As of Elementor Pro v2.9, Elementor Pro widgets are not draggable unless your Elementor license has been activated.
Protecting against piracy without bothering honest users
Like many WordPress companies, Elementor suffers from piracy. Unlicensed use of Elementor Pro not only affects Elementor, but our users as well. It has an impact on support, on developing new features and on other services we provide.
As part of our ongoing fight against piracy, In Pro v2.9 we’ve disabled the option to drag and drop widgets to the page until the license has been activated, which only affects users who have never activated their license on their site. We hope this measure will help us reduce the abuse of Elementor Pro.
If you already activated your license on current sites, you will notice no difference and will be able to edit as usual. You can continue to work normally, as long as you’ve activated Elementor Pro at some point in the past, and it has not been deactivated prior to expiring. So if you’ve updated the plugin even once, everything will be as usual.
We strongly suggest activating your license across all your sites, and keeping websites up to date with new releases. Not just for the amazing new features we keep adding, but also for your own security. The entire activation process takes no more than a few seconds.
FAQ
Q: I’m an agency. Will this affect my clients?
A: No. As long as you made sure to activate each new site you created, your client sites won’t be affected.
Q: What if I have Elementor Pro installed on 100 sites for different clients, but never activated?
A: If you are a pro user, you need to activate your license on each website, to make sure you continue to get updates and to use Pro widgets.
Q: How do I handle development and testing?
A: As mentioned in this guide, when building a website using a local machine, Elementor Pro doesn’t register as an install, meaning you can install Elementor Pro on your local machine or staging site and on your online website at the same time. This works on .local, .dev, and .test, as well as many other staging domains . In this way, you can run staging and development without having to activate a license.
Q: What happens if my subscription expires?
A: If you have an expired subscription, you won’t be able to get support, templates, or updates, but you will still be able to drag in Pro widgets as long as the site is activated and was not deactivated prior to the subscription expiring. However, even though you will be able to drag in the widgets, we strongly recommend you renew your license, in order to get the latest version, security updates, support, amazing templates and more.
Q: Can I edit Pro widgets that are already in place on a page if the site does not an activated license?
A: Yes, if the Pro widget is already in place, and doesn’t need to be dragged, you will still be able to edit the widget. However, you will not be able to use any dynamic feature of that widget unless the license is active.