Frequently Asked Questions

The purchase of any of our plugins is a one-time fee for one domain with limited access to free support and updates. The limit is given by the duration of your Support License, which defaults to 1 year after the last purchase date. However, renewing your Support License is not mandatory, unless you need to upgrade the plugin to a newer version or if you need to access our technical support.

There is an exception just for those who use both our accommodation plugins Vik Booking and Vik Channel Manager. If these two plugins are purchased with the same account, your Support License will have no expiration date, and you will have unlimited access to free updates and support. However, in order to establish the connection with the desired channels, there's a recurring cost that changes depending on the number of rooms, on the number and type of channels, and on the duration of the subscription. 
You can simulate the subscription costs at this link by adding the desired channels to the cart https://e4jconnect.com/subscribe-e4jconnect-service. This is the only recurring cost, and it's obviously meant only for those who are using both plugins Vik Booking and Vik Channel Manager.

The invoices will be automatic generated within the first week of the next month after the product purchase date. You're going to find your invoice in the order page of your purchase on our website.

It depends on which products you purchased. The purchase of some plugins will generate a License Key for you to upgrade them from the Free to the Pro version. Such plugins cannot be downloaded from this website, but they should rather be installed in their Free version from the WordPress Plugins Repository (Plugins section of your WordPress website). With the License Key you can then upgrade your plugin to its Pro version.

Instead, if you don't see any License Key for the plugin/theme you purchased, then it means that you will be able to download the Payment Plugin, the Theme, or Vik Channel Manager from your account on this website. In this case you should proceed with the manual installation of the plugin onto your WordPress website by uploading the downloaded zip file.

Please check your order details page from your account on this website to see the available options to download or upgrade your plugins/themes.

No, all the Payment Plugins that you see on our website were designed to work just with our "Vik" plugins. They would not support any other WordPress plugin, and the same thing goes for any other third party payment plugin: these would not work with any of the "Vik" plugins on this website.

Yes of course, you are free to use your preferred WordPress Theme with any of our plugins. As you may have noticed, we have designed and developed a few Themes specifically for our plugins. However, it is not mandatory to use one of our Themes because all our "Vik" plugins have their own CSS framework that will adjust to any Theme for WordPress.

The biggest issue or conflict you can have by using a third party Theme is just a few minor graphical glitches, like a color or some margin/padding that should be adjusted. In this case you can place your CSS customization inside the apposite CSS file made available by the "Vik" plugin to adjust or simply customize any kind of styling. Alternatively, you can place your CSS customization onto any custom CSS file that your Theme may be loading.

"e4jConnect" is a Channel Manager service for Hotels, B&Bs, Hostels, Vacation Rentals, Villas, Apartments or any other accommodation. This service is only available for those who are using our plugins Vik Booking (Pro) and Vik Channel Manager. If you are using other plugins, then you don't need the e4jConnect service.

Our company is a certified Channel Manager provider for accommodations, and the name we gave to our system is "e4jConnect". In order to use this service and to interface your website with various booking channels, it is necessary to make a subscription. For more details, please visit our dedicated website at https://e4jconnect.com.

No, this is not possible. Our plugins Vik Booking (the Booking Engine + PMS) and Vik Channel Manager were designed and certified to work together. They simply wouldn't support any third party Booking Engine or Channel Manager plugin for WordPress. This means that Vik Booking would not work with a different Channel Manager than ours, and that Vik Channel Manager could not be used with another WordPress plugin.

However, Vik Channel Manager supports some API calls when installed and configured on your website. This means that it would be possible to interface this plugin with a third party software, like an external PMS. Of course it would still not be possible to use Vik Channel Manager with a different WordPress Booking Engine plugin than Vik Booking, but thanks to the built-in APIs, some external software, even client software, could read data from your own website through the APIs of this plugin. More details (for developers) are available in this case at our dedicated website https://e4jconnect.com. You may need to be logged into your account in order to access the "Developers API" documentation on that website.

The costs are all visible from our dedicated website at https://e4jconnect.com. If you visit the page "Subscribe", you can simulate the final costs for your subscription by adding to the cart the desired channels.

Costs are based on the total number of rooms of your accommodation(s), on the number and type of channels (OTAs) you wish to connect, and on the duration of the subscription where the yearly subscription plans are the most convenient ones.

Unlike many other Channel Manager services, in our case the only recurring cost is the one to keep your Channel Manager subscription active for the desired channels. The booking engine plugin Vik Booking has got no recurring costs when you are also using Vik Channel Manager. Moreover, our plugins will install directly on your WordPress website, so this means that your customer will never leave your site to be redirected onto an external server to complete the booking process. This is a big difference and advantage.

