TrustLens Free vs Pro: What Auto-Blocks, What Doesn’t, and When to Upgrade

The Single Most Important Thing to Understand About TrustLens Free

TrustLens Free does not auto-block customers. Not on a low trust score. Not when a customer enters a critical risk segment. Not after a chargeback. You review the data, you decide what to do, and you block manually if you choose to.

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of TrustLens, and it is worth being direct about it: the free version is a visibility and decision-support tool. It is not an enforcement engine. The enforcement layer — automatic responses, trigger-based rules, auto-block after lost disputes — that is Pro.

This design is intentional, not a limitation. Automated blocking on behavioral signals carries real risk of false positives. A customer who moves into the Critical segment because of a run of legitimate refunds on defective products should not get silently blocked. The free version ensures you make every enforcement decision with eyes open. Pro gives you the option to automate those decisions once you have enough context to trust the rules you are setting.

Everything below flows from that core distinction. Free tells you what is happening. Pro tells TrustLens what to do about it.

What Free Actually Includes

TrustLens Free is the complete plugin minus the automation and advanced reporting layers. The full feature list from the WordPress.org listing describes the free version as having “no trial limits, no disabled scoring, no locked modules” — and the code backs that up. Here is what that means in practice.

All eight detection modules

Every detection module TrustLens ships runs in the free version. The eight modules are: Return Abuse Detection, Order Pattern Analysis, Coupon Abuse Detection, Category-Aware Risk Scoring, Linked Accounts Detection, Shipping Address Anomalies, Chargeback Tracking, and Card-Testing Defense. All eight are enabled by default on a fresh install.

The important nuance here is the Chargebacks module. Chargeback tracking — ingesting disputes from Stripe and WooPayments, maintaining per-customer dispute counters, feeding dispute history into trust scores — is free. What is Pro is the Advanced Chargeback Monitor page (per-brand breakdown, 12-month trend, trailing-30-day window, daily email alerts) and the auto-block-after-N-lost-disputes setting. The data capture and the score signals are free; the advanced analytics and the automated response are Pro.

The full trust scoring engine

The 0–100 trust score, the six customer segments (VIP, Trusted, Normal, Caution, Risk, Critical), the account-age loyalty bonus, the minimum-orders threshold, and the per-signal breakdown visible on every customer profile — all of these are free. Pro does not add scoring features; it adds the ability to act on scores automatically.

The Command Center dashboard

The full Command Center dashboard — health score, KPI cards, trust score trends, segment distribution, refund activity, hourly activity, category return rates, revenue protection overview, high-risk attention list — is free. The command center dashboard guide covers what each section shows and how to use it as part of a weekly review routine.

Customer management

The customer list, individual customer profiles, event timelines, the trust badge column on the WooCommerce orders list, the order-screen metabox, manual blocking and allowlisting, bulk operations (block, unblock, allowlist, recalculate, delete), and the Historical Sync — all free. The REST API with its 8 endpoints is also free (more on that below).

Core notifications

Three core email notifications are included in Free: a blocked-checkout alert (fires when a blocked customer tries to complete a purchase), a weekly protection report, and a welcome summary sent after activation. Pro adds 10 additional notification types including High-Risk Order Alert, Segment Change Alert, Daily Digest, Velocity Alert, and a Monthly Revenue Protection Report.

Trust Scoring: Same Engine in Both Tiers

TrustLens Pro does not give customers better or more accurate scores than TrustLens Free. The scoring engine is identical. Every customer starts at 50. The same eight detection modules apply the same positive and negative signals. The same account-age loyalty bonus of up to +15 points applies. The same minimum-orders threshold (default 3 orders) controls when a customer leaves the Normal holding segment.

What Pro adds is not scoring capability — it is the ability to trigger automatic actions when a score changes. An Automation Rule in Pro can watch for a customer moving into the Risk segment and immediately hold the next order or send an internal alert. Without Pro, you see the same segment change on the dashboard and decide what to do about it yourself.

