Migrating Free → Pro

You've been running the free build and you're ready to upgrade. Here's the end-to-end path, including what changes, what doesn't, and how to roll back if something goes wrong.

Before You Start

Upgrading is non-destructive, but it's still a plugin replacement. Two sensible precautions:

• Take a backup of your database and the wp-content/plugins/boxcart/ directory. Any hosting-level backup is fine; you probably won't need it, but the 60 seconds it takes is cheap insurance.
• Do the upgrade on a quiet window. The plugin is unavailable for a few seconds while WordPress replaces the files. Customers can't add items to their basket or complete checkout during that window.

Upgrade Steps

1. Buy a licence

   Go to boxcart.dev/pricing and choose a plan. Checkout runs through Freemius. You'll receive an email receipt with a link to your Freemius customer account.

2. Download the Pro zip

   Sign in at customers.freemius.com/store/14420. Open the Licenses page and click the download icon next to your BoxCart Pro licence. You'll get a file like boxcart-premium-{version}.zip. The licence is pre-attached to this download.

3. Upload to WordPress

   In your WordPress admin:

   • Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
   • Choose the Pro zip and click Install Now
   • When prompted, click Replace current with uploaded

   WordPress swaps the plugin files while leaving everything else alone.

4. Verify

   Go to BoxCart → Account. You should see Version: your version number (Premium version) and your Plan name (not "FREE"). The "Activate License" and "Upgrade" sidebar items disappear once Pro is active.

   Do a quick smoke test: visit your Products page on the frontend, add an item to basket, go through to checkout, and place a test order as a logged-in customer. Pro features like table view, favourites, and the order-modification window won't appear until you switch them on in Settings.

What's Preserved

Everything outside the plugin code survives the upgrade:

• All products (including categories, images, SKUs, stock)
• All orders and the order status log
• All customer accounts and their order history
• Your single location and its opening hours / time slots
• All settings: General, Payments, Styling, Badges & Toasts, etc.
• Page assignments (Products, Basket, Checkout, Account)

What Changes

After the upgrade, Pro-only options become available inline in the existing screens. You don't need to reconfigure anything, but here's what's now unlocked:

• Locations: the one-location cap is removed. Add more locations from BoxCart → Locations. The existing location remains unchanged.
• Payments: Stripe becomes available under BoxCart → Settings → Payments. Enter your Stripe API keys to switch it on.
• Storefront: enable Table View and customer Favourites under BoxCart → Settings → Styling & Customisation.
• Orders: two-way messaging and the customer order-modification window are available under Settings → Customer Accounts and within each order.
• Location scheduling: holiday closures and per-date capacity overrides are available inside each location's settings page.

Multisite Networks

If you run WordPress Multisite, install the Pro zip via Network Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, then network-activate. Your site-count entitlement applies across the network. Each site keeps its own products, orders, locations and settings: the migration behaves like a single-site upgrade on every site at once.

Rolling Back

If something unexpected happens, you can roll back to Free in under a minute:

1. Deactivate BoxCart from Plugins (your data stays in the database).
2. Delete the BoxCart plugin. This only removes plugin files, not your data.
3. Re-install BoxCart Free from Plugins → Add New (search "BoxCart").
4. Activate. All your products, orders, and settings reappear.

Pro-only data that has no Free equivalent is retained but dormant: for example, any additional locations you added, or the holiday closures and capacity overrides you configured. They light back up if you reactivate Pro later.

Next Steps

• Activating Pro: deeper dive on licence state and troubleshooting.
• Locations & Collection: adding more pickup locations.
• Payments: switch on Stripe.
• Products: configuring multi-quantity products.