Handling freemium theme upsells with grace
Freemium WordPress themes are a big business. While revenue potential is well established, the conundrum of managing freemium codebases remains. As a freemium theme author, you have several methods of delivering paid functionality:
- Premium functionality separated into child theme
- Separately maintained, but largely overlapping, premium parent theme
- Premium functionality separated into paid plugin
- Separate premium parent theme managed via pre-processing
The separate codebase approach
Clearly convenient for the user, but not so much for the developer. Inefficiencies may trickle down if consistency is not maintained across both codebases.
The child theme approach
Convenient for the developer, not so much for the user. Users must messily “merge” their customizations with new code when updates arrive.
Best of both worlds: a “Pro” plugin
The Theme Foundry uses this strategy with their popular free Make theme. Pro functionality is separated into a plugin called Make Plus.
- User downloads free parent theme.
- User buys paid “Pro” upgrade plugin.
- User makes customizations via child theme.
- Developer releases updates independently.
- Everyone is happy.
Best of both worlds alternative: Freemius
Freemius helps WordPress developers monetize their products with a single codebase. Their PHP pre-processor automatically generates free and paid versions when uploaded to their management dashboard.