Do I need a paid plan to use add-ons?

No — but you do need a benecaster.com account with a connected license. The Launch plan is $0 and is all you need to purchase and activate add-ons. The WordPress.org free plugin without a benecaster.com account cannot use add-ons — add-on entitlements are tied to your account and validated through your site’s connection to benecaster.com.

Installing the add-on files alone isn’t enough. Each add-on verifies its entitlement against your site’s license on every validation cycle, for the specific show it is being asked to run on — not once for the whole site. If your license doesn’t include that add-on, the functionality won’t activate — regardless of whether the plugin files are present. This means copying an add-on from another site and installing it on yours won’t work without a valid entitlement on your own account. You’ll see this in your admin, too: an add-on plugin present without a valid entitlement is listed in its own Installed — no license section on Settings → Add-ons, rather than disappearing or looking active.

If you’re already using the free plugin from WordPress.org and want to start using add-ons, sign up for a free Launch account at benecaster.com and connect your site. A card is collected at signup to enable one-click add-on purchases from your account dashboard — no charge until you buy something.

On a site running more than one show, “active” is answered per show rather than per site. A show is covered when the licence it is connected to includes the add-on and you have left it switched on for that show. So an add-on can be genuinely active on one show and not another on the same installation — either because you switched it off there, or because that show is connected to a different licence.