Upset about required license to use software.

I too am super surprised and super disappointed with this new roadblock that makes install and setup and securing of WP take MUCH longer.
This leaves sites open to multiple attacks longer than they should be.
I’m looking at other security plugins and doing different settings on new setups now – and the new time sink is ridiculous!
Isn’t it against wp dot org’s rules to force a third party connection for plugin use?
Terrible experience, terrible change.
And yes I read the reasoning on the wordfence announcement post ( https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2022/11/wordfence-7-8-0-announcement/ ) – surely this could be done differently.

Hi @compassionateveg, I’m sorry to hear you feel that way.

To clarify our position, we’re not looking to limit our offering for free customers or provide a roadblock. Each new free site does now require its own API key upon installation, but you can get as many keys sent to the same email address as you’d like. There’s no limit and no plan to add any kind of limit to the number of free sites a single email address can configure.

For a situation such as yours with many projects to manage, your existing sites have a free API key that Wordfence automatically fetched when you installed it, which will remain valid. You could also set up Wordfence Central for free so you can manage security across all sites you’re responsible for in one dashboard.

Whilst general plugin installation figures are public, knowing the precise number of active sites with license keys will help us allocate our resources, send policy/ToS updates and prioritize development moving forward, which will benefit all free and premium customers.

Thanks,
Peter.