CBSubs License and Maintenance Periods

leader777 wrote: It means I am forced to pay for maintenance from 2010-10-08 when my license expired until now thought there was no maintenance in that period. It seems slightly wrong. If I bought it 5 years ago and didn't use it until now would you force me to pay for that 5 year period also?

Well, maintenance periods are really not meant to expire. If they do then typically users are forced to purchase a new license (or purchase an upgrade to a newer product). At present we do not enforce such a policy and permit license owners to renew expired maintenance agreements starting from expiration date. This in my opinion is fare. To reply to your example: currently yes - you would need to extend your elapsed maintenance agreement from the moment it elapsed - you cannot selectively choose the maintenance period.

Thank you for understanding.

Just want to add that work on cbsubs continues even when your license maintenance has elapsed. So to catchup on work done, it's normal to pay maintenance for the whole passed period.

Hi Nick,

I understand the idea behind the maintenance licence and have no problems with that. I use a product called WHMCS which I purchased and pay annual maintenance for ugrades.

What is happening here, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that I can choose to purchase maintenance for up to 5 years or go for a lifetime option. If I let my maintenance licence lapse I have to buy a new Subs licence entirely.

If I opted for 3 years based on client needs and then later decided the client want 5 years does the 5 years start at the end of the 3 years or does the period run concurrently (overlap)? If the latter does the plan get discounted by the value of the previous maintenance purchase?

At the moment it appears that any site that lasts in excess of 5 years and doesn't have a lifetime maintenance will have to be purchased all over again. Seems a bit unfair if this is the case. Rather than rewarding loyalty you would be penalising loyal users.

I have absolutely no problem with paying for each year, even if I have to pay any missed years to bring it into continuous maintenance from original purchase. I would suggest that this should be an option as I am now concerned that as I have recommended CB Subs to customers and purchased several licences it will be my integrity that is questioned when I go back with large renewal bills at the end of 5 years or when their current maintenance expires.

How can I extend the 2 years I have paid for into 5 years without over paying?

Hi 3cellhosting,

I need to correct you as you requested, as the information you posted is (fortunately!) completely wrong

Our maintenance extensions are very fair and there is no overlap: You won't be paying twice for the same thing.

When you click the button "Change Options / Maintenance Period", and change the maintenance length from e.g. 3 years to 5 years (from initial purchase date), then you are invoiced for only 2 year of maintenance for your license.

Right now, it's even implemented better than advertised: E.g. if you are a user since e.g. 4 years, with 5 years maintenance, going lifetime maintenance will cost you only 1 extra-year of maintenance. In fact it is same price than going 6 years, while you did already use-up 4 years.

So your 3 years maintenance user considering paying 2 years to get 5 years might have a very good deal going lifetime by paying only 3 years extra-maintenance, instead of adding 2 years for the price of 2 years extra-maintenance !

I'm not guaranteeing that the simplified implementation will remain that way, but for now it is that way, and we have no urgencies to fix it, as it is to the customer's advantage.

Detailed answers within your quotes:

3cellhosting wrote: Hi Nick,

I understand the idea behind the maintenance licence and have no problems with that. I use a product called WHMCS which I purchased and pay annual maintenance for ugrades.

What is happening here, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that I can choose to purchase maintenance for up to 5 years or go for a lifetime option. If I let my maintenance licence lapse I have to buy a new Subs licence entirely.

Yes you are completely wrong ...and I'm sure you're happy to be wrong :lol:

Right now, lapsed maintenance periods can be "catched up", by extending from the expiration date by the number of years needed to include at least current date.

Normally, in software licenses, lapsed maintenance raises the need to purchase a new license for getting back into maintenance. But we do not enforce that now, so simple catchup is possible. Up to a month ago, there was no warning in the user-interface in backend of the lapsed maintenance. All lapsed maintenance license owners have received mail to encourage to extend their maintenance a month back.

We will keep that grace period where expired maintenance can be reactivated for some more time, to be fair. But if any user is still in this case, we really recommend bringing maintenance back into validity.

If I opted for 3 years based on client needs and then later decided the client want 5 years does the 5 years start at the end of the 3 years or does the period run concurrently (overlap)? If the latter does the plan get discounted by the value of the previous maintenance purchase?

Thre is no overlap, extending maintenance from 3 years since begin of license to 5 years (still since begin of license) costs 2 years extra maintenance, not 5.

At the moment it appears that any site that lasts in excess of 5 years and doesn't have a lifetime maintenance will have to be purchased all over again. Seems a bit unfair if this is the case. Rather than rewarding loyalty you would be penalising loyal users.

Fortunately NOT true, see above

I have absolutely no problem with paying for each year, even if I have to pay any missed years to bring it into continuous maintenance from original purchase.

That's how it's meant right now, but make sure to keep the maintenance periods up to date.

As in most software licenses it's the way that expired , and in the future we might implement enough warnings to renew maintenance in time, and then if maintenance is expired, license will continue to work with current versions, but new versions will be requiring a new license.

I would suggest that this should be an option as I am now concerned that as I have recommended CB Subs to customers and purchased several licences it will be my integrity that is questioned when I go back with large renewal bills at the end of 5 years or when their current maintenance expires.

How can I extend the 2 years I have paid for into 5 years without over paying?

Just go to the account ownining the license, click the button "Change Options / Maintenance Period", and change the maintenance length from e.g. +2 years to +4 years, then you are invoiced for only 2 year of maintenance for your license. Or choose lifetime for only the price of 3 years, as explained above

In short, we try hard to conduct ourselves as fairly as we would like any vendor and customer from the community to be with us.

Thanks Beat,

I am now a happy subscriber again

Having used Subs since its release I was fairly sure I must have misunderstood what I was reading as you guys have always been fair and this sort of process is exactly what CB Subs is meant to handle :laugh:

I will go and renew the extra for this client.

Thanks again.

I just went in to upgrade and hadn't read this thread yet. I had 1.1.2 running and it said the maintenance license had expired 6/23/2010 (I think that was the date) so I renewed for a year (50Euro) which got me to 6/23/2011. After realizing it was still expired, I did the 1 year upgrade for the extra 38Euro, but it is still showing that my license expired 6/23/2011. Am I misunderstanding the licensing?

Maximum number of Users: 500
Maximum number of Sites: 2
Maintenance period: 2 years
License started on: 2009-06-23
License valid until: unlimited
Maintenance expires on: 2011-06-23

I'm hoping this is just a PayPal thing where you haven't received the upgrade notice yet.

Hi miewis,

You can see the purchases made today in your profile in memberships tab, when clicking at the Invoices link at bottom.

Your 50 EUR payment was to reactivate your Advanced Membership (previously "CB Documentation Subscription", that expired in March) for 12 months, for the 5th year as a CB supporting member. Thank You very much for your support.

Your second payment was to extend by 1 year your CBSubs maintenance, but as it expired over 1 year ago, it needs to be extended by a second year to be brought to active again, as explained above.

Please make sure to check your Private Messages as well for a personal thank you message.