We're Leaving Envato Market

Aikeedo has been available on Envato Market since late 2023. Over that period, we sold hundreds of licenses through the platform and more than $30,000 in platform fees as an exclusive author. We are proud of the product we built and grateful to every customer who purchased it.

We are no longer willing to operate as an exclusive Envato author. Effective immediately, Aikeedo will transition to non-exclusive status on Envato, pricing will be revised, and we will no longer publish software updates through the Envato platform. Going forward, Aikeedo is sold and supported exclusively through our website at aikeedo.com.

This statement explains what happened.

A Decade of Experience

This is not a new problem, and we are not a new voice on it. We have participated in Envato's marketplace across multiple author accounts since 2016. The chargeback exploit we describe below — fraudulent purchases completing before fraud detection, resulting in illegitimate downloads that end up distributed online — has existed throughout that entire period. Nearly a decade later, nothing has materially changed. When Envato told us they "continue to work on this," our ten years of firsthand platform experience tells a different story.

The Piracy Problem Envato Created

Shortly after listing on Envato, we began encountering nulled versions of our software circulating online — copies with license verification bypassed, distributed freely and, in some cases, sold by third parties for profit. The source of these copies was not difficult to identify.

Envato's purchase flow contains a vulnerability that allows bad actors to complete a purchase, receive a legitimate download, and then issue a chargeback through their payment provider. The download is already delivered. Envato processes the refund. The fraudster keeps the software. That software then ends up online.

The pattern is not ambiguous. Every single new item we have published on Envato has had its very first sale result in a chargeback — without exception. This is not random fraud. It is an organized, repeatable exploit of Envato's system. We have no equivalent experience on our own website, where the same software is sold through our own payment processing with near-zero chargebacks.

Over the course of our time on Envato, we filed dozens of formal takedown reports for nulled versions of our software. Numerous infringing URLs remain live as of this writing. Some are behind paywalls — meaning third parties are directly monetizing our software without our knowledge or consent, as a direct downstream result of Envato's payment failures.

Envato's Response

We raised these issues formally with Envato. Their response was not to acknowledge responsibility, propose a fix, or offer any mechanism for authors to contest fraudulent chargebacks. Instead, they normalized the problem — framing it as an unavoidable reality of selling online — and confirmed that exclusivity obligations would continue to be enforced regardless.

We want to be direct about what that response represents: a decade-old, documented, systemic failure met with justification instead of action. Envato chose to defend the status quo rather than address the damage their platform creates for the authors who fund it.

To be clear: we were not asking for a policy exception. Our expectation was straightforward — fix the piracy problem your platform created before enforcing exclusivity obligations on authors. That is not an unreasonable request. Envato chose not to engage with it.

What Exclusivity Actually Means

When we joined Envato as exclusive authors, we accepted significant restrictions on our own business — we could not sell our software anywhere else — in exchange for what the arrangement was supposed to provide: a protected, well-managed marketplace that actively brought customers to our product.

The exclusivity agreement restricted where we could sell our own software in exchange for a higher commission rate — a trade-off that only makes commercial sense if the platform actively protects and markets the software it exclusively hosts. Over time, that premise has eroded significantly:

• Meaningful marketing and traffic generation to the marketplace has declined substantially
• Authors have no tools to track conversions from their own promotional efforts
• Fraudulent purchases are processed, downloads delivered, and chargebacks absorbed by authors with no ability to contest
• The resulting piracy means the software is already being distributed beyond Envato's platform — rendering the exclusivity restriction meaningless in practice

The exclusive distribution of our software was already being breached at scale — not by us, but as a direct consequence of Envato's own platform failures. We paid $30K+ in fees for a protected marketplace. What we received was a payment gateway and a piracy crisis of Envato's own making.

We believe Envato should resolve these fundamental platform failures before holding authors accountable to exclusivity obligations it is itself failing to uphold.

Envato's exclusivity policy was built on a promise that no longer reflects the reality of the platform. Authors are held to strict distribution restrictions while receiving diminishing marketing reach, inadequate fraud protection, and no recourse against chargebacks. The platform collects its fees regardless. The authors absorb the damage.

We are far from the only author in this position. We are speaking openly because we believe the broader author community deserves an honest account of what operating on this platform looks like in 2026.

What This Means for Existing Customers

If you purchased Aikeedo through Envato, your existing license covers the software as it was delivered at the time of purchase. That obligation has been fully met, and your Envato license will remain valid. We will no longer be uploading software updates to Envato Market — updates continue to be released actively through our website. Customers who migrate to a direct license will have full access to all future releases. The item will remain listed on Envato to allow existing customers to access their purchases. This should not be interpreted as a commitment to maintain Envato as an active update channel — uploading updates to a platform that has caused significant unresolved harm to our business is not something we are able to justify.

We want to be transparent about how this situation reached this point. Before making this decision, we explicitly warned Envato that their inaction would result in customer dissatisfaction falling on their own support team. They did not respond to that concern. They chose to ignore it entirely. The consequences of that choice — for their customers — are Envato's responsibility, not ours. Any questions regarding your Envato purchase should be directed to Envato support.

For eligible Envato customers who wish to continue receiving updates, we have created a structured path to migrate to a direct license. Learn about our Migration Program →

The Aikeedo Team