You can simulate the final costs of the "e4jConnect" subscription by adding to the cart the desired channels from the link: https://e4jconnect.com/subscribe-e4jconnect-service

Please notice that you also need to have the plugins Vik Booking (Pro) and Vik Channel Manager installed on your website in order to use the full solution. This would be a one-time fee with unlimited access to free updates and support, while the only recurring cost is the one for the e4jConnect subscription.

It is not necessary to "cancel" your subscription for the e4jConnect service, it is sufficient to let it expire without renewing it. Every subscription is pre-paid, meaning that it will be active until the expiration date. To renew your subscription it's necessary to log into your account at https://e4jconnect.com at least one day before the expiration date, while if you are not willing to renew the subscription there is nothing to do unless you selected a "recurring payment" for your subscription during the first order.

Our company is unable to charge your credit card to renew your subscription, this should either be renewed manually by making a new order from your account, or automatically in case you selected a "Recurring payment" with your bank.

Once your subscription will expire, the entire connection with the Channel Manager will drop and will stop working. In this case we suggest to remove the plugin Vik Channel Manager from your website to avoid receiving several erroneous notifications via email or error messages. However, your website with the booking engine Vik Booking will keep working regularly, just the Channel Manager will stop working.

Our Booking Engine + Channel Manager solution was developed for single properties, or for multiple properties but with a unique manager. Our plugins are not suited to build portals for multiple vendors like Booking.com, Expedia, or any other similar OTA. This is because there are no "owners" of the properties you list.

If you are looking to build a multi-vendor and multi-property system, then you need a different kind of software, and you are not going to find a Channel Manager developed by the same company that has developed the Booking Engine. This is because OTAs like Booking.com or Expedia would never certify a software that can create their competitors.

Unfortunately not. Vik Booking is the right solution for any kind of accommodations, but the minimum booking period is of 1 night.

In order to start working with the channel manager you need to have an active subscription for the e4jConnect service. Without it, Vik Channel Manager cannot be set up or activated.

You can simulate the final costs of the subscription by adding to the cart the desired channels from the link: https://e4jconnect.com/subscribe-e4jconnect-service

You don’t need to download the plugin, you should just upgrade your Free version to the Pro version by entering the License Key that you obtained by purchasing the plugin. You can find it in your account on this website.

Please notice that the Free version of Vik Booking should be first installed and activated from your WordPress website, from the apposite Plugins section by looking for the plugin "Vik Booking". You will find a button to "Upgrade to Pro" that will open a page that requests your License Key.

Yes, you can. If you don’t need a channel manager, then you can just use Vik Booking alone and you will still be able to collect direct reservations from your own website. However, without the complementary Channel Manager service, no connection between your website and the channels will be available. This means that any new bookings received through the channels will have to be manually registered into your system in order to keep the availability up to date.

Yes of course. Vik Booking comes with a multi-language system built-in that lets you create translations for any contents you create in the primary language. For example, the names of the rooms, the descriptions, the texts, the rate plans etc.. can all be translated into other languages. Since the plugin follows the WP standards for anything concerning the language translations and files, you are free to use any multi-language plugin like WPML or Polylang, which are widely used by our clients to translate the rest of the website and publish a sort of language switcher widget.
Moreover, the plugins come with an official translation in English and Italian, but from our website you can download many other translations that were contributed by our clients:
https://vikwp.com/translations

So long as the Booking Engine and Channel Manager plugins will be installed on the same website, one setup package (plugins + channel manager subscription) will be sufficient. The Channel Manager supports multiple Hotel IDs/Accounts for the various channels like Booking.com, Expedia or others, so there are no problems for that. You could connect multiple accounts belonging to different properties onto one single website where the plugins Vik Booking and Vik Channel Manager are installed.

No, Vik Booking is a stand-alone solution that doesn't rely on any third-party plugins. Also, for PCI-DSS compliance reasons, Vik Booking is unable to share data with any external plugins. The same thing goes for the payment plugins, where Vik Booking requires its own plugins.

You can do that with the Pro version, but it depends on what type of portal you need.
If you are working on a project for a portal with independent employees, like a network of doctors, baby-sitters, hair stylists or any other professional, then VikAppointments is the right choice.
However, multiple vendors, like companies that should be able to manage several of their employees (but not all), are not supported. This means that employees can either be managed by the website administrators, or by themselves through their accounts. Not by some sort of groups or companies.

