html2wp / Licences
Free without a key. A licence for what you are paid for.
html2wp is source-available, not open source. The free tier is open to everyone and needs no key at all. A licence, which is what commercial work needs, is in closed beta: issued by email on request to agencies and to freelancers who have a profile and references to point at. This page is what a licence carries and what the terms behind it say.
Free now, licences by request
The free tier is public. Install the plugin and convert: three conversions of up to five pages each, and five re-runs to share between them, the blog becomes real posts, and Visual Edit Lite comes with it. No key, no sign-up, no card. Both counts are per IP address, so an office on one shared IP has a single free allowance between everyone, not one each. It is for evaluation, personal sites and other non-commercial work.
Licences are in closed beta, open to agencies and freelancers, by request. Write and say who you are and what you would convert first, and a licence key comes back by email. There is no self-serve checkout and no queue to sit in: a person reads it and answers.
A beta key carries five conversions at no cost and a Visual Edit Pro licence free for 30 days, and it covers client work, which is the point of handing it to people who do that work rather than to anyone who asks.
Freelancers, on the same terms
A one-person studio is as welcome as a twenty-person one. What is asked for instead of a company is something to look at: a profile with references, on Upwork or another platform where your work and your reviews are public, or your own site if that is where the portfolio lives. It is not a credential check, it is the same question we ask an agency: what does the work you would put through this look like.
How many re-runs, exactly
Unlimited, with a key. A re-run is the same built site uploaded again, matched by digest rather than by promise, so correcting which page is which and asking again is a re-run rather than a new conversion, and it does not spend one of your five. Getting the page roles wrong is meant to be the cheapest mistake in the pipeline.
It runs one conversion at a time per machine, which is physics rather than billing: a conversion holds a browser, a WordPress and a workspace.
The licence never buys fidelity
Every conversion produces the same theme. A key buys page headroom, re-runs, WooCommerce and the editor, never the quality of what comes back.
What a key carries
| A beta licence key | What it carries |
|---|---|
| Conversions | 5, free |
| Visual Edit Pro | free for 30 days |
| Commercial use, client work | yes, that is what the key is for |
| Pages per conversion | 20, or uncapped on an agency pool licence |
| Re-runs | unlimited |
| Blog to WordPress Posts | included |
| Shop to WooCommerce | included |
| The theme itself | identical to what any conversion produces |
Converting a shop to WooCommerce is a licensed stage and there is no unlicensed taste of it: without a key in place, a conversion whose manifest declares a shop is refused outright rather than half-done. With a beta key that stage is simply part of the run.
Setting the key up is one command, once per machine, and it belongs before you start rather than halfway through.
What commercial use means
Using html2wp in the course of a business, a trade, a profession or any other undertaking, or for money or other commercial advantage. Converting a website for a client, for an employer, or for a business you own or operate is commercial use, whether or not you invoice the conversion itself as a separate line.
With a key that is fully permitted: charge what you like, deliver what you like, run an agency on it. The agency licences exist for exactly that.
Non-profits, schools and open source
Say what you are doing and a complimentary licence is usually available. Ask rather than assume: a non-profit can still carry on economic activity, so the definition can catch one, and the answer is a decision rather than a reading of it.
Your output is yours, unconditionally
A theme html2wp produces from your design carries no obligation to us. Use it, sell it, hand it to a client, publish it. That does not depend on holding a key and it survives everything else in the licence.
What cannot be handed to you is what was never ours: a licensed font, a stock photo or a third-party library that came in with your input keeps its own terms on the way out.
What you may not do
Republish the skill, or put the conversion technology into someone else's hands: a service, SaaS, API, plugin, skill, CLI or platform built out of it, by hand or by pointing an AI at it.
The line is between the work and the tool. Handing a client the finished theme is yes. Handing them something that does the converting is no.
Reading and running html2wp with an AI assistant is not the restricted case: that is what it is written for.
Getting a key
What each plan costs is on the pricing page. This section is how a key reaches you.
Use the request form. It asks for three things and only two of them are required: a website or profile we can look at, an address to send the key to, and, if you want to say, what you would convert first. That first field is the one we cannot do without, because it is how we see the work a conversion would sit next to. For an agency it is usually the studio site; for a freelancer, an Upwork profile or the equivalent elsewhere does the same job. A key comes back by email, and a person reads every request.
Licence keys are issued per licensee, and the scope, meaning the term and how many conversions, sites or people it covers, is whatever you were given when it was issued. Agency licences carry a pool of conversions rather than the one-site-per-30-days rhythm.
A Visual Edit Pro key is also a conversion key. If you already hold one for the editor, the converter accepts it and you can run conversions on it without a separate html2wp key.
If you want to do something the licence does not cover, ask. Non-profits, schools and open source projects included.