Most WordPress websites run on a handful of premium plugins. Usually a page builder, a forms plugin, and something that adds custom fields, filters, bookings or a shop. Each one arrived with a licence, and each licence has an end date.
When that date passes, almost nothing happens. The site looks fine. The forms still send. Nothing turns red.
What a licence actually buys
It sounds like the licence is your permission to use the plugin. For most premium WordPress plugins, it is not.
WordPress, and most of the plugins built for it, are released under an open source licence called the GPL. In most cases the code keeps running whether the licence is current or not. What the licence pays for is everything around the code:
- Updates, including security fixes.
- Support from the people who made it.
- Extras that live on the maker’s servers, such as template libraries and connected services.
- Sometimes the ability to keep building. Some plugins let existing features carry on working, but lock you out of creating new ones until you renew.
So an expired licence rarely breaks a website on the day it expires. It changes what happens next.
Why still working is not the same as maintained
A plugin that stops updating stops receiving security fixes. When a weakness is found, it gets patched for everyone holding a current licence, published so the world can read about it, and left in place on every site still running the old version.
It also stops keeping up. WordPress moves on, PHP versions move on, other plugins change, and a plugin frozen in time eventually meets something it was never tested against. That failure tends to arrive on a bad day, usually straight after an update to something else.
The extras hosted on the maker’s servers can simply stop too: a template library that no longer loads, a connected feature that goes quiet.
None of this is dramatic. It is slow, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Whose name is the licence in?
This is the question almost nobody asks until they need the answer.
If a developer or an agency built your site, the premium plugins may well be running on their licence, in their account, under their email address. That is normal and usually sensible. A developer licence covers many sites, which keeps the cost down while they look after yours.
Most plugin licences cannot be transferred, though. If you and your developer part ways, the licence stays with them and the plugins on your site stop receiving updates. Nobody has done anything wrong. It is simply how these licences are written.
It works the other way round too. If the licence was bought by somebody who has since left your business, the renewal notices are going to an inbox nobody reads.
Your four options when a licence expires
Each of them is the right choice in the right situation.
- Renew it, in your own name. Buy directly from the maker, registered to an email address your business controls. The straightforward choice when the plugin does important work and its makers look after it well.
- Replace it. Plugins overlap more than people realise. What a premium plugin does may now be handled by WordPress itself, by a plugin you already have, or by a lighter alternative. Sometimes a small custom build does the one job you actually use it for.
- Remove it. Sites collect plugins over the years. If it was installed for a campaign that ended, or a feature nobody uses, the cheapest licence is no licence.
- Leave it, for now. Reasonable for a short while, if there is a plan and a date attached to it. Not reasonable as the plan.
One route we would steer you away from: licences sold by third-party sites at a fraction of the maker’s price. They are usually resold against the maker’s terms, they can be switched off without warning, and some arrive with modified files you do not want anywhere near a website.
Five things you can check this week
- Which of your plugins are premium? In your WordPress dashboard, look for the ones asking for a licence key, or with Pro in the name.
- Whose name is each licence in? Yours, your developer’s, or somebody who has left.
- When does each one expire, and does it renew automatically?
- What does each one actually do on your site? If nobody can answer that, that is the finding.
- Are two plugins doing the same job? It is common, and usually a saving waiting to happen.
If every answer on that list is clear, you are in better shape than most.
How we handle it
Plugins are part of what we look after on the websites we host: the updates, the compatibility, and knowing what each one is there to do. When a licence is coming to an end, or a client is ready to move their site on, we set out the options above with the costs attached. The decision is theirs, and it should be an informed one.
We do the same for websites we did not build. We go through everything installed on your site: what it does, who holds each licence, and what it costs to keep. Where a plugin needs replacing, we migrate the site to the alternative without losing the work that plugin was doing.
The unglamorous part
Nobody chooses a website for its plugin licences, and nobody notices them while they are current. They are still part of the reason a site is secure and working in three years’ time, and they are exactly the kind of thing that falls between a developer, a host and the business itself.
If you would like someone to look at yours, let’s talk.