Well, VikAppointments only supports one-way syncing with any ICS Calendar, such as Google or Apple iCal. You can tell your calendar system to import the reservations from VikAppointments by using the apposite calendar subscription URL of the plugin.

However, VikAppointments will not sync with such external calendar URLs. For example, if you create an event from your Google Calendar, this won't be listed in VikAppointments.

Both the API Key and API Secret can be found within the Credentials Page of your Zoom App account.

If you haven't built yet a Zoom App, try to follow these steps:

1. Visit the Zoom Marketplace page
2. Click on the Develop button on the top-right side of the page and then select Build App option
3. Select JWT type and click on the Create button
4. After completing the App configuration, click the App Credentials section on the left sidebar
5. Copy the API credentials and paste them within the plugin configuration.

Not necessarily. All the features used by this plugin are available also for FREE plans.

You might consider to purchase a plan in case you need one of the following points:

• I want to host group meetings that last more than 40 minutes (3+ participants only)
• I need to host group meetings for more than 100 participants
• My website should communicate with Zoom more than 100 times per day (because of the REST API rate limit)

For further details on the features supported by your plan, you can take a look at pricing page on Zoom.

Since the 1.1 version of the plugin, it will be possible to configure a different Zoom account for each employee in the system. Under the details page of an employee you'll find the parameters needed to fill its private API login. This will be possible by turning on the Multi-Account parameter from the configuration of the plugin.

For versions lower than 1.1 or in case the Multi-Account feature is turned off, the plugin lets you configure only ONE account for Zoom, which should be considered as a master account and it shall belong to the owner of the website.

In case the employees of your website needed to use different Zoom accounts, the master account should have a pro/premium license, required to support multiple hosts. This way, the employees will also be able to host different meetings simultaneously.

It is not possible to assign the employees to their personal Zoom account (if they already own it), because this would mean configuring a JWT application for each employee/host in the system. Adding new users to a master account is like using different or multiple Zoom accounts, with the main difference that only one App/JWT is needed. In short, the steps to set up the plugin (see "Where do I find the API credentials?" FAQ) can only be followed once.

The Zoom plugin for VikAppointments lets you create new hosts (users) accounts from the management page of the employees. Alternatively, new hosts can still be added through your Zoom account, under the User Management section.

Not necessarily. Zoom for VikAppointments works fine also on the FREE version.

Obviously, certain features might be not available because they are part of the PRO version only, such as the management of the created meetings.

The plugin creates a meeting every time the status of an appointment becomes CONFIRMED.

The plugin deletes a meeting every time the status of an appointment becomes CANCELLED. The meeting is NOT removed on Zoom in case you delete an appointment without cancelling it first.

If your meeting does run over time, the session will not automatically stop. You can continue the meeting for as long as necessary.

The duration parameter is used to determine an "end time" to give participants an idea of how long the meeting will be, it's NOT a hard stop.

No, you can't. The link used to join a meeting should be accessible as close as possible to the check-in of the appointment. In this way, you will be able to prevent that the users can copy the link of the meeting before cancelling the reservation.

If you are not using cancellations, keep in mind that the join link might change over time. So, it is not suggested to include within the e-mail a link that might be no more valid.

Yes you can, but you need to purchase a license for each of them.

Anyhow, even if it is possible, that's not suggested at all, since you won't be able to rebrand the application by including your personal name.

No you can't. Once the trial expires the application will be locked, letting you to perform only one action: entering a license key.

Of course. The application takes advantage of the API Framework provided by VikRestaurants to download the orders, which is not included within the free version of the plugin.

You are still free to download and install the application to check whether it works with your personal printer.

Because our software hasn't been code signed. Code signing is a security technology that a software company can use to certify that an app was created by them.

On macOS the system can detect any change to the app, whether the change is introduced accidentally or by malicious code.

On Windows, the system assigns a trust level to the code signing certificate which, if not available, or if the trust level is low, will cause security dialogs to appear when users start using the application.

Since this is the first software ever released by our company on Windows, our trust level is extremely low. This means that Windows is not able to guarantee that the code is safe. Anyhow, we can confirm that the code of the program doesn't run any malicious code and it is safe from XSS attacks. You can sleep peacefully.

So, when Windows Defender SmartScreen appears, just click on More Info and then hit Run Anyway button.

On macOS you shouldn't face a similar warning because we are already enrolled in the Apple Developers Program.

The application has a size around 80 MB on Windows and 200 MB on macOS.

The application has been developed by using an hybrid compiler called Electron, which let us create a cross-platform application by using the same code. There's an high discrepancy because the dependencies for macOS are a lot heavier than the ones needed to Windows.

This is the price to pay for a cross-platform application.