Digital download licences explained: personal, commercial, extended

A personal licence is for one buyer. A printed wall poster, a family photo book, a school newsletter or a hobby blog are typical uses, because the work earns nothing for the buyer.

It usually names one person, not a team. A freelancer who buys a font pack under a personal licence and sets a client’s logo has stepped outside it. Say this in plain words, not legal phrases.

Spell out what the buyer may not do. No sharing the file. No uploading it to a library. No claiming it as their own.

A commercial licence covers work done for money. A brand kit for a client, a printed menu for a café, a run of tote bags, an Instagram template used in paid posts. The licence names a cap, such as the number of printed copies or end products, and the cap belongs on the product page beside the tier name.

Give examples. Buyers read examples faster than clauses, and a named case such as a menu for one café is clearer than a phrase like limited commercial use.

Clients complicate things. Decide whether a designer may deliver the file to the client or must buy a licence in the client’s name.

An extended licence lifts the cap. It typically allows unlimited print runs and use inside products sold to many buyers, such as a template built into an app, and sometimes transfer to a client. The file itself cannot be resold.

Draw the line between using the file in a product and selling the file, because buyers blur the two more often than they admit. It is the most common dispute. Anyone who drops your icon set into a website theme and sells the theme needs extended, because the theme reaches many buyers and each one receives your icons. Selling the set as theirs breaks every tier.

Price tiers by the rights they carry, not by the size of the file, and say so on the product page beside the example uses.

Licence text changes over time. You rewrite a clause. You add a tier. You fix an unclear sentence. That buyer accepted the old words.

Store the licence text, its version and the tier with each order, along with the date and the buyer’s email. When a buyer writes in to ask what they may do with the file, you open the order, find the version they accepted and quote it. It helps in a chargeback too.

Put a short summary in the receipt email, attach a PDF copy of the full text and keep the same copy on the buyer’s account page for later. Buyers who lose the page can find it again.

An update inherits the licence of the original purchase. Holders of a personal licence for version one get version two under the same terms, even if version two adds many new layouts and a fresh font set. Improving the file does not raise the tier.

Bundles need a rule. If twelve templates are sold together under one tier, does each carry that tier, or can a buyer mix personal and commercial files inside one pack? Say yes or no on the bundle page. Mark any file with a stricter font.

Sell upgrades as the difference between tiers. Someone on personal who needs commercial upgrades by paying the difference, and the order record then shows both dates and both wordings. Review your own product list this week. Each page needs a tier and a cap.