Freemius and data processing

Selling anything isn’t exactly simple – payment gateways, availability, invoices, subscription management and renewals, and more.

On top of that, selling plugin licenses adds the overhead of continuously checking license validity. You have to account for refunds, license upgrade/downgrade events, and so on. Maintaining that kind of infrastructure can easily become a full-time job.

That’s why I’d rather leave the maintenance of the licensing system to Freemius – a platform for selling digital products – and focus on the plugins themselves instead. Freemius has been on the market since 2014 and is a reliable partner to hundreds of plugin authors in the WordPress world.

How does it work?

When you buy one of our plugins, you pay Freemius, which acts as the reseller on our behalf. This means you provide your billing address and payment details to Freemius.

Note

When you buy something on eBay or Amazon, you’re often buying from various companies that advertise their products on those platforms. Freemius works similarly, but for digital products.

After your purchase, you’ll receive 2 emails from Freemius on our behalf:

1. an email containing your license key and instructions for downloading + installing
2. an email containing the login details for your Freemius account

Tip

You can use the same email address to buy plugins/themes from other authors who use Freemius. You’ll access all of those products under the same login.

How are payments and plugins connected?

While checkout is an important part of the buying process, license management and basic analytics matter too. Freemius helps with that as well.

Every plugin ships with the Freemius Software Development Kit (SDK), which takes care of the things mentioned above. In short, when you activate one of the plugins, you’ll be redirected to a screen powered by Freemius that asks for your permission to track some diagnostic data, which also includes the validity of your license.

What data is tracked?

The only sensitive data that’s stored is the administrator’s name and email. Nothing else concerning your company or your site’s users is tracked. The administrator’s email is important so I can contact you about any security updates, feature announcements, and so on. Tracking data is sent to Freemius after login and then every 24 hours (for as long as the plugin is active).

Note

You can keep sharing your website’s data without receiving my occasional emails. Just click the unsubscribe link in one of the emails, or let me know in advance.

The exact scope of the tracked data is available in the Freemius FAQ here. The list also explains why each individual data point is tracked.

What is that data used for?

I prefer to make decisions based on data rather than guesswork and “gut feelings.” Here are a few examples of why this data is invaluable:

• Knowing which versions of WordPress/PHP our customers use helps keep the code cleaner and shortens development time between releases.
• Knowing which languages customers use helps prioritize translations.
• Knowing which themes customers use lets us test compatibility before releasing new versions.

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it should give you an idea of why this type of data matters and how it can be useful to you as well when we have it.

Further questions

If you have further concerns about Freemius and privacy, you can start with their data tracking FAQ. If you have even more questions, I’ll do my best to answer them – just get in touch.