Upon entering a license key into its corresponding license key field in your WordPress site’s settings, you may be met with a notice that says you’re out of installs. The notice usually looks like this:
Why it happens
This notice usually only arises when the following two things are true:
- You have purchased a subscription type that supports a limited number of license key activations.
- You have already entered this license key on the maximum number of allowed sites.
☝️ When these conditions are met, you will get the “out of installs” notice on your Licenses page. This means that you have reached your subscription’s limit for license activations, and your license key cannot be installed on any additional sites.
For example, a Personal subscription for Events Calendar PRO will only allow activation on one site. If you try to add the Personal license key to a second or third site, you will get the “out of installs” notice.
How to fix It
There are two main ways to resolve this error message.
Option 1: Upgrade the subscription
First, you can upgrade your subscription to a higher tier that allows for more sites to use it. You can do this any time by heading to your account’s Manage Subscriptions page, clicking on the subscription you want to upgrade, then selecting the “Upgrade” options in the subscription menu.
Option 2: Disconnect the license key from other sites
An alternative to upgrading your license key is to remove support and updates from one of your sites to “make room” for another site. Please see this tutorial for step-by-step details for transferring licenses between sites.
👋 An active license key is required to get support on a website and enable automatic plugin updates.
Using licenses with development sites
Many developers will have a version of their site that they use to test changes before rolling them out to the “live” site. Not only is that a safe way to work, but it’s recommended by WordPress every time a new version is available.
It’s absolutely OK to use the same license on a development (or “staging”) site and your live site. In fact, we automatically exclude certain domain extensions when counting the number of sites registered to a license key. Please see this tutorial for more information.