Releasing and Claiming Licenses
This article covers self-service features of personal accounts and organizations in Craft Console.
Every Craft installation gets a unique license key—even if you’re using the Solo edition. Craft sends that key along with any communications to our web services (say, to check for updates), but we typically don’t know who owns a key when it’s first created.
Purchasing a Pro edition license (or any plugin license), on the other hand, immediately registers it with the Craft Console account or organization.
At times, this can result in some confusion about where your licenses live—especially when a site has changed hands, or a service provider took care of purchasing licenses during development. Craft Console provides a few ways to rectify this!
Scope #
Not all license issues can be resolved by releasing or claiming a key from your account. For instance, banners in the Craft control panel indicating that a license is invalid or belongs to a different domain cannot be remedied solely by moving it to a new Console account.
This guide will only cover situations in which you suspect a license is missing from the account you expect it to be in, or you aren’t sure what account it should be tied to.
Claiming a License #
Supposing you have a license key on-hand (from a live Craft installation, a git repository, or your own records), the first thing you should try is claiming it.
From your personal Console account (or an organization), click Claim License in the main menu.
The Claim License screen is identical for personal accounts and organizations. Instructions above the field indicate where your license will be attached.
Paste the full key into the text area (or upload a license.key file), then press Claim License.
If the key exists (but isn’t currently associated with a Console account or organization) it will be attached to the account or organization you are using. Keys attached to another account, invalid keys, and keys that we have no record of cannot be claimed and will produce an error.
An error doesn’t always mean that your key is invalid. It could just be attached to a different account!
Once you’ve tracked down that account, you can release the license and start this process over.
Pixel & Tonic cannot provide information about the account that owns a license.
Transferring and Releasing Licenses #
There are two ways to move licenses between accounts.
The Danger Zone™
Transfer #
A license can be immediately transferred between two contexts:
- Personal Account → Organization;
- Organization → Personal Account;
- Organization → Organization (if you are logged in as a member of both organizations);
At this time, the only way to transfer a license between personal accounts is by releasing and claiming it. If you find yourself wanting to do this, it's a sign that both accounts should be members of an organization.
In the Danger Zone, press Transfer License, then select the account or organization you want the license to end up in.
Transferring a license from a personal account to an organization.
If any plugin licenses are attached to a Craft license, you will be prompted to transfer those, as well.
Release #
Releasing a license detaches it from your account or organization.
At this point, anyone with the license key can claim it. Guard your key carefully, and only release a license if you are confident it will be claimed in a reasonable amount of time.
Let the new account owner know that the license has been released, and have them follow the claiming instructions, above!