PipKey

PipKey documentation

Everything you need to understand and integrate PipKey.

PipKey is PluginPip Ltd's API-first licensing, entitlement, activation and secure product-delivery platform. This documentation separates the live PipKey Server 1.0 capabilities from the wider 1.1 commercial platform currently in development.

Server 1.0 liveCommercial platform 1.1 in development
Start here if you are integrating a product.

Read Getting started, then Core concepts, then API & authentication. You should understand the authority boundary before writing product-side licensing logic.

Getting started

Understand PipKey, choose an integration model and prepare your first product for licensing.

Core concepts

Products, plans, customers, licences, activations, entitlements, releases and service credentials explained.

API & authentication

How protected API access, machine credentials, scopes, environments, retries and errors work.

Licensing lifecycle

Issuance, activation, validation, offline operation, deactivation, suspension, expiry and revocation.

Integrations

Patterns for WordPress, desktop apps, services, commerce providers and PluginPip products.

Troubleshooting

Diagnose validation failures, activation limits, authentication issues, webhook problems and update delivery.

What is live in PipKey Server 1.0?

  • Product, plan, customer and licence lifecycle management.
  • Online activation, validation and deactivation with activation-limit enforcement.
  • Suspension, expiry and revocation controls.
  • Time-bounded Ed25519-signed offline licence assertions.
  • Machine-to-machine API credentials with live/test separation, audience and scopes.
  • Signed release metadata, software-update checks, download grants and release eligibility.
  • Tamper-evident audit evidence, idempotent mutations and transactional outbox behaviour where implemented.

What is being added in 1.1?

The commercial-platform programme is adding organisation/team accounts, plan versioning, usage meters and credits, broader customer self-service, operator administration and fully reviewed commerce-to-licence automation. These capabilities remain development features until an accepted release explicitly marks them complete.

Need help rather than developer documentation?

Use the PipKey Help Centre for common questions, customer-facing explanations and problem diagnosis, or contact PluginPip Ltd for onboarding and integration support.