Working Without a License
Folders are free and unlimited without a licence. What an unlicensed site can do, what waits for Pro, and the three-day licence-server grace period.
On this page
An unlicensed MediaFlow is not read-only. Manual folders — creating them, renaming, nesting, reordering, deleting, and filing media into them — work in full, with no licence and no limit on how many you make.
What a licence adds is everything built on the content scan: the automatic folders, the “where is this file used” answers, the no-known-usage list, duplicate detection and the importers.
What is free
- Creating, renaming, moving, reordering, nesting and deleting folders.
- Filing media into folders — by drag and drop, the Move to folder bulk action, the list-view filter, the keyboard controls, and the folder picker in the media modal.
- All media and Unorganized views, and filtering the library by folder.
- The first-run scan that reports what MediaFlow can see. It writes nothing, which is exactly why it does not need a licence.
What needs a licence
| Feature | Why it is Pro |
|---|---|
| Automatic folders, and the refresh that maintains them | Built on the content scan |
| Used on / No known usage | Built on the content scan |
| Duplicate detection | Hashing pass over the library |
| Importing from another plugin | Reads another plugin’s tables |
| Downloading a folder as a ZIP | — |
| Folder colours and icons | — |
| Per-role folder visibility | — |
The reasoning is stated in the plugin itself: the resolver is the part with a permanent maintenance cost, because page builders keep changing how they store things and a resolver nobody funds quietly starts lying about what a file is used for.
Asking for one of these without a licence returns a refusal that names the feature, rather than a generic “you need Pro” — for example “Automatic folders are part of MediaFlow Pro. Your own folders keep working.”
When a licence lapses
Nothing is deleted, hidden or downgraded.
- Every folder stays, with its media still in it.
- The library still filters by folder.
- You can still create and edit folders — those are free.
- Automatic folders stay exactly where they are.
Renewing restores the Pro features immediately, with no rebuild.
When the licence server is unreachable
The site keeps its Pro features for three days.
A failure to reach the server moves the site to an unverified status and
opens a grace window. That window:
- is never extended by further failures, so a permanently unreachable server does not become an unlimited licence;
- is never granted to a site that was not already licensed;
- ends exactly when it says it does.
The License tab shows the transport error and whether a grace window is running.
A refusal is not an outage
Only a failure to reach the server grants a grace period.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use MediaFlow for free?
Yes. Manual folders are free and unlimited. See Free vs Pro for the full split.
My licence expired. Did I lose my folders?
No. Every folder stays, and you can still create and edit them. What stops is the content-scan features.
Will an outage at the licence server switch my Pro features off?
Not for three days, and only if the server genuinely cannot be reached.
I renewed. Do I need to rebuild anything?
No. Everything resumes immediately with your structure intact.
Can a developer change what counts as free?
The mediaflow_free_features filter decides the list, and folders cannot be
removed from it — a build whose free tier cannot make a folder is not a free
tier. See Filters and hooks.
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