How do I upgrade from free to Pro mid-cycle?

Strong agree. Good defaults beat a wall of toggles every single time.

This is the answer I wish I had found six months ago. Would have saved me a weekend of trial and error.

Following this thread closely. We are about to face the exact same decision and the replies here are gold.

Solid breakdown. The only thing I would add is to back up before making the change — better safe than sorry.

This is the answer I wish I had found six months ago. Would have saved me a weekend of trial and error.

Tried this on a staging copy first and it behaved exactly as described. Confident enough to roll it to production now.

Solid breakdown. The only thing I would add is to back up before making the change — better safe than sorry.

One caveat for larger communities: keep an eye on the indexes. At a few thousand rows the difference is night and day.

Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it — the kind of thing I will want to reference again in a month.