Common Issues

No license is created after a test purchase#

Symptom: Payment succeeds in Paddle but the Licenses tab stays empty and the buyer sees “Preparing Your License” forever.

Cause: The webhook never reached your site, or its signature failed.

1. Open License Cart → Logs. If there are no rows at all, Paddle is not sending to your site: check the destination URL in Paddle → Developer Tools → Notifications matches the Webhook URL in Settings, and that transaction.completed is selected.
2. If rows show failed with “Webhook signature verification failed.”, the Webhook Secret is wrong. Open the notification in Paddle, copy its Secret key (not the ntfset_… ID) and paste it into the matching environment’s secret field.
3. If rows show skipped with “Transaction status ‘billed’ is not completed”, wait: Paddle sends another event when the payment settles.
4. If rows show success with “0 license(s) created”, the purchased price ID is not linked to a pricing package. Create the package from License Cart so it has a paddle_price_id, or check that you bought the right pri_….

Webhook returns HTTP 403 or 429 in Paddle’s delivery log#

Cause: Signature verification failed (403) and, after 20 failures in 10 minutes, the sender was rate-limited (429).

1. Fix the secret as above.
2. Wait 10 minutes for the limit to reset, then use Retry in Paddle’s notification log.

The buy button says “Payment system is loading”#

Cause: Paddle.js is not loaded because no Client-side Token is saved for the active environment, or a caching/optimisation plugin stripped the script.

1. In Settings confirm the token for the active environment is filled in and saved.
2. Exclude cdn.paddle.com/paddle/v2/paddle.js from script delay or minification in your optimisation plugin.

Creating a product or package fails with “Paddle Error”#

Cause: The API key for the active environment is missing or wrong, or belongs to the other environment.

1. Check Active Environment and the matching API Key in Settings.
2. Sandbox keys start with pdl_sdbx_apikey_, live keys with pdl_live_apikey_.

Release ZIPs are downloadable without a license (nginx)#

Symptom: Opening https://your-site.com/wp-content/uploads/lc-releases/<file>.zip in a browser downloads the file.

Cause: nginx ignores the .htaccess License Cart writes into the folder.

1. Add this to your server block and reload nginx:

location ^~ /wp-content/uploads/lc-releases/ {
    deny all;
    return 403;
}

1. Confirm the direct URL now returns 403 while Download Latest Version in the portal still works (it uses /wp-json/license-cart/v1/update/download).

Customers get “Activate this license on the current domain before downloading updates”#

Cause: The customer’s plugin calls update/check from a domain that is not in the key’s activations, usually after a site move or a change from http to https with a non-standard port.

1. Ask the customer to deactivate and re-activate the key from their plugin’s License screen.
2. If the activation limit is reached, create a replacement key or raise the limit by issuing a new manual license.

Magic login link says it has expired#

Cause: Links are single-use and valid for 30 minutes. Email scanners that pre-fetch links can consume them.

1. Ask the customer to request a new link from the portal login form and open it within 30 minutes.
2. Alternatively set a password for their WordPress user and let them log in at /wp-login.php; the portal works with any logged-in session.

Customers land in wp-admin instead of the portal#

Cause: A plugin or theme redirects logins, or a filter disabled the License Cart redirect.

1. Check for license_cart_redirect_customers_from_admin in your theme or must-use plugins.
2. Point your login redirect plugin at the portal URL (/my-licenses/).

“Restore failed” or “No Cloudflare backups found”#

1. In Settings click Save & Test R2 Connection and read the result. The token needs Object Read & Write on the bucket.
2. Confirm R2 Account ID is the 32-character account ID, not the bucket’s public hostname.