Ah, the Festinger Vault. A place where WP plugins used to be stored like fine wine, aged to perfection, and yet, somehow, always elusive. If you know about this super-niche forum/service I have nothing to explain to you (scroll dow to hear the latest info), but if you never heard of it, let me just drop a small intro

What is Festinger Vault?

Back in 2019, now deleted member of Black Hat World (BHW), Festinger, started a sales thread where he offered “Unlimited Premium Themes and Plugins Directly from your Dashboard”. Basically, he was reselling WP plugins and themes via its lifetime licence ($299). You pay one time fee, and you download premium themes for as long as the service is live.

How Festinger Vault went down?

But, fast forward September 2024 things went south for Festinger Vault and its members, when Automattic (owner of WordPress) filed a legal claim against this service.

“Regarding trademark usage and GPL compliance, we are forced to temporarily hold our offerings to prevent the risk of fines.”- said owner of Festinger.

Following this, some serious issues with FestingerVault login appeared and users were not allowed to login, so some of the BHW members started to complain and request either their money back or to have the service restored. One of the users noted that Festinger was:”…one of the best services here, but since the problem with Automatic, their website wasn’t working properly, it was more inactive than functional”.

Return of the Festinger Vault

While Festinger did not answer any complaints via BlackHatWorld, he continued claiming that everything is fine with login and website accounts, via his subreddit. Three weeks ago he claimed that 500:server errors are resolved.

Well, I do hope it’s a subreddit controlled by him, because many lifetime members will be thrilled to know that today, Festinger announced that the Festinger Vault will be live again on December 18th, 2025.

Time will tell.