Metered Licensing FAQ

1. What are Metered licenses and how do they work compared to other license types?

Metered Licenses are a form of consumptive licensing for .NET and Java. You install the .NET or Java versions of our products like you would with unmetered licenses, but instead of purchasing a perpetual license, you pay royalties for the use of the product every month. You can use any Aspose for .NET or Java product you want with the same license and when you use our API your usage is recorded and routinely reported back to our servers, you are then billed monthly for what you use. Metered Licenses are the only license types that are suitable for SaaS targeting developers or other providers who provide an API for developers to use or for creating products that are allowed to "wrap" the core functionality of Aspose's products.

Unmetered license types (Developer Small Business, Developer OEM, Site Small Business, Site OEM) are primarily based on the number of developers using the product and locations that derived works are deployed to. The license is perpetual and includes a one year subscription to access to updates and new versions of the product. These license types do not support derived works that have an API for other developers to use.

2. What are the advantages of Metered licenses?

Metered licenses combines the self hosted nature of our .NET and Java line with the powerful freedom and scalability of using a cloud service.

Pay monthly for what you use instead of all upfront. As you usage grows the cost per MB processed drops.
Documents are processed on your own servers and are never transmitted over the internet.
Add as many developers using our APIs as you want and the same monthly charge applies.
Access all of our products using the one license.
Create applications that have an API for other developers to use.

3. How does billing work and when does the billing period begin?

Your usage of the product is reported to our servers and we invoice you monthly for the amount of documents processed through your applications. The billing period begins the date you sign up so for example if you were to sign up on the 18th of the month then your billing period will run from 18th through to the 17th of the following month.

4. What is the cost of Metered licenses and how do I pay?

A list of our prices is available along with an interactive pricing guide for you to calculate your expected monthly cost. See the Metered pricing page for further information. Note that both the Metered Small Business and Metered OEM license types are currently billed at the same rate.

Payment by credit card is preferred however payment by bank transfer is possible. Contact a member of our sales team and they will be glad to assist you.

5. Can I purchase through an authorized reseller?

Due to the complexity surrounding the arrangements of monthly billing through a third party metered licenses are not available to be purchased via a reseller.

6. How are Metered licenses activated and how do you monitor/track the usage of my application?

After installing the product locally, sign up through our sales channel for a metered license and you will be issued a key pair consisting of a public and private key which you use to activate the product via the API. This enables the product to run in production mode and your usage of the product is recorded and that information is routinely sent back to our servers.

Usage is tracked by the amount of MBs processed from calls to our API from your application. This is generally the size of the input file or the file after export, whichever is greater.

To activate the license refer to the Metered licensing documentation for each product.

7. Are we able to easily see via the product how many MB's have been used in a given usage period?

It is quick and easy to check your usage via the API. Refer to the documentation for further instructions.

8. Can I upgrade/downgrade between Metered and Unmetered license types?

You can upgrade from an unmetered license type to a Metered license within the first 90 days of purchase. The payment from your unmetered license is credited to the balance of your account and deducted from your monthly bill until used up. We do not offer downgrades from a Metered license to an unmetered license.

9. What provisions do you have in place to ensure your servers for the licensing infrastructure are available?

If your systems can’t reach ours, the billing mechanism on your side will try hourly for 24 hours before reverting to a ‘trial’ state. If this does happen, we’ll know about any issues before you do and we’ll be working on getting the situation resolved. To date we've had no issues like this.

10. With regard to data protection and our customer files, can you clarify what data is sent to your servers?

Purely usage information is sent to our servers, no document data or your customer data is sent to us

11. What is the pricing?

Check out pricing using the interactive guide available for Metered Small Business and Metered OEM.

12. How do I purchase a Metered License?

Contact a member of our sales team and they will be glad to assist you to get started.

13. Can I test the product before signing up for a Metered License?

Yes, you can request a temporary license to fully test Aspose products. This free temporary license is unmetered and is used for testing only. Once you are ready for a production license contact us to purchase a Metered license.

Questions?

If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact our sales support who will be glad to assist.