For stores that check the dashboard regularly and are comfortable with manual enforcement, the free scoring engine is fully adequate. For stores processing hundreds of orders per day where manual review of every risk-segment change is not practical, the automation layer starts earning its keep.

The Chargeback Speedometer: What Free Shows vs What Pro Adds

The Chargeback Ratio Speedometer is one of the most visible elements on the TrustLens dashboard, and it is partially free. Understanding exactly where the free/Pro boundary sits here matters for stores watching their chargeback ratio carefully.

What is included in Free

The dashboard speedometer shows your blended calendar-month chargeback ratio with a three-state status: Healthy, Approaching threshold, and Action needed. The status colors are keyed to the thresholds for Visa VDMP/VFMP, Mastercard ECP, Amex Excessive Disputes, and Discover Excessive Disputes — so you can see at a glance whether you are in safe territory or approaching a network monitoring program enrollment.

The underlying ratio computation, the card-brand detection on every Stripe and WooPayments order, the per-customer dispute counters, and the calendar-month view are all part of the free Chargeback Tracking module. Stripe and WooPayments disputes are ingested automatically; other gateways use the manual entry form on the order edit screen.

What Pro adds

Pro adds a dedicated TrustLens → Chargeback Monitor page that goes significantly deeper than the dashboard speedometer. The monitor page provides per-brand ratio breakdowns (Visa VDMP/VFMP, Mastercard ECP, Amex, Discover each on separate threshold progress bars), a 12-month trend chart showing how each brand has moved over time, and a trailing-30-day window alongside the free calendar-month view. It also surfaces a recent disputes activity feed with case status and a list of top-disputed customers with one-click access to their Dispute Evidence Report.

The Dispute Evidence Report itself is Pro: a print-ready behavioral risk report — trust score, signals, order history, return analysis versus store average, linked accounts, full event timeline — formatted for submission alongside payment processor dispute responses. If you are regularly fighting chargebacks and need structured evidence documentation, this is one of the strongest arguments for upgrading.

Pro also adds chargeback ratio email alerts: a daily check that emails you before any brand crosses its network threshold, deduplicated per brand per calendar month so you are not spammed. And the configurable Auto-Block After N Lost Disputes setting, which is the only chargeback-related auto-block mechanism in the plugin (discussed in detail in the auto-block section below).

Linked Accounts Detection: How Free and Pro Differ

Linked accounts detection is entirely free. The module runs in both tiers. It creates pseudonymous fingerprints from shipping addresses, billing addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, payment method tokens, and device user agents. When multiple customer accounts share fingerprints, they are flagged as linked and the risk level of linked accounts factors into each customer’s score.

All of that — the fingerprint creation, the link detection, the score propagation, the linked accounts display on customer profiles — ships in the free version. The fingerprints use keyed HMAC-SHA256 hashes so raw personal data is never stored in the database.

What Pro adds on top of linked accounts detection is the ability to automate responses to it. An Automation Rule in Pro can fire when linked accounts are detected — triggering a hold order, sending an internal alert, or flagging the customer for review. It also adds Payment Method Risk Controls, which can restrict specific payment gateways for customers with linked accounts. In Free, you see the linked accounts on the customer profile and decide what to do manually.

The guide to linked account fraud patterns covers how this kind of abuse actually operates in practice — worth reading alongside the TrustLens docs if multi-account exploitation is a concern for your store.

Auto-Block: Why It Is Pro-Only and Why That Is Intentional

TrustLens has two distinct types of blocking. Manual blocking — where you open a customer profile and click Block — is free. Automatic blocking — where TrustLens blocks a customer without a human in the loop — requires Pro.

