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Publishing, Licensing & Monetization

Once your SitePack theme is developed, styled, localized, and thoroughly verified, you are ready to distribute it. SitePack provides a robust infrastructure for developers, accommodating both custom client themes and public marketplace monetization.

This guide outlines the differences between private and public listings, details available monetization plans, covers platform transaction fees and payouts, and provides an essential pre-publishing technical checklist.

Public vs. Private Distribution Models​

When you deploy a theme release using the CLI or publish it via the SitePack Partner Dashboard, you can configure its access permissions based on your target audience:

1. Private Themes (Custom / Bespoke Builds)​

Private themes are restricted to specific merchant stores or designated partner organizations. They do not appear in the public catalog.

  • Ideal for: Specialized agencies building custom storefronts for unique clients, or internal developers designing a proprietary skin for their company’s multi-site brand portfolio.
  • Permissions: You govern installation rights using explicit white-listed Store IDs or Organization profiles inside your partner console.

2. Public Themes (SitePack Marketplace)​

Public themes are listed in the official SitePack Theme Marketplace.

  • Ideal for: Independent developers, template studios, and design agencies looking to build scalable, recurring software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue streams.
  • Permissions: Any merchant on the SitePack platform can discover, interactively preview, purchase, and install your theme directly on their store.

Monetization & Licensing Models​

SitePack integrates a flexible payment and licensing system. This allows you to select a monetization structure that fits your business goals.

:::info Euro-Based Billing Please note that all billing systems, merchant invoices, and developer revenue payouts are processed in Euros (€) to maintain international accounting standards. :::

You can license your theme using any of the following models:

1. Free Distribution​

  • How it works: Merchants install and use your theme on their storefronts without any charges or licensing fees.
  • Why use it: This is a highly effective marketing and branding strategy. It drives early adoption, builds brand trust, and channels merchants toward your premium themes, custom development services, or companion apps.

2. One-Time Purchase (Lifetime License)​

  • How it works: Merchants make a single, upfront payment to secure a permanent, lifetime license to run your theme on a specific store ID.
  • Why use it: Ideal for high-end, highly specialized themes designed for specific industries or containing advanced custom layout templates. It delivers fast, high-margin cash flow.

3. Recurring Subscriptions (Recurring SaaS Revenue)​

  • How it works: SitePack manages automatic, recurring billing cycles for you. Merchants pay an ongoing fee to keep the theme active:
    • Monthly Subscription: A fixed fee charged every month. Ideal for merchants who want a low entry barrier.
    • Yearly Subscription: A discounted or standard annual fee charged once per year. Excellent for securing longer customer lifetimes.
  • Why use it: This is the most powerful model for scaling your development studio. It establishes predictable, compounding Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) to support ongoing feature upgrades, bug fixes, and customer support.

Marketplace Listing Assets​

In the Partner Dashboard you upload the visual assets shown on your marketplace listing: the theme icon and up to four marketplace screenshots.

You write the listing itself (tagline, descriptions, key features and tags) in English only. When you save it, SitePack translates it automatically into the other marketplace languages (Dutch, German and Spanish), and the screenshots and website link are used for every language. Change the English text and the translations follow within a few minutes; merchants read your listing in their own language, and it also appears as a page of its own on sitepack.eu. SitePack writes the title and description search engines show for that page once from your listing, and translates them with it.

You also pick the theme's category from a fixed list: Fashion & lifestyle, Food & drinks, Creative, Business services, Hospitality, Sport & outdoor, Health & wellbeing, Beauty, Home & garden, Retail, Education or General. Merchants filter the marketplace by it, and it is shown in their language; there is no need to translate it.

Besides the descriptions, the listing has room for what that page shows, all optional and all translated the same way:

  • Key features: up to six, each a short title with one sentence that explains it.
  • How to set it up: an intro line and up to five steps.
  • Requirements: what a merchant needs before the theme works, for example an active module in other software.
  • Manual and support: a link to your documentation, and a web or email address for support.
  • Frequently asked questions: up to six questions with their answers.

Your pricing plans (up to five) are shown on the page as cards; their names and benefits are translated with the listing.

  • Page previews: the theme's page on sitepack.eu shows your demo site page by page, on desktop (1440 × 900) and on mobile (390 × 844). SitePack takes those screenshots itself from the listing's website address, so make that the public address of your demo: a webshop theme shows its homepage, a category and a product, a website theme its homepage, a content page and a blog post. When the demo is a SitePack site, the first product category that has products and the first product in it are used, and for a website theme the first published page and the newest blog post, so add the content you want to show off first. The Marketplace listing page in the Partner Dashboard shows the screenshots SitePack captured.
  • Uploaded screenshots: Screenshot 1 is the theme's preview image in the marketplace and in onboarding, and the uploads are shown until the page previews exist. Use 1440 × 900 desktop screenshots (16:10) of the homepage, a category page, a product page and one distinctive section, without a cookie banner.
  • Accepted formats: PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP and SVG.
  • Maximum size: 2 MB per file.
  • SVG handling: SVG uploads are automatically sanitized on our side. Any embedded scripts, inline event handlers and references to remote resources are stripped before the file is stored, so keep your SVG artwork purely presentational (paths, shapes, gradients) — anything script-like will simply be removed.

Marketplace Fees & Payouts​

When you sell a theme on our public marketplace, SitePack acts as the master merchant of record, handling:

  • Secure credit card and banking transactions.
  • Automated subscription invoicing, VAT/sales tax calculations, and compliance.
  • Licensing token validation and secure file delivery.

Fees and Financial Tracking​

You can track real-time conversion statistics, active subscription counts, monthly churn, and accumulated earnings directly inside your Partner Dashboard.

Requesting Payouts​

Accumulated earnings can be requested as direct bank transfers. Detailed terms regarding our payout schedule, minimum balance thresholds, and the standard platform marketplace commission fee are specified inside your partner registration agreement.

Pre-Publishing Technical Quality Checklist​

Before running sitepack theme:publish, run sitepack theme:verify in your theme directory. It checks the directory structure, theme.json, the required templates and template hooks, the translations and the Twig sandbox offline, and lists what to fix. Then review this checklist to ensure your theme passes SitePack's automated compilation checks and manual marketplace review:

  • Manifest Validation: Ensure your theme.json has a unique uuid and a matching author profile. You don't need to touch the version field yourself — SitePack automatically assigns and increments it (a plain integer, not Semantic Versioning) every time you run sitepack theme:publish; see the theme.json Reference.
  • Schema Accuracy: Verify that your root theme.json settings manifest is syntactically valid JSON, that every setting's key in the "settings" array is unique, and that all static CSS stylesheets inside /assets/css/ are fully compiled and minified locally.
  • Template Hooks Implemented: Double-check that all core template hooks (such as head_after, body_start, body_end, and cart/product page blocks) are correctly embedded with {% app_block %} tags to guarantee app compatibility.
  • Performance Audit: Verify that all images inside /assets/img are compressed (preferably using WebP) and that CSS/JS files load without blocking errors.
  • Localization Completeness: Ship at least en.json, nl.json, de.json and es.json in /translations (strictly lowercase), with matching nested key-value pairs for all user-facing copy.
  • Nothing left behind: Working on several themes? Run sitepack themes:diff in the folder that holds them to see which ones still have unpublished changes.
  • Staging Proof: Run sitepack theme:watch and click through your complete checkout, cart, category, and account layouts on your staging domain to confirm everything is responsive and bug-free.

Ready to Deploy?​

Once your checklist is complete, open your terminal inside your root theme directory and publish your creation to the cloud:

sitepack theme:publish