Can't apply purchased 4SC key to expiring running instance. Is a 3CX hosted to 3CX hosted migration the only way to use it? And if so, how?

[Ozed]

Hello all,

I did try to find this topic in this forum and elsewhere, but couldn't seem to find anything relevant unfortunately. Apologies in advance if there's something I missed, and thanks for your help.

So, I currently have a 4SC Pro v20.0 Instance which is 3CX hosted, but the licence is expiring this week.

Long story short, I have a 4SC PRO Hosted licence in my https://portal.3cx.com/ which I want to apply to this running instance. But, I understand it's no longer possible to do this, when I try to "replace", I get the "Commercial Keys cannot be replaced." error.

So my thought was to:

1. Take a full backup of the running v20.0 OLD instance
2. Stop hosting on OLD instance
3. Release the FQDN from OLD licence
4. Spin up the NEW Hosted Instance
5. Select the original FQDN (now it's released) during setup
6. NEW licence is on v18, so upgrade it to v20.0
7. Restore the old backup

However, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is now a permanent link between the actual 3CX licence and the FQDN, and I'm worried that once I release it, I won't be able to apply the original FQDN to the new licence.

What’s the easiest way to make use of this paid licence while keeping everything the same from the user’s perspective i.e. same FQDN, logins, and configuration?

As an aside, I also have a purchased 3CX SMB Pro licence, and if it’s any easier to migrate to that instead (i'm sure it's not, but thought I'd mention it), happy to do this instead. We probably don’t need the additional 4SC Pro functionality.

Any advice or suggestions would be really appreciated, I’d just really like to make use of the licences I’ve already paid for.

Cheers!