Your Pro licence

Where your licence key is

It arrives by email the moment you buy, in a message titled Thanks for subscribing. The key is in the list of steps, and there is a link beside it that activates it for you, so most people never type it.

If you cannot find the email, check spam, then log in to your account with the link in any receipt we have sent you. Your key is there and it does not change.

Activating it

Install and activate Bang! Cart Pro as you would any plugin. It asks for the key straight away. Paste it, and every Pro feature switches on.

Afterwards, your licence lives at Bang! Cart → Account in your WordPress admin. That screen shows what you have, when it renews, and lets you release the site.

What one licence covers

• A single-site licence covers one live site.
• Local copies are free and unlimited. A site on your own machine - localhost, .local, .test - does not use up your licence, so developers can work without buying a second one.
• 5-site and unlimited licences exist for anyone running several shops or building for clients. You can move up at any time from the checkout, paying only the difference.

Moving a site, staging copies and backups

This is the part people worry about, so here it is plainly: copying your site does not switch your shop off.

• Restoring a backup to the same address is not noticed at all. Nothing happens, nothing to do.
• A copy at a different address - staging, a new host, a domain change - raises a notice asking what it is. You get three answers: this is the site's new home, this is a temporary duplicate, or this is a long-term duplicate.
• Choosing "temporary duplicate" keeps both sites working for two weeks, which is what a staging copy needs. When that runs out it asks again rather than switching anything off.
• Your licence and your features keep working while that notice waits for an answer. Nothing goes off sale because you moved house.

Moving your licence to a different site

Open Bang! Cart → Account on the site you are leaving and deactivate the licence there. That frees the slot. Then activate it on the new site with the same key.

You do not need to ask us, and while your licence is live there is no limit on how often you do it.

When a licence expires

Your shop keeps selling. Every Pro feature carries on working.

Variants, automatic discounts, postage that scales with the order, customer-set prices, checkout on your own site and order notes all keep doing exactly what they did the day before. A card that fails, a renewal you forgot, a subscription you cancelled on purpose - none of them take a working shop off sale.

What stops is updates and support. You stay on the version you have, you stop receiving fixes and new features, and you are on your own if something breaks. That is what renewing buys.

When there is no licence at all

Different situation, different behaviour. This means one of two things: Pro is installed but no key was ever entered on that site, or the licence was withdrawn because the purchase was refunded or charged back. Cancelling a subscription is not this, and neither is expiry. In those two cases Pro stands down: no feature registers, and the free plugin behaves exactly as it does when Pro is not installed.

Nothing is deleted. Every option, price, band, rule, variant and photograph you set up is kept precisely as you left it. A product with variants and a zone priced in bands stop being offered rather than being sold at a guessed price - because a wrong charge is worse than a paused feature. Activate a licence and all of it returns, with nothing to set up again.

Updates are not appearing

Three things to check, in this order:

• Is the licence live? Open Bang! Cart → Account. An expired licence is the commonest answer, and it is working as designed.
• Can the site reach the internet? Updates are served from Freemius rather than WordPress.org, so a firewall or a security plugin that blocks outbound requests will stop them arriving.
• Have you checked recently? WordPress caches update information for hours. Visit Dashboard → Updates and press Check again.

Renewing, changing your card, cancelling

Your subscription renews automatically each year, and you are emailed 30 days before it does. Everything about the money - the card on file, the renewal, cancelling, past invoices - is handled in your account with Freemius, the merchant of record for every Pro licence. The link is in every receipt.

Cancelling stops the next payment, not your licence. Your licence runs on until the date you have already paid up to, and then it expires - and expiry does not switch your features off; see above.

Invoices and VAT

A PDF invoice is attached to your payment receipt, and every invoice is available in your account at any time.

If you are VAT registered, enter your VAT number at the checkout and the tax comes off. If you have already bought without it, ask Freemius and they will reissue.

Refunds

Thirty days, no quibble. If Pro does not do what you needed and we cannot put it right, ask and you get your money back. Refunds are processed by Freemius, because they are the merchant of record and it was they who took the payment - but write to us first if the problem is the plugin, because most things people want refunds for turn out to be fixable in ten minutes.

Who to ask