Activate GoBuildWP Pro licence keys in wp-admin

Before you start

To activate GoBuildWP Pro licence keys you work in wp-admin, in the browser, on the site that should hold the seat: activation ties one of your licence's site seats to that WordPress installation. Log in as an administrator. GoBuildWP Free must already be installed and active; without it, Pro loads neither its activation screen nor the Freemius SDK that checks keys.

The key is in the email Freemius sent straight after purchase, and in the Freemius customer portal, which app.gobuildwp.com > Licences > "Billing, invoices and licence keys" opens. Your GoBuildWP account itself never displays the key. Copy it from the email or the portal directly into the dialog described below. A key that has passed through chat, a ticket or a shared document should be treated as exposed.

Recognise the unlicensed state

Pro registers its features only while the Freemius SDK accepts the licence stored on the site, which it does for an active paid licence or a trial. When it does not, feature modules and screens stay unavailable while the activation and licence screens remain. Every admin page shows a red notice that cannot be dismissed: "GoBuildWP Pro is installed but not licensed, so none of it is running. Activate your licence to turn it on." Free remains installed, but persisted Pro approval policies can refuse affected Free writes after lapse; inspect the held-write policy rather than expecting a silent bypass. The link in the notice opens GoBuildWP > Activate Pro.

Enter the key

1. Open GoBuildWP > Activate Pro. The heading reads "Activate GoBuildWP Pro" and the highlighted panel is "Enter your licence key".

2. Press "Enter licence key". A Freemius dialog opens with a "License key" field and the line "Please enter the license key that you received in the email right after the purchase:".

3. Paste the key. On a site's first activation the button reads "Agree & Activate License", and a note under the field explains that the plugin will periodically send essential licence data to Freemius to check for security and feature updates and to verify the licence. Press the button.

4. On success the Activate Pro entry leaves the menu, the red notice disappears, and GoBuildWP > Licence takes their place. If the browser is sent to the old activation address, GoBuildWP forwards it to Licence rather than showing an access error.

Day-to-day eligibility delegates to the Freemius SDK and its stored state. Do not infer a fixed grace period from local caching; inspect the actual licence result and sync status before resuming writes.

If the dialog cannot load on this screen, the button reads "Activate licence on the Plugins screen" instead. It opens Plugins, where Freemius adds its own "Activate License" link to the GoBuildWP Pro row; that link opens the same dialog.

Confirm it on the Licence screen

GoBuildWP > Licence (browser title "GoBuildWP Pro licence") opens with four figures. Plan is the plan name. Sites reads, for example, "8 of 10 left", or "Unlimited". Expires shows a date, "Never" marked as a lifetime licence, or "Expired on" and the date it lapsed. Key is always masked; wp-admin never displays the full key.

Under "Manage this licence" sit three controls. "Sync licence" asks Freemius for the current state immediately; press it after renewing, upgrading or changing plan instead of waiting for the scheduled check. "Invoices and account" opens your GoBuildWP account at app.gobuildwp.com in a new tab (older Pro builds open the account page on our former domain, which forwards there), where Licences links on to the Freemius billing portal. "Deactivate licence on this site" frees the seat, and Pro stops running on this site the moment you press it.

Move a seat between sites

Seats belong to sites, not to people. To move one, press "Deactivate licence on this site" on the old site first, then run the activation steps on the new one. If the old site no longer exists or cannot be logged in to, open a request under "Activation or update failure" naming its address so the seat can be dealt with from the licensing side.

Your GoBuildWP account shows the move under app.gobuildwp.com > Licences > "Where GoBuildWP Pro is installed". That list is built from Freemius, which is read every five minutes and re-checked in full once a day, so the old site can linger there for a while after the seat is free. The Licence screen on each site is the live answer.

Decode a failed or lapsed licence

"Hmm... It looks like the license could not be activated." Read the reason that follows: it may identify an invalid key, account or seat issue, or a network failure. The message alone does not prove that Freemius rejected a valid key. Send the exact reason after reviewing it for private data.

"No licence on this site" on GoBuildWP > Licence means Freemius holds no licence for this installation. The "Enter a licence key" button beneath it goes back to the activation dialog.

"GoBuildWP Pro was built without its licensing identifiers, so it cannot verify a licence and is not loading. This is a packaging error rather than a problem with your licence." The ZIP is incomplete. The activation screen offers "Open your account", which leads to your GoBuildWP account at app.gobuildwp.com; from Licences there, "Billing, invoices and licence keys" opens the Freemius portal. Fetch a fresh copy of Pro and upload it over the broken one.

An expired or deactivated licence switches Pro's abilities off. If the site had "Require approval for writes" turned on, the approval queue needs the licence to run, so agent writes are refused rather than waved through. Agents see the ability name followed by "was not run: approval is required on this site, and it cannot be granted while the GoBuildWP Pro licence is inactive." Read-only abilities still work and requests already waiting are kept. Renew, then press "Sync licence".

Who can see the activation screens

Activate Pro and Licence use the same permission as the rest of GoBuildWP: manage_options on a single site, and the network-level equivalent on multisite. An editor never sees either entry, and opening the address directly returns "You are not allowed to manage GoBuildWP Pro." If the person holding the key is not an administrator on the site, have an administrator enter it, or create a temporary administrator account for the purpose and remove it afterwards; never send the key to someone over chat so they can type it for you.

When the site cannot reach Freemius

The activation screen itself states how checking works: activation verifies the key over the network once, and day-to-day checks then run against the stored licence with a periodic background re-sync. So the moment that needs outbound access is the moment you press the activation button. A host or firewall that blocks the site's own outgoing requests makes activation fail, and Freemius' reason appears after "Hmm... It looks like the license could not be activated."

A failed licence-service request does not by itself establish that the key is invalid or that premium eligibility has ended. GoBuildWP delegates eligibility to the Freemius SDK and its stored state; no fixed offline grace period is promised. A first activation or a later renewal, upgrade, cancellation or refund needs a successful service exchange to be reflected correctly. A missing or broken SDK, or a build without licensing identifiers, fails closed. If activation keeps failing with a network-related reason, check outbound HTTPS from PHP with your host and retain a reviewed Diagnostics report for support.

After a renewal, an upgrade or a plan change

Changes made on the purchase side do not reach a site instantly; they arrive at the next background re-sync. Press "Sync licence" on GoBuildWP > Licence after any of these:

A yearly licence was renewed after lapsing. Pro starts loading again once the site reads the renewed licence, and any agent writes that were being refused for lack of the approval queue resume. Requests that were already waiting in the queue were kept.

The plan moved to a larger tier. The Sites figure, which reads as how many of the allowance are left, reflects the new allowance once the site syncs.

A yearly licence was cancelled. Nothing changes on the site until the paid period ends, and the Expires figure keeps showing that date; syncing simply confirms it.

Hand the desk a licence case

The site address exactly as WordPress reports it under Settings > General, the Free and Pro versions from the Plugins screen, the time you tried, the full Freemius sentence from the dialog, and your purchase email. The masked value in the Key field is harmless to include; nobody needs the full key to look a licence up.