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.

Distinctions Between Time-Limited and Subscription Licenses

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.

When to Use Time-Limited Licenses

• 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 its validity period is specifically renewed.

When to Use Subscription Licenses

• Use this only if you are using an external source of truth to maintain subscription status. This external source of truth is typically a recurring billing system or a CRM.