Let me start by relieving the stress that any lifetime ACF license holders might be feeling – these changes won’t affect you at all.

However, if you’re a newer customer of ACF who’s using the yearly license (which is the only option now, as ACF no longer offers a lifetime license), there’s been a change that you’ll want to pay attention to.

Going forward, ACF will start locking certain backend admin functionality if your ACF license expires, which I was first alerted to in this January tweet from Jeff Chandler.

More specifically, ACF will lock certain ACF Pro admin features if the license is not active.

This will not affect you or your users/clients adding data to custom fields in the WordPress editor.

If you’ve already added Pro custom fields to your site, you will still be able to add/edit field data in the WordPress editor screens, even without an active license.

This change will also not affect rendering Pro field data on the frontend – that will keep working even without an active license.

However, without an active license, you will not be able to create or edit ACF Pro fields, ACF blocks, and options pages.

Here’s a detailed post from ACF that explains what will and won’t work with an inactive license.

Obviously, the goal here is to encourage people to keep their licenses active, while also not breaking people’s sites if their licenses expire (which is especially important if you’re building client websites).

ACF is also not the first plugin to implement this type of licensing. I know that MemberPress does something similar where it locks the admin screens, while still allowing frontend membership functionality to continue like normal.

Interestingly, most people in the Twitter thread seem to be ok with the change, while most people in the Advanced WordPress Facebook group post that Jeff screenshotted seem to be against it.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of it, but I also understand why developers would want to go with this approach, as it makes it easier to lock in long-term recurring revenue. Still, I think it’s better to go with this approach from the beginning, as making this change after years of handling things differently is probably going to make some people upset.

Of course, because ACF is GPL-licensed, you’re free to go in and modify it to remove the code that locks the admin screens if you don’t like it. Or, if you’re interested in alternatives, Meta Box and Pods are both great options for working with custom fields and custom post types on WordPress.

Note – it appears that ACF might have made this change in late November 2023. However, this is the first time that most people are hearing about it and seeing the effects, which is why I’m reporting it now.