---
title: 'Cartwright Plus — buying and activating'
description: 'How the Plus purchase works end-to-end — checkout, your access key, activation in your shop, billing portal, and key reissue via support.'
canonical: 'https://cartwright.app/docs/guides/plus-activation'
---

# Cartwright Plus — buying and activating (/docs/guides/plus-activation)



Cartwright Plus is a **membership, not a license**. The engine is MIT and
stays MIT — Plus adds priority support, upgrade guidance, the Pro agent
playbooks, and SEO/GEO Lab beta access on top. This page walks through the
whole loop: buy → key → activate → manage billing → reissue.

## 1. Buy [#1-buy]

The [pricing page](/pricing) checks out through a Stripe Payment Link
($49/mo, cancel anytime). There is no Cartwright account system: Stripe is
the system of record, and billing self-service happens through Stripe's
customer portal (email + one-time code login).

## 2. Your Plus access key [#2-your-plus-access-key]

Right after checkout you land on `/plus/success`, which shows your **Plus
access key** — a string that looks like this:

```text
cw_plus_v1.eyJ2IjoxLCJwbGFuIjoicGx1cyIs...  (one long line)
```

The same key arrives by email. Treat it like a password: it is your proof of
membership. Technically it is an Ed25519-signed statement of your
subscription — your self-hosted shop can check its authenticity fully
offline, and cartwright.app can additionally confirm the live subscription
status. It contains no name, no email, no payment data.

## 3. Activate [#3-activate]

Two ways, either works:

* **Admin UI** — open `/admin/plus` in your shop's admin and paste the key.
  (This page arrives with engine v0.40; until then use the env var below.)
* **Environment variable** — set `CARTWRIGHT_PLUS_KEY=<your key>` on your
  deployment (Vercel project settings, Docker env, `.env.local`) and
  redeploy.

## 4. Billing and cancellation [#4-billing-and-cancellation]

Invoices, card changes, and cancellation all live in the Stripe customer
portal — the link is on your success page and in your activation email.
Cancel anytime, effective at the end of the billing period.

## 5. Lost your key? [#5-lost-your-key]

Email [support](mailto:hello@cartwright.app) from the address you purchased with and
we reissue it — manually, usually same day. There is deliberately no
automated recovery form yet; at current volume a human is faster and safer.

## What happens if verification fails? [#what-happens-if-verification-fails]

Honest answer: very little, by design. Cartwright's enforcement is
trust-based — the key gates support, private artifacts, and future Plus
updates, and it **never shuts down your site**. Concretely:

* If cartwright.app is unreachable, your shop honors a previously verified
  key for seven days and shows "offline grace".
* If the subscription is canceled, you lose access to support, private
  downloads, and future Plus updates — nothing already in your repository is
  touched.
* Your storefront, checkout, and every line of MIT code you already have
  keep running, always. Cancellation never disables an existing site.

We would rather you stay for the support than because of a kill switch.

## Key rotation (operator note) [#key-rotation-operator-note]

Access keys carry a key id (`kid`) naming the keypair that signed them, and
verification selects the matching public key by that `kid`. When
cartwright.app rotates its signing keypair, the retired public key stays in
the verifier's keyring (`CARTWRIGHT_PLUS_PUBLIC_KEYS`, a JSON map of
`kid → public key`), so **keys issued before a rotation keep working** — you
never need to re-activate after a rotation on our side. Only if a key is
actually compromised would its `kid` be dropped, and affected members get a
fresh key by email.