This page is about what you bought and what its limits are. Activating it is a separate walkthrough, and this one assumes you have already done that or are deciding before you buy.
Start with the thing people get wrong most often.
A license is permanent. It does not expire and it is never renewed.
The word "renew" belongs to support, which is a separate window of time with its own clock. Your license, your activations and every version you have downloaded stay yours for good, whatever happens to that window.
Two channels sell the same theme under different terms, and mixing them up causes many of the questions we get.
#A direct license
The main channel, and the one that carries everything.
The number of sites comes from the number of activations you chose when buying. If you need five sites, you take five activations in one order.
Five activations is one key covering five sites.
The same string is entered on each site, and each site confirms its own activation separately. That is also why adding capacity later needs nothing reinstalled anywhere.
You can add activations later from your account, or move to the unlimited tier. The key does not change: the same string gets a larger allowance, and nothing has to be reinstalled on the sites already running.
Each production domain takes an activation, and a subdomain counts as its own domain. The www and non-www forms of the same address are one site and share one activation. A test environment has a separate free slot, so staging does not consume a paid activation.
When you run out, the refusal names the domains holding your activations. That is the answer to "where is it in use", so read it rather than guessing.
Twelve months of priority support is included, and it is the only part of a direct purchase with a clock on it. Priority means order in the queue: direct customers are answered first. When the support window ends the theme keeps working exactly as it is, the license stays valid, and every version you own stays available in your account. What closes is the ability to open a new support request, and a new support window can be bought at any time.
A domain is not permanent either. An activation can be released and moved to another site whenever you want.
#An Envato license
The marketplace channel. Envato issues that license, not us, and their licensing terms govern it. They change those terms without our involvement, so read their current text rather than trusting a summary anywhere.
The short version: Regular covers one end product whose users are not charged for access, Extended covers one where they are. One purchased item is one end product, so a second site is a second purchase.
It carries limited support, meaning the period Envato sold with the item, six months by default. Inside it you have one support thread for that product, answered after the direct queue, and it cannot be extended on the marketplace. The date your own key carries is shown on the license in your account.
It also sits at the Regular tier, which is where the differences below come from.
#Three tiers, and what each one decides
Our tiers are separate from the two Envato license types, and the two are easy to confuse.
| Tier | Where it comes from | Automatic updates | Integrations | Demos | Feature requests | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premium | a direct purchase | yes | all of them | all of them | 3 per activation | 12 months, priority |
| Agency | a direct purchase, unlimited sites | yes | all of them | all of them | 10 | 12 months, priority |
| Regular | an Envato purchase | no | only those marked for Envato | only those marked for Envato | no | the marketplace window, one thread |
The tier decides all of it. The store you bought from and the date on the calendar do not. A direct license gets every demo and every integration. A Regular key activates, verifies and works normally; it has no Version Control screen, gets only the demos and integrations marked available to Envato, and cannot send a roadmap suggestion. Voting on published roadmap entries is open to everybody.
This list may grow, and we set it, not the marketplace.
New paid-channel capabilities can be added to it, so treat the table as current rather than permanent. The reasoning behind where that line sits is written up on the main site.
If you already hold an Envato key, you do not have to buy again to move up. The upgrade applies the author share of your marketplace purchase as credit, so you pay the difference.
#What a license really is
This is where expectations most often break.
A license belongs to an account, not to a purchase code.
The purchase code is a label we recognize your license by. Holding one does not make somebody the owner, so handing your code to another person transfers nothing, and a license bought from somebody else's account cannot be moved into yours. The thing to protect is access to your account and to the email address the purchase was made with.
The same design has a useful side effect: the purchase code does not change when you move from an Envato purchase to a direct one. The string you once pasted into the admin stays valid, and nothing needs re-entering.
Licenses are not transferable to third parties.
#What is not allowed
One license on several domains at once, cloning a database with its activation, or otherwise working around the binding. Verification happens on our side, and those activations get removed.
You agreed to this at purchase, and the authoritative text is on the main site:
The legitimate route is cheaper anyway: if you need more sites, buy more activations, and your account shows how many you have and where each one is in use.
#Common questions
Does a subdomain need its own activation?
Yes. blog.example.com and example.com are separate domains as far as activation is concerned. The www and non-www forms of the same name are not: they count as one site.
What happens after twelve months?
Nothing happens to the license. Twelve months is the support window on a direct purchase, so what ends is the ability to open a new request, and a new support window can be bought whenever you need one. The theme, the versions you own and your activations are unaffected.
What does priority support actually mean?
Order in the queue. A direct customer's ticket is answered first, and a marketplace ticket inside its own window is answered after it. Both are answered.
How many feature requests does my license include?
Three per paid activation on Premium, so a key covering four sites carries twelve for that product, and ten on Agency. A Regular key carries none. The count is per product and the form shows what you have left.
I bought on Envato and want automatic updates
Open the license in your account and take the Premium offer on it. The author share of your marketplace purchase is applied as credit, so you pay the difference rather than the full price. Every integration and every demo, feature requests and twelve months of priority support come with it.
Why does a direct purchase get more than a marketplace one?
A marketplace sale returns a fraction of its price after fees. A direct sale is what pays for the update pipeline, the full integration catalog, every demo and a support queue that answers first. The write-up on the main site sets out the arithmetic.
Can I sell a site I built to a client?
Yes. The Terms and conditions let you build sites for clients within the activation count your license allows and hand the finished site over. The license itself stays in your account.
My account shows something I did not expect
Your account is the authoritative view of what you own and where each activation sits. When it disagrees with what a site reports, trust the account and open a support request with both pictures.
#Still stuck
Open a support ticket and say what you tried and where it stopped. Your product, your domain, a screenshot and the exact message you saw are usually enough to settle it in one reply.
Last updated
