A renewal email and a question
A renewal notice arrives for the studio's developer licence on a forms plugin. The owner wonders how many client sites use it, whether they are all still clients, and whether the licence covers them all. Nobody knows. A developer starts logging into sites to check.
Meanwhile, a client who left last year is still running the plugin under the studio's licence and receiving updates. Another client's site shows an unlicensed notice in the admin because it was set up with a single-site key that belonged to a different project. And the cost of all these licences has never been recharged to the clients whose sites use them.
Why licences get tangled
- Developer licences make it easy to install a premium plugin on any site without thinking about it.
- Licence keys are stored in the plugin settings on each site, not in a central record.
- Some plugins count sites against a limit, and old sites are never removed.
- Clients who leave keep running plugins under the studio's licence.
- Recharging licence costs depends on someone remembering to add a line to the maintenance invoice.
Premium plugins are some of the most useful tools a studio has, and their licensing is one of the least managed parts of the business.
What tangled licences cost
Licence costs are absorbed instead of recharged. Sites may run unlicensed or under the wrong licence, missing security updates. Former clients use the studio's licences, which may conflict with the plugin's terms. Renewal decisions are made blind. When a client asks to take their site elsewhere, nobody knows which plugins they will need to buy their own licences for.
The licence register we build
- Plugins and themes on every client site are read regularly, through your management tool such as ManageWP or MainWP, or a small reporting plugin.
- Premium plugins are identified and linked to the licence each site is using, where the plugin exposes it.
- Your licences are recorded with their renewal date, site limit and cost.
- The register shows, per licence, which sites use it, whether each site belongs to a current client, and how close you are to the site limit.
- Sites running a premium plugin without a valid licence are flagged.
- Licence costs can be allocated to client sites and added as recharge lines to maintenance invoices, following the rules you set.
- When a client leaves, the register lists the premium plugins on their site that will need the client's own licence, for the handover.
| Question | What the register answers |
|---|---|
| Which sites use this licence? | List per licence |
| Are they all current clients? | Former client sites flagged |
| Are we near the site limit? | Count against limit |
| Which sites are unlicensed? | Flagged for a fix |
| What should we recharge? | Allocation per client site |
| What does a leaving client need? | Premium plugins to relicense |
How each plugin's licence terms apply to client sites is set by the plugin vendor. The register makes the current position clear so you can check it against those terms.
The next renewal
The renewal notice arrives. The owner opens the register and sees the licence covers the current client sites, plus several former clients. Those are contacted about moving to their own licences. Two unlicensed sites are fixed. The renewal goes ahead with a clear view of what it covers, and its cost is spread across the maintenance invoices of the clients who use it.
Is your plugin licensing a mystery?
- Premium plugins run on client sites under your developer licences.
- Nobody can list which sites use each licence.
- Former clients still run plugins under your licences.
- Licence costs are not recharged to clients.
- Some client sites show unlicensed plugin notices.