Website License Subscription Costs
It’s been a busy few years here at Primal Space HQ. This update is long overdue and we’ve continually delayed it for as long as we can. But the time has come to switch up some of the services we provide to be in line with the world today. The way licenses for website plugins and themes are changing, and the bulk of software providers are now providing purely on a subscription model. A large number of plugin providers for platforms like WordPress used to offer updates for free after the initial purchase price, but have now changed to an annual subscription fee.
To date, we’ve generally absorbed the costs of license subscriptions for websites we have created, where previously they were a single stand-alone cost. This figure has now grown to a sizeable amount in the region of many thousands of Pounds per year. But to allow these plugins and themes to update to the latest version, a subscription is required for all clients to access the latest versions of the integration code.
To be able to subscribe to the updates, you need a paid license for these modules. This is in line with our latest hosting & support policy, of always keeping your website up to date on the latest versions of software. If you are on one of our managed website hosting packages, you will now need a license for all paid modules and themes from the 1st of October 2022 onwards. This will allow your website to access the latest versions of the plugin or theme. If you already have a license in place, then there is no action required, and your updates will continue to work as normal through our support.
What is a License Subscription?
Subscriptions are growing ever more popular as a means to retaining access to a service, without purchasing lifetime ownership. Consider Netflix, Spotify etc… It’s likely you already have many subscriptions running personally and for your business that break large costs down into small monthly payments. Allowing you to subscribe to a service you’re using at the time while benefiting from ongoing updates. As opposed to buying the service outright, when it may no longer be required several years, or even months, down the line. Therefore the subscription-based model saves your business money in the long term by allowing you to simply pay for what you use.
What Services Will License Subscriptions Be Billed For?
There are several areas in the building and maintenance of your website requiring license subscriptions. Firstly from a build perspective, we require the purchase of a license subscription for the theme that your website will be built within. Providing you with all of the benefits and add-ons that the theme provides.
Further to this are the plugin licenses for additional services that allow your website to run effectively, such as plugins for WordPress websites. While offering the requirements to allow you to run your business day to day. For example, at the time of writing this post, the WP Bakery Page Builder license currently costs around £50 for an annual subscription. This page builder is used on a large amount of WordPress website builds globally. We have adopted it on a lot of our client sites through the years. Another famous one is Elementor for WordPress. Which carries a relatively low-cost fee for an annual subscription for their page builder plugin. Again at around about £50 per year for the license for a single site.
We’re finding that some client’s licences have expired since the installation of the software. Or they don’t have these set up at all where we’ve inherited the site from another agency. Which means we aren’t able to update certain modules of their site. So having us take care of your licence set up and renewal for you will ensure that none of your web services or website functionality is lost or experiences downtime. Particularly over time, as new version updates are provided by developers. While running old versions of plugins and themes can lead to security risks for your site. So it’s important to always be using the most up to date versions of these that you have access to via a licence subscription.
How Much Will Subscriptions Cost?
License subscriptions will vary depending on the services that you’re using. To date we’ve only billed for some of the larger licences and have generally absorbed the costs of the rest of these for our clients during an initial website build. We also have agency licenses for some WordPress plugins, but these can total thousands of pounds a year collectively. However, as our business grows larger we’re not able to continue absorbing these costs going forward for so many WordPress and Magento websites. Opting for the subscription model that many of our fellow agencies have been running successfully for some time. It’s been a long overdue change for us to implement and have notified all existing clients on email during August 2022.
Next Steps to Set Up Your License Subscription
If you’re an existing client, there’s no need to worry about contacting us to set up your licence subscription. We’ll contact you when this is in place and provide you with an update of the services you’ll be provided with that will require an ongoing licence agreement. You’ll just need to sign a new copy of your terms to allow us to proceed. Then ongoing, the licenses will all be managed from our side for ease of access and updating your site that we host. Our recommendation is still for our clients to hold their own access to certain external integrations such as Google Analytics for example.
If you’re a new client that has recently onboarded with us in Q2 or Q3 of 2022, then we’ll set up your licence subscription for you when you agree to your terms with us to provide ongoing digital services.
At Primal Space, we’re all about empowering our clients to have everything at their fingertips to run their business. So having an overview of the subscriptions that your website requires to run will greatly benefit clients going forward. Please contact us if you have any queries about your site licenses and we will happily answer any questions you have.
Check out our blog for tutorials and guides to help you run your business with ease.