Important
If you're looking for the instructions on how to activate a Freemius licence key on a brand new site, please refer to the following article: How to manage your licences for the Aelia products (Freemius Service).


This article is applicable to the following scenario:

  1. Your site had an active licence for an Aelia product, purchased prior to the 30th of September 2021.
  2. You are trying to activate a new licence on the site, purchased after the 30th of September 2021, and you're seeing an error code, such as 5004 or 5009, after entering your licence key.


The error is caused by the fact that, at the end of September 2021, we moved our products to the Freemius platform, which will handle the sales of our products and the related licences. The legacy licensing system and the Freemius system uses different licence numbers, and trying to activate a licence key from one system against the other can trigger an error.


If you bought a licence after the 30 September 2021, and you're seeing an error such as 5004 or 5009 while trying to activate it, the following article will guide you to complete the activation successfully.


1. How to determine if you got a licence from the Freemius service

If you're not sure if you purchased your licence through our previous system, or through Freemius, you can determine that as follows:

  • Licences generated by our previous system are a hexadecimal number, i.e. string of numbers and uppercase letters. Example: 944C1A2B3C4D5E6F1234567890ABCDEFB4CB8.
  • Licences generated by the Freemius platforms start with "sk_" and are followed by a list of numbers, letters and special characters. Example: sk_abcdefghij123456789abcdef.


2. What to do if you receive an error 5004, or 5009 while trying to activate a licence

If you try to enter a Freemius licence key in the field where you originally entered a licence number in hexadecimal format, that will return an error saying "Response code: 5004. License not found" or "5009 - License is not valid, expired, or not activated for this site" Example:

The error is returned by the "legacy" licensing system, which does not recognise the new licence key. The legacy licensing service and the Freemius service are independent and work in a different way, so the keys generated by one service can't be used with the other.


Tip - Errors related to licences won't affect the functionalities of the Aelia plugins

The discrepancy between the licensing systems, which causes the errors 5004 and 5009, don't affect the plugins installed on your site. We designed our solutions so that they keep working normally after a licence expires, and even if they are installed without a licence key. Due to that, even if you encounter some difficulties while activating or updating a licence, your site will keep running fine. You can update the plugin and the licence at your convenience, by following the instructions you find below.



3. How to migrate your site from the legacy system to Freemius

To be able to activate a new Freemius licence on an existing site, you will first have to install a plugin version that is linked to the new licensing system. This is a simple operation, which you will only have to do once for each plugin you need to upgrade.


The steps to perform the upgrade and activate the Freemius licence are the following:

  1. Download the plugin from the link you received with your last renewal. With every purchase, the Freemius system sends an email with a link to download the latest version of the product, which is linked to their licensing system. 
  2. Upload the new version to your site manually (it's a once-off operation), as follows:
    1. Go to WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New.
    2. Click on Upload file.
    3. Select the file you downloaded at step#1 and complete the upload.
    4. When prompted to overwrite the existing plugin, confirm the operation.
  3. After updating the plugin, you should see a prompt asking you to complete the product activation. Example:
    By following the instructions, you will be able to enter the new licence key, generated by the Freemius service.


    Tip
    If you don't see the prompt, you can also enter the key by going to WooCommerce > Settings > Aelia > Freemius Licenses (notice the different label, which contains "Freemius"). See example, below:

    To activate your licence, simply click on the activation link and follow the instructions on screen.


After activating the new licence key, you will start receiving updates from the Freemius service. You won't need to perform any further manual updates, nor renew your licence manually. The new system will take care of these aspects automatically. 


3.2 How to manage your Freemius licenses

For more information about managing your Freemius licences, please refer to the following article: How to manage your licences for the Aelia products (Freemius Service).


4. Contact us if you have any questions

Should you have any questions about the new licensing system, please feel free to contact us. We will be happy to assist you.


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