Canvas Docs

License Problems

Everything license-related shows on one screen, and every symptom maps to the status badge it displays. Read this page with that screen open: identify the status, then apply its section.

Starting screenCanvasLicense.

What Each Status Means

The License screen shows one of five statuses, and each has a defined effect:

  • Active. Licensed. Everything works and nothing needs doing.
  • Active (grace period). The license server could not be reached, or a renewal is in flight, so the site is operating within a grace period. Everything keeps working exactly as Active until the date the screen shows, which is Canvas failing safe rather than failing your site. Press Check now to re-verify once the connection or renewal has settled.
  • Expired. The license was valid and has lapsed. The site keeps rendering, so nothing a visitor sees breaks, but editing premium blocks, updates and support are paused until you renew. A License Expired notice sits above the card with a Renew License button.
  • Not activated. No license has been activated here. Premium features do not render on the front end, and where a premium block would appear, an administrator sees a notice in its place while other visitors see nothing. The card carries a No license yet panel with a Get a License button.
  • Invalid. A key was entered and the server refused it. Re-check the key for typing errors, and confirm it has activations left on your plan. The card carries a Find your license panel with a Go to My Account button, because a refused key is more often the wrong key than a missing purchase.

Each of those three buttons opens the billing area of your Canvas account at https://dashboard.canvaswp.com/billing, in a new tab, and asks you to sign in. A site that fills in Purchase / Upgrade URL, in the General tab of Canvas > Theme Options, sends every one of these buttons to that address instead, which is how an agency points its clients at its own store.

How To Activate

Enter the key in License key and press Activate License. On success the screen fills with the license details: the plan, the licensed domain, the expiry, and the activation identifiers.

The Site Moved To A New Domain

When the license was activated on one address and the site now runs on another, the screen says so directly, naming both addresses. Press Migrate License and confirm, which re-binds the activation to the current domain without consuming another activation.

Pitfalls

The site is fine but the status says grace. Grace is informational, not an outage: it means the last check could not complete. It resolves itself on a later check, or immediately via Check now.

Premium blocks stopped rendering after a domain or environment change. The activation is bound to a domain. Check the Licensed domain row against the Site address row on the screen, and migrate if they differ. Local and development environments are recognised and shown as such on the screen, and they do not consume activations.

Deactivate was pressed by mistake. Deactivation frees the activation. Re-activate with the same key, which uses a fresh activation slot.

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