Comparison
This is a much closer contest than the Freemius one. EDD is self-hosted, takes no cut of your sales, and its Software Licensing extension does the same core job we do. The differences are architectural, not ideological — and if you already run a WordPress site you are happy with, EDD may well be the right answer.
Neither product takes a percentage. Both leave you paying only your payment gateway. So this comes down to licence cost, and the thing that matters with EDD is which tier you need: Software Licensing is not in the cheaper plans.
| Price / year | Includes licensing? | |
|---|---|---|
| EDD Personal | $99.50 intro, $199 renewal | No |
| EDD Extended | $199.50 intro, $399 renewal | No |
| EDD Professional | $299.50 intro, $599 renewal | Yes |
| EDD All Access | $499.50 intro, $999 renewal | Yes |
| LicensorPro Solo | $199 | Yes |
| LicensorPro Studio | $399 | Yes |
| LicensorPro Agency | $799 | Yes |
Do not read that table as "we are three times cheaper". EDD Professional includes a whole store — a storefront with product marketing pages inside WordPress, a multi-item cart, customer reviews, and dozens of extensions. We do have checkout, coupons, bundles, subscriptions, invoices, affiliate commissions and a customer portal, so those are not the difference. What we are not is a shop: there is no catalogue for buyers to browse and no cart holding several items at once. If you need a storefront, you are comparing a store against a licensing server and the prices are not measuring the same thing.
EDD is a WordPress plugin. Your licensing lives inside a WordPress site, alongside your marketing pages, your theme, and every other plugin on it. That is a genuine advantage if you already run that site: one system, one login, one host.
It is also the thing that makes people look for an alternative. Your licence API's uptime becomes your WordPress site's uptime. A plugin conflict, a bad theme update, or a PHP upgrade on the host is now an incident in which customers cannot activate. LicensorPro runs as its own small PHP app — usually on a separate host or subdomain — so your store and your marketing site can break without your customers' activations breaking.
Where we are genuinely behind. We do not compute or file sales tax — we store what your gateway reports and nothing more, so you either use a merchant of record in front of us or handle tax yourself. Free trials work on Stripe and PayPal only. And our reporting covers revenue, MRR and churn but not conversion rate or LTV yet. EDD, with the right extensions, covers more of this today.
| LicensorPro | EDD + Software Licensing | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue share | None | None |
| Entry price with licensing | $199/yr | $299.50 intro, $599 renewal |
| Runs inside WordPress | No — standalone PHP app | Yes |
| Licence API independent of your site's uptime | Yes | No |
| Licence keys, activation limits, auto-updates | Yes | Yes |
| Non-WordPress PHP apps | Yes | Possible via the API |
| Payment gateways | 19, with country routing | Stripe/PayPal core, more via extensions |
| Subscriptions and renewals | Yes | Yes (Recurring Payments) |
| Dunning, cart recovery, coupons, affiliates | Yes | Yes (extensions/tiers) |
| Full storefront and cart | Checkout only | Yes |
| Multi-vendor commissions | No | Yes |
| Sales tax computation | No | Via extensions |
| Free trials | Stripe and PayPal only | Yes |
| Extension ecosystem | No | Large |
Found something wrong on this page? EDD's pricing and bundling change, and we would rather be corrected than be inaccurate. Tell us and we will fix it — [email protected].
Software Licensing is not sold separately and is not in the cheaper plans. It requires the Professional Pass, which is $299.50 for the first year and $599 a year on renewal. The All Access Pass at $499.50 first year and $999 renewal also includes it.
The Professional Pass and the All Access Pass. The Personal and Extended passes do not include it, which catches people out because Extended looks like the natural mid-tier choice.
No. EDD state on their pricing page that this is "special introductory pricing, all renewals are at full price". The lower figure is first year only and it renews at the full rate, so budget on the renewal number rather than the intro one.
No. EDD advertises "No Platform Fees" on all tiers. Like a self-hosted licensing server, you pay only your own payment gateway. That makes EDD and LicensorPro the two flat-fee options in this comparison.
Yes. EDD is a WordPress plugin, so your store runs inside a WordPress install and your licence API depends on that site staying up. A standalone licensing server keeps activations working independently of any WordPress site.
If you already run a WordPress site you are happy with and want a store as well as licensing, EDD adds both to what you have. If you only need licensing and updates, a standalone server avoids buying a store to get them, and keeps working when your WordPress site does not.
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