updates:

If you are looking for the most simple solution to offer premium plugin updates, look no further than WP updates. This is good for those developers, who have launched free or premium plugin both, and distributing it independently.

WP Updates, offer easy to use the dashboard to push a plugin update. You can manage 1 product for free, beyond that you need to subscribe to their plan, according to number of products you have.

Here is the video that shows how easy it is to use WP Updates:

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For now, these are the two easy to integrate solution for offering automatic WordPress updates.

You can use the above system for plugin or themes. I will keep updating this post with alternative solutions.

Do let me know what method are you using to offer automatic updates for your digital product? I would love to hear your thoughts and opinion in the comment section below.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

3 thoughts on “How To Sell WordPress Plugins & Offer Automatic Plugin Updates”

  1. Harvilas Meena

    Yes, Harsh, It is very useful for the person who want to sell the WordPress Themes or Plugins. More over, you don’t want to email manually users about new updates, and make the upgrade process tiresome. The shared tools by which you can offer automatic updates for your WordPress plugin or themes. This is useful for those developers, who are launching their product in coming days.

  2. Sachin saini

    Hello Harsh
    its good info for us but can you please tell me its ….free / paid ?
    Thank you

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