Contents
Free vs Pro - Plugixa Car Wash
The free edition is a complete car wash system, not a trial. Customers book online, you run the day from the staff app, and there is no limit on locations, bays, vehicle types, packages or bookings. Nothing in it is time-limited or switched off.
Pro is the same plugin plus a pro/ directory. Whether a feature exists on
a site is decided by whether its code is there, never by a licence check.
Price
| Licence | Price |
|---|---|
| Pro, single site | €39 a year |
| Pro, unlimited sites | €59 a year |
A licence includes a year of updates and priority email support. Pro is sold through Freemius. There is no trial period.
Booking on your site
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Step-by-step booking form: vehicle, package, extras, date and time, details | yes | yes |
| A one page layout as an alternative to step by step | yes | yes |
| Shortcode and block | yes | yes |
| Several booking forms, each with its own locations, vehicle types, packages, fields, agreements and colour | yes | yes |
| Forms that sell packages, packages and add-ons, or individual services | yes | yes |
| Live summary with the price worked out on the server | yes | yes |
| Only free times offered, from real durations and free bays | yes | yes |
| Promo code field | yes | yes |
| Confirmation with add to calendar and cancel | yes | yes |
| Form drawn in a shadow root, untouched by the theme’s styles | yes | yes |
| Customer account with sign-in by emailed link: upcoming washes, history, cancelling, details | yes | yes |
| Customer’s address checked and a travel fee added by distance, for mobile washes | - | yes |
| Panels on the customer account for memberships, loyalty points, company accounts and a team on its way | - | yes |
Vehicles, catalogue and pricing
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle types with an icon or photo, an extra fee and a time multiplier | yes | yes |
| Services, packages and add-ons, with what each package includes and offers | yes | yes |
| Price and duration per vehicle type for any package or add-on, or not available for a vehicle | yes | yes |
| Tax per location, included in prices or added on top | yes | yes |
| Coupons: percentage or fixed, dates, usage limit, minimum total, packages | yes | yes |
| Memberships: monthly or yearly plans with a number of washes, or unlimited | - | yes |
| Gift cards with a balance that pays all or part of a wash | - | yes |
| Loyalty points for completed washes, turned into reward coupons | - | yes |
| Company accounts with a company rate, drivers and managers, a credit limit and monthly statements | - | yes |
Capacity and locations
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Any number of locations with opening hours, breaks and closures | yes | yes |
| Slot length, minimum notice, booking window and buffer per location | yes | yes |
| Bays and mobile teams, each limited to certain vehicle types if you like | yes | yes |
| Database lock when booking, so two customers never get the same bay | yes | yes |
| Online payments that hold the slot until paid, then release it | yes | yes |
| Customer cancellation with a cut-off | yes | yes |
| Taking online bookings at a mobile location, with the customer’s address | yes | yes |
Payments
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Pay at the wash | yes | yes |
| Bank transfer, with your own instructions | yes | yes |
| Part payments and an outstanding balance on every booking | yes | yes |
| Card payments through Stripe | - | yes |
| Membership subscriptions billed by Stripe | - | yes |
| Charging a wash to a company account | - | yes |
Staff app
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard with today’s figures, a takings chart and today’s queue | yes | yes |
| Bay schedule by day, week and month, with drag to move | yes | yes |
| Job board: upcoming, in the bay, done | yes | yes |
| Bookings list, booking at the desk, status history | yes | yes |
| Customers with their vehicles and visit history | yes | yes |
| CSV export of lists | yes | yes |
| Trash with restore | yes | yes |
| The app on a page of your site, without wp-admin | yes | yes |
| App manager to switch modules on and off | yes | yes |
| Dispatch board for mobile jobs: stages, route order, checklists, before and after photos | - | yes |
| Reports: revenue, collected, bay use with a heatmap, packages, add-ons and coupons, with CSV export | - | yes |
| Roles and permissions per screen | - | yes |
| Dark theme | - | yes |
| Installing the app on a phone or tablet home screen | - | yes |
Messages
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Emails to the customer when they book, and when a booking is confirmed, moved or cancelled | yes | yes |
| Email to you for every new online booking | yes | yes |
| Your business name and accent colour in emails | yes | yes |
| Reminder before the appointment, by email or text message through Twilio or Vonage | - | yes |
| Calendar feed: a private link that puts bookings in staff calendars | - | yes |
| Signed webhooks to other systems, with retries | - | yes |
For developers
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
REST API under plugixa-carwash/v1 |
yes | yes |
| Actions and filters | yes | yes |
| Seven capabilities to grant with a role editor | yes | yes |
| Translation template | yes | yes |
| REST routes for Stripe, memberships, gift cards, loyalty, company accounts, dispatch, reports, webhooks, the calendar feed and roles | - | yes |
The Pro pages are Stripe, Memberships, Gift cards, Loyalty, Company accounts, Mobile service, Dispatch, Reminders and SMS, Reports, Webhooks, Calendar feed and Appearance and app.