There are two auto-block mechanisms in TrustLens, both Pro-only:

1. Auto-Block After N Lost Disputes — a setting in the Chargeback module. When a customer’s lost-dispute count reaches the configured threshold (configurable 1–20, default 2), TrustLens blocks them at checkout automatically. The code guard is explicit: the maybe_auto_block() function that implements this only runs when wstl_can_use_pro() returns true. In Free, the lost-dispute count accumulates and affects the trust score, but no automatic blocking ever fires.
2. Automation Rules with a Block Customer action — Pro’s trigger-based rule engine supports “Block customer” as one of its available actions. You configure the trigger (score dropped below threshold, dispute filed, linked accounts detected, etc.), the conditions, and the action. When the rule fires, TrustLens blocks the customer automatically. No such rule can be created in Free.

The decision to keep all auto-blocking behind the Pro license is deliberate. Automated blocking based on behavioral signals can cause false positives — a long-standing VIP customer with a temporary spike in refunds, a business buyer with unusual order patterns, a family sharing an IP address triggering a linked-account flag. The free version forces a human review step before any checkout is blocked. Pro gives you the ability to automate, but only after you have deliberately configured the rules that define when automation is appropriate for your store.

Automation Rules: The Heart of the Pro Tier

TrustLens Automation Rules are the feature that most clearly separates the two tiers. In Free, TrustLens is a monitor: it watches, scores, and surfaces information. In Pro, you can configure it to respond.

The rules engine supports 16+ triggers including Score Updated, Segment Changed, Order Placed, Refund Processed, Dispute Filed, Dispute Recorded, Linked Accounts Detected, Card Testing Attack, and Shipping Anomaly. Each rule can have multiple conditions (30+ condition fields available, covering trust score, segment, total order value, total disputes, customer age, country mismatch, coupon total, payment method, linked accounts count, and more). Available actions include Block Customer, Hold Order, Send Email, Fire Webhook, Allowlist Customer, Cancel Order, and Tag Customer.

Rules fire asynchronously with automatic retry (60s, 120s, 240s backoff). Webhooks are HMAC-SHA256 signed by default. A save-time validator blocks rules that can never fire — unsatisfiable conditions, schema violations, contradictions — with a specific inline reason for each. And an inline inspector shows SKIP status on evaluations that did not execute, with the exact reason, so you can answer “why did my rule not fire?” without guesswork.

The complete guide to TrustLens Automation Rules covers rule design in depth — including how to build a graduated response that escalates from email alert to order hold to customer block as evidence accumulates, rather than jumping straight to blocking on the first signal.

None of the Automation Rules infrastructure is available in Free. The classes are not loaded, the admin page is not registered, and no rules can be created.

REST API Access: Same in Both Tiers

TrustLens includes a REST API with 8 endpoints for customer lookups, score retrieval, segment filtering, bulk recalculation triggers, and integration hooks. This API is fully available in the free version. Access requires either the manage_woocommerce capability or a valid API key configured in Settings.

The 8 endpoints cover: listing customers (with segment filtering), retrieving an individual customer profile, retrieving a customer’s trust score, triggering a score recalculation, listing customers by segment, bulk operations, event retrieval, and a store stats summary. None of these are gated behind the Pro license. If you are building an integration — connecting TrustLens data to an external CRM, a fulfilment system, or a custom admin tool — you can do it with the free tier.

Full Feature Comparison Table

The table below covers every significant feature boundary between TrustLens Free and Pro, as verified against the plugin source code and readme.txt at version 1.2.5.

When to Upgrade — and When Not To

The question is not really “is Pro better?” It is “does my store have a problem that needs automation to solve, or is manual review enough?”

Stay on Free if

• You process under roughly 100 orders per day and have bandwidth to review your high-risk customer list weekly.
• You are still learning which signals produce false positives in your specific store. Use Free to calibrate before you automate.
• Your primary need is visibility — understanding your customer risk picture — rather than automated enforcement.
• You want to block specific customers after reviewing their profiles, and you are comfortable doing that manually.
• You do not yet have a significant chargeback problem requiring the Advanced Chargeback Monitor or the Dispute Evidence Report.

