Free vs Pro
The free plugin runs the whole recovery loop on its own. Pro adds six features on top, and you can add or remove it without losing anything.
ShapedRecover comes as two plugins. Shaped Recover is free, from WordPress.org, and holds the whole engine and all your data. Shaped Recover Pro is a paid add-on that sits on top of it and unlocks a few extras. You never swap one for the other: with Pro, both plugins stay installed and active.
This page lists exactly what each one does, how Pro features look before you have them, and what the license changes.
What the free plugin does
Everything you need to recover carts, start to finish, with no trial period:
| Area | What you get | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Capture | Emails and carts saved at checkout, on block and classic checkouts, for guests and logged-in customers. Role exclusions and Stop Tracking keep your own carts out. | Email Capture |
| Consent and privacy | The consent checkbox, an unsubscribe link in every email, WordPress's export and erase tools, and automatic data retention. | Consent Checkbox |
| Abandoned carts | The carts table with statuses, search and filters, the cart drawer with each cart's timeline, Send Now, pause, and bulk actions. | Carts Table |
| Campaigns | As many recovery emails as you like, three starter templates, the email editor with merge tags, product tables, triggers and timing, and test sends. | Campaign List |
| Coupons | A personal, single-use code for each shopper (or one of your existing coupons), applied through the link when the campaign's Auto Apply is on, with six styles and automatic cleanup. | Coupons in Emails |
| Recovery link | One click rebuilds the cart and fills in the checkout. | Recovery Link |
| Dashboard and reports | Eight KPIs, the chart, Recent Activity, and Recovered Sales with an audit of every credited sale. | Dashboard Overview |
What Pro adds
Pro adds six features. Each is shown in the free plugin too, locked, so you can see what it does before you decide.
| Pro feature | What it does | What the free plugin shows |
|---|---|---|
| License | Activates Pro on your site, and brings updates and support. | Nothing. There's no License section, link or notice in the free plugin. |
| Admin Notifications | A digest email of recovered sales and abandoned carts, for you and your staff, on a schedule you pick. | The Notifications section with faded sample values and an Unlock Pro link. No digest is sent. |
| Never Track | A list of email addresses that are never tracked, logged in or not. | Never Track These Addresses, read-only with a Pro badge. No address is blocked. |
| Coupon restrictions | Allow Coupons to Combine and Exclude Sale Items for generated coupons. | Both switches locked with a Pro badge. Generated coupons can't be combined with other coupons, and do apply to sale items. |
| Exclude Products | Products that never get a campaign's generated discount. | The switch locked with a Pro badge. Generated coupons exclude nothing. |
| Product Report | A Dashboard card with your five most abandoned products, and how often each was recovered. | The card with blurred sample rows and an Unlock Pro link. Your product data isn't even sent to the browser. |
Everything else in these docs is free.
How locked features look
In the free plugin, Pro features are visible but can't be used:
- A locked field or switch shows a crown Pro badge and can't be changed. It shows the default, or sample content, never anything you saved earlier with Pro.
- Unlock Pro opens the ShapedRecover pricing page in a new tab. Nothing on your screen changes.
- With Pro installed but its license not active, the same link reads Activate License and opens Settings → License. A shop manager, who can't change the license, sees Needs an active license instead.
Locked is all it is. The free plugin has no trial that runs out, never locks a feature it once gave you, and doesn't put upgrade notices across your admin. See Pro settings in the free plugin.
The license
Pro's features depend on its license, not just on the plugin being installed. A license is in one of three states:
| State | When | Pro features | Updates and support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active | The license is valid. | Work | Yes |
| Expired | The license has run out. | Keep working | Stop until you renew |
| Inactive | No license was ever activated, it was deactivated, or it was disabled or isn't valid for this site. | Locked, exactly as in the free plugin | No |
So an expired license never switches anything off. It only stops new Pro versions and support. An inactive one is different: Pro is installed, but its features behave as if it weren't, until you activate a license. License has the full reference, including every activation error.
Pro features still locked after installing Pro?
Check Settings → License. Installing Pro isn't enough on its own; the license has to be activated. See Troubleshooting.
Upgrading from Free to Pro
There's nothing to migrate. Keep the free plugin active, install Pro alongside it, and activate your license. Your carts, campaigns, reports and settings stay exactly as they were, and the six Pro features unlock in place. Installation & License walks through it.
Pro is built against a minimum version of the free plugin. If yours is older, Pro waits, with a notice naming both versions, until you update the free plugin.
Going back to Free
Deactivating Pro, or letting its license become inactive, never deletes anything:
- Recovery keeps running. Capture, campaigns, sending and reports are all free, so they carry on as before.
- Pro settings are kept. Your Never Track list, coupon restrictions, Exclude Products lists and notification settings stay stored. They just stop taking effect: listed addresses are tracked again, new coupons go back to the free behaviour, and no digest is sent.
- They come back unchanged. Reactivate Pro with an active or expired license, and every Pro setting applies again with nothing to re-enter.
Saving free settings while Pro is off doesn't touch the Pro values either. Even deleting Pro removes only its license; see Uninstalling & Data.
What's next
More features are planned for both the free plugin and Pro. These docs cover what's available today, and grow as new features ship.
Where to go next
- Installation & License: install Pro and activate your license.
- License: the three states and every activation error.
- Settings Overview: how Pro settings look while locked.