Time-Limited vs Subscription Licenses
There are important distinctions between a time-limited license and a subscription license. Although they both hold a validity period, they don't work the same way. One license type might be more appropriate to use than another depending on how you wish to enforce your licensing.
There are a few key distinctions:
Distinction | Time-Limited | Subscription |
License Status | Assuming the license is enabled, the license status will be inactive if the total activations of the license is 0, and active if total activations is greater than 0. | The status does not depend on total activations. It will be active when the license is created, and will only be disabled if the source of truth communicates that the subscription has been cancelled. |
Offline Activations | Possible by sending a license refresh file | Not possible. |
Grace Period | Not implemented at the moment | You can define number of hours after which the license will be still valid ( is_expired will be false ) even if validity_period is expired |
Time-limited licenses need to be extended manually or using management api and subscriptions should rely on some 3rd party service as a source of truth.
- If you were issuing a recurring license that is for use on machines that do not have access to the internet. In this case, you can activate licenses offline, and simply resend a refreshed license file.
- You want to ensure a license expires unless it's validity period is specifically renewed.
The only time you would use this is if you were using an external source of truth to maintain subscription status. This external source of truth is typically a recurring billing system or a CRM.