Consider Pro if

• You process enough orders that checking the dashboard and manually reviewing risk-segment changes daily is not realistic.
• You have a documented chargeback pattern with Stripe or WooPayments and need per-brand ratio monitoring with daily alerts to stay below network program thresholds.
• You are regularly submitting chargeback disputes to your payment processor and need structured behavioral evidence documentation (the Dispute Evidence Report).
• You want to restrict payment gateway access for high-risk customers without blocking their entire checkout — Payment Method Risk Controls lets you hide specific gateways for specific risk segments.
• You have a pattern of lost disputes from repeat offenders and want to automatically block customers who have lost two or more disputes without manually tracking each case.
• You are building an external integration that needs to push data via webhooks when TrustLens detects risk events.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does TrustLens Free auto-block customers who reach a Critical risk segment?

No. TrustLens Free does not auto-block under any circumstances. A customer moving into the Critical segment triggers no automatic enforcement action. The segment change is visible on your dashboard, on the customer list, and on the trust badge in your orders list — but acting on it requires you to open the customer profile, review the signals, and manually block the customer if you decide to. Auto-block requires Pro and must be explicitly configured through either the Chargeback module’s “Auto-Block After N Lost Disputes” setting or an Automation Rule with a Block Customer action.

Is the Chargeback Ratio Speedometer part of Free or Pro?

The dashboard speedometer — showing your blended calendar-month chargeback ratio with Healthy/Approaching/Action-needed status against Visa VDMP/VFMP, Mastercard ECP, Amex, and Discover thresholds — is free. The dedicated Advanced Chargeback Monitor page with per-brand breakdowns, 12-month trend chart, trailing-30-day window, daily email alerts, and the Dispute Evidence Report is Pro.

Can I use the REST API on the free plan?

Yes. The TrustLens REST API with its 8 endpoints is fully available in the free version. API access requires the manage_woocommerce capability or a configured API key. No Pro license is needed to build integrations via the API.

Does linked accounts detection work the same way in Free and Pro?

The detection is the same in both tiers. TrustLens creates fingerprints from shipping addresses, billing addresses, phone numbers, IPs, payment method tokens, and device user agents in both Free and Pro. Linked accounts are flagged, risk propagates between linked accounts, and the linked accounts view appears on customer profiles in both tiers. What Pro adds is the ability to automatically respond when a link is detected — via Automation Rules — and the Payment Method Risk Controls for restricting gateway access to linked-account clusters.

If a customer is manually blocked in Free, does the block survive an upgrade to Pro?

Yes. Manual blocks set in Free persist after upgrading to Pro. The block list is stored in the database and is not tier-dependent. Upgrading to Pro does not change or reset any existing manual blocks, allowlist entries, or customer trust profiles.

What happens to trust scores if I upgrade from Free to Pro and then downgrade back?

Trust scores and customer profiles are stored in your database and remain intact through license changes. If you downgrade from Pro to Free, the scoring engine continues running and all customer data is preserved. Automation Rules you configured while on Pro will stop firing (the Automation class is only loaded when wstl_is_pro() is true), but they are not deleted — if you re-upgrade, they pick back up. The main consequence of downgrading is that automatic enforcement stops and you return to manual-review mode.

How does the auto-block-after-disputes setting work in Pro?

In TrustLens Pro, the Chargeback module includes a configurable “Auto-Block After N Lost Disputes” setting (range 1–20, default 2 when enabled). When a customer’s count of lost disputes reaches the configured threshold, TrustLens automatically blocks them at checkout. The setting defaults to 0 (disabled) in the database, so it must be explicitly enabled — auto-blocking does not happen by default even in Pro. The auto-block is idempotent: a customer who is already blocked will not be double-blocked.

Is TrustLens Free worth installing if I am not going to upgrade?

For most stores processing more than a few hundred orders per year: yes, clearly. The free version gives you a complete behavioral picture of your customer base that does not exist anywhere else in a standard WooCommerce setup. Running the Historical Sync after installation frequently surfaces patterns — serial returners, coupon farmers, linked-account clusters — that have been quietly accumulating for months. Even if you never upgrade, the visibility alone changes how you respond to refund requests, chargeback disputes, and high-volume customers you previously knew only by order count.