Short definitions for the terms that come up most often across Fontdue’s admin, docs, and client library. Grouped roughly by topic, alphabetical within each group.
Core
Admin – Fontdue’s interface at /admin, where you manage your catalog, licenses, orders, customers, and settings.
Dashboard – The sales overview inside the admin – revenue charts, top SKUs, recent orders. A specific section of the admin, not the admin as a whole.
Demo template – Fontdue’s built-in website template, generated automatically from your catalog. A fast way to launch without building a custom site.11Good for getting started or for foundries that want a simple site. Customization is limited – see The demo template.
Foundry – A business that sells fonts. If you’re using Fontdue, you’re the foundry.
Site – Shorthand for Website throughout Fontdue’s docs and admin. Both words refer to the same thing.
Website – Your foundry’s public-facing website (the frontend), whether it’s the demo template, a Webflow or similar site, or a custom-coded template.
Catalog
Bundle – A curated group of font collections sold together at a single price.
Color font – A font that paints its glyphs in color – gradients, layered shapes, or embedded bitmaps – rather than single-color outlines. Fontdue supports the common formats: COLRv0, COLRv1, OpenType-SVG, sbix, and CBDT.22See Color fonts for how they’re uploaded and delivered.
Designer – A type designer attributed to one or more collections. Optional – used for organizing and displaying designer credits on your site.
Family – A set of related font styles sharing a common design (e.g. General Sans Regular, Bold, Italic).
Font collection – A sellable product in your catalog. Can be a family, a superfamily, or a bundle.
Font file – A single binary in one format – .otf, .ttf, .woff, or .woff2. Loosely called “a font.” A style usually has several, one per format.
Font style – A distinct member of a family – the font files under it that share one style name33The typographic subfamily name (Name ID 17), the field Fontdue reads to group files into a style. (e.g. Regular, Bold, Italic), one file per format. Usually weights and slants, but a family can divide however its design calls for. The unit customers buy; often shortened to style, and priced as its own SKU.
Root collection – A top-level font collection – either a standalone family or a superfamily. These are the collections that usually have their own product page on your site.
SKU – A priced catalog unit. Styles, families, superfamilies, and bundles each get a SKU once a price is set on them – items without prices aren’t SKUs. Licenses aren’t SKUs either; they scale SKU prices via multipliers at checkout. See Pricing for how SKUs combine.
Superfamily – A set of related families grouped together (e.g. a sans and its matching serif).
Variable font – A font with one or more adjustable axes – weight, width, optical size, or custom axes. Fontdue supports custom axes and named instances.44See Variable fonts for how axes and instances are configured and delivered.
Licensing and pricing
Coupon – A discount code that applies at checkout. Percentage-based or fixed-amount, with optional expiration and redemption limits.
License – The terms and pricing under which a customer can use a font. Every purchase is one or more licenses applied to font collections.
License variable – A configurable parameter on a license – page views, domains, app installs, seats – that affects price through a multiplier.55For example: a Web license might have a page-views variable with four tiers, each with its own price multiplier.
Order variable – A question answered by the buyer at checkout (e.g. company size) that can affect pricing across the entire order, rather than on a single license.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) – Automatic regional pricing that adjusts based on the buyer’s country, to keep fonts accessible in lower-income markets.66See Purchasing power parity for the full calculation.
Retail license – A paid license available in the store. Common types: Desktop, Web, App. You can also define custom retail licenses.
Special license – A license you grant directly, for reviewers, team members, or comped copies. Doesn’t appear in the store.
Test license – A free license for evaluation, usually paired with test fonts.
Commerce
Order – A single purchase. Can be incomplete (abandoned cart), completed (paid), or archived.
Receipt – The transactional email and PDF invoice sent when an order completes.
Stripe Connect – Fontdue’s payments layer. Each foundry connects its own Stripe account; money goes from the buyer to you directly – Fontdue never holds it.
Stripe Tax – Stripe’s automatic tax calculation, which Fontdue uses for VAT, GST, and US sales tax.
Test mode – A Fontdue mode where orders run against a Stripe test account, for trying the checkout flow end-to-end without real payments.
Fonts on your site
Test fonts – Free, subsetted copies of your fonts that prospective buyers can download to evaluate before purchasing. Configurable per collection.
Watermark – An identifier embedded in the fonts delivered with a completed order. Lets you trace a leaked font file back to its order via Watermark lookup. Test fonts aren’t watermarked.
Webfonts – WOFF/WOFF2 files generated automatically from your uploaded OTF/TTF files and served from Fontdue’s CDN.
Website components
Interactive elements you drop into your site. Full reference in Components.
Buy button – Opens the store modal to a specific font collection.
Cart button – Opens the store modal to the current cart.
Character viewer – Interactive glyph grid where visitors can browse every character in a font.
Fontdue components – Collective name for the interactive UI elements listed in this section. Loaded onto your site via a <script> tag or the fontdue-js npm package.
Store modal – The embeddable cart and checkout experience. A single component that handles browsing, license selection, and payment.
Type tester – The interactive text field where visitors try a font – type, change size, toggle features.
Integration paths
How your site connects to Fontdue. See Integrate Fontdue for the full picture.
Headless (GraphQL only) – Use only the GraphQL API and build your own website UI. The most flexible path, and the most work.
Script tag – Embed Fontdue via a <script> from js.fontdue.com, then drop in HTML custom elements. Works on any site that lets you add custom HTML – Webflow, WordPress, Cargo, Framer, or a hand-built page – with no build tooling.
fontdue-js (npm) – The React package for Next.js or React sites, installed from npm.
Communications
Email domain – The sending domain for your transactional email. By default Fontdue sends as fontdue.com; you can authenticate your own domain so receipts come from you.
Klaviyo – Optional marketing email integration for newsletter signups.
SendGrid – The service Fontdue uses to send transactional email (receipts, password resets). Invisible by default; becomes relevant when you’re setting up your own sending domain.