How the two editions differ
At start-up the plugin looks for feature modules in two places:
includes/Modules/<Name>/Module.php every edition
pro/includes/Modules/<Name>/Module.php Pro only
The free download does not contain the pro/ directory, nor the source of the
Pro admin screens, so the second search finds nothing and the Pro modules are
never created. That one fact has several visible consequences.
- There is no licence check on features. No code asks whether a licence is
valid before running a Pro feature. If
pro/is on disk, its features run. - Pro routes do not exist in free. A request to a Pro route, such as
/stripe/settings, on a free site returns WordPress’s ordinary 404 for an unknown route, not a “please upgrade” refusal. - Pro screens are not in the free admin app. The free app is built without them. There are no greyed-out menu entries and no locked pages.
- Pro tables are not created in free. They are created when the Pro modules first load.
- Pro engines are not attached. Memberships, gift cards, company rates and travel fees are listeners on the plugin’s own pricing filter. In free nothing is attached, so a booking costs its package and add-ons for the vehicle, plus tax, less any coupon.
Licensing, updates and the account pages are handled by the Freemius SDK. See Privacy and uninstall for what it sends and when.
Moving between editions
From free to Pro
Pro installs as a second copy of the plugin beside the free one. Activate the Pro copy from the Plugins screen and the free copy is deactivated for you. Both copies use the same tables and settings, so there is nothing to migrate. On its first load the Pro copy notices that the set of modules on disk has changed and creates the Pro tables by itself.
If both copies end up active, which can happen when the Pro copy is activated from WP-CLI or a hosting panel, only one runs and a notice says so: “Two copies of Plugixa Car Wash are active. Only one can run”. Deactivate the copy you no longer need. Your bookings and settings are shared and stay as they are.
Upgrading does not change who can do what. Pro’s permissions apply only once you save the first role in Permissions; until then everybody who could open the app keeps the access they had.
Deleting the copy you no longer need is safe. Deleting keeps the data by default, and even with the erase switch on, nothing is erased while another copy is installed. See Privacy and uninstall.
From Pro back to free
Nothing is deleted: the Pro tables and settings stay in the database. What changes:
| Pro data | What happens without Pro |
|---|---|
| Stripe | The keys stay stored, encrypted. Card payment disappears from the form, which offers the free methods you have switched on. A booking left waiting for a card payment is released when its time to pay runs out. Payments already recorded stay on their bookings. |
| Memberships | Kept, with their plans and washes used. Member washes are no longer free online. Subscriptions already running at Stripe keep charging, but the site no longer hears about them: stop them in the Stripe dashboard, or keep Pro until they end. |
| Gift cards | Kept, with their balances. Codes are no longer accepted on the form. What a card already paid stays recorded on its bookings. |
| Loyalty points | Kept and no longer earned. Reward codes already issued are ordinary coupons and keep working. |
| Company accounts | Kept, with their statements. Company rates no longer apply and washes can no longer be charged to a company. |
| Mobile service | The settings and the routing key stay stored. A location set to Mobile can still be booked online with an address, but any address is accepted, no travel fee is added and the drive is not blocked on the team’s calendar. |
| Dispatch | Job stages, checklists and photos are kept. The board is gone; the free job board still moves bookings to in the bay and done. |
| Reminders, text messages, calendar feed, webhooks | The settings stay stored. Nothing is sent, and the calendar feed link stops answering. |
| Permissions | The roles you drew are kept but no longer applied, so everybody who holds the plugin’s capabilities can act on everything again. WordPress roles created in Pro’s Roles screen, such as “Car Wash Manager”, stay in WordPress with their capabilities. |
| Dark theme, installable app | Each person’s theme choice is kept. The app shows in the light theme and can no longer be installed. |
| Reports | Nothing is lost: reports are worked out from your bookings each time. |
| Existing bookings | Unchanged, including totals that a membership, gift card, company rate or travel fee adjusted. |
Reinstall Pro and everything above comes back as it was.
What to do next
- Install and take a first booking: see Getting started.
- Read what the uninstaller removes in Privacy and uninstall.