The WordPress.org freemium trap: how to ship a Pro plugin without getting suspended
The article discusses the challenges of creating a freemium WordPress plugin while adhering to WordPress.org guidelines. It emphasizes that plugins cannot include locked features, even if they are hidden or dormant. The author presents a solution using WordPress's hook system to separate free and Pro functionalities effectively.
- ▪WordPress.org prohibits plugins from containing locked features, which can lead to suspension.
- ▪The guidelines specify that no Pro code can be included in the free version of a plugin.
- ▪The author suggests using hooks to create a bridge between free and Pro versions, ensuring that Pro features are not present in the free build.
DEV.to (Top) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 4,924 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/roberto_anguitamartin_0b/the-wordpressorg-freemium-trap-how-to-ship-a-pro-plugin-without-getting-suspended-4543 |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 2026 21:27:23 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T21:34:58.272Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T21:34:58.272Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ViapCgogR9ra |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3903131) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } ROBERTO ANGUITA MARTIN Posted on May 19 The WordPress.org freemium trap: how to ship a Pro plugin without getting suspended #wordpress #php #webdev #opensource If you've ever thought about building a freemium WordPress plugin and distributing the free version through WordPress.org, there's a compliance rule that will catch you off guard. You cannot ship locked features. Not locked behind a license check. Not hidden behind an if (is_pro()).
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
Discussion
0 commentsMore from DEV.to (Top)
