Annual and Perpetual

[Anzu5]

More of a noob question but can anyone please explain the difference between Annual and Perpetual license and how either one is better?

 

[Saqqara]

Annual is software subscription where every year you pay to use the software (this included maintenance. Each year the costs will be same (excluding any price increase), but initial costs are lower than the one off cost of Perpetual

https://www.3cx.com/ordering/pricing/

Perpetual is where you purchase the software and from year 2 onwards you pay for maintenance. Year1 costs are higher than annual but year2 onwards costs are lower as you are only paying for maintenance.

https://www.3cx.com/ordering/pricing/perpetual/

 

[Saqqara]

How many licenses are you looking at ? and what version std , pro or enterprise ?

"New" Free License (16SC Standard) - Annual license
Once you activated your License Key, you automatically get maintenance for 1 year. After the year, the key will be changed to a 4SC, but will remain Standard and your maintenance will be extended, so you won't lose your FQDN and SMTP capabilities.

 

[teichhei]

This whole license back and forth is getting on my nerves. Looking into alternatives now. Any license used to be able to use custom fqdn's and mail servers (even 200$ printers support that). Now you need Pro if you want to stay independent. I hate it when I'm being forced into something. They should make sure people pay for maintenance because of the great improvements, not because they are conned into it.
Back to the question, basically if you are only using manual provisioning, don't need e-mail alerts and want to leave the software at a certain state and think you don't need updates, perpetual standard is fine. We always had maintenance since v8 or 9 but now it seems to become too expensive for a small business. I believe if you always buy maintenance anyways then the cost each year is similar.

 

[Anzu5]

Hey Guys, thanks for replying. I am just trying to understand what it actually is so that I can help my customers.

I understand what Annual and Perpetual is but why one over the other? Is it just the cost which is the difference?

 

[jimbo59]

Perpetual you could stop buying support and the system would continue to work as is, but you could not upgrade, update, or add concurrent connections unless it was in full maintenance. To continue to function outside of maintenance would require your own FQDN. Maintenance is included with first year of perpetual and with all annual contracts. Once maintenance is expired you get a small grace period and then cannot add support again. Annual is a lease year to year and includes updates. Support is extra and can be supported by resellers or $75 per call. The system must use supported sip trunks and phones or 3CX will not support it.

That's my understanding.

 

[rwiertz]

Hi,
Forcing a 3CX FQDN on customers with the standard version is quite annoying and to buy the Pro version only to be able to use your own FQDN is quite absurd. We love 3CX, our customers love 3CX but we don't like to be bullied by 3CX. The 3CX tech guy told me todat that the only option is to stay at V14. Instead of motivating customers to buy maintenance this means that customers don't need maintenance. At this moment we have a work-a-round by using an older install (jan '18) which still had the option to use choose your own FQDN even with the standard version, so that's what we will do for the moment. If it is not working anymore... we will decide than.

Cheers..

Ron Wiertz - www.equa.nl

 

[cobaltit]

Hi,
Forcing a 3CX FQDN on customers with the standard version is quite annoying and to buy the Pro version only to be able to use your own FQDN is quite absurd. We love 3CX, our customers love 3CX but we don't like to be bullied by 3CX. The 3CX tech guy told me todat that the only option is to stay at V14. Instead of motivating customers to buy maintenance this means that customers don't need maintenance. At this moment we have a work-a-round by using an older install (jan '18) which still had the option to use choose your own FQDN even with the standard version, so that's what we will do for the moment. If it is not working anymore... we will decide than.

Cheers..

Ron Wiertz - www.equa.nl

I'm really confused by all the complaining and talk of 'forcing'. Noone is forcing you do do anything. Feel free to use another product. 3CX is already cheaper than just about any other commerical product so if using a custom FQDN is a must, then the price difference between STD and PRO is nominal.