Perpetual to Annual license

[travis1593]

It appears my system has moved from our perpetual license to an annual license as I just received an expiration notice. Ive seen a few other threads that mention this, but i have not seen a clear resolution. Is there a resolution to this, or do I have to buy support to have 3CX check it?

 

[Evolute IT]

Did you pay a maintenance every year to keep it up to date? Perpetual licenses no longer exists except for Enterprise licenses.

If you paid a maintenance before, the annual will cost you around the same.

 

[travis1593]

No, the only update was done when the SSL expired last year so it could be reinstalled (that free maintenance period). After the update it showed perpetual and auto updates were shut off. Sometime within the last probably 3-4 months it changed to annual i would say. Not something I login to everyday.

 

[cobaltit]

It's still unclear if you paid maintenance or not. But if you did not pay maintenance then after 90 days of expired maintenance the license changes from perpetual to annual which sounds like what happened for you. If you did pay maintenance it's possible you are running an old version which can't reach the 3CX activation servers.

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/information-to-provide-when-requesting-help.67558/

 

[travis1593]

The answer was no, i did not pay for maintenance because i do not need updates or maintenance. If i wanted an annual fee, i wouldnt have paid for the perpetual license. The only maintenance that was done was when the 3cx SSL certificate was expiring and couldnt be reactivated upon a re-install. So i was forced to update to make sure if something happened i would be able to reinstall. Why do you believe the license should have changed from perpetual to annual or did i miss something?

 

[Evolute IT]

@NickD_3CX should be able to explain and help if possible.

 

[cobaltit]

So it seems as if the perpetual licensing is all but gone. It used to be that when your perpetual license expired you had a 90 grace period to get maintenance. After that you would need to buy a version upgrade license to go to the next version. When they started doing annual licensing I believe they shortened the grace period. Then the small perpetual licenses were no longer available and now you can't buy perpetual licenses anymore. Existing perpetual licenses can be kept current via maintenance, but once you exit the grace period (if there even is one anymore) then your license turns into an annual license. So it appears you are now on an annual license and there's no going back.

 

[NickD_3CX]

The answer was no, i did not pay for maintenance because i do not need updates or maintenance. If i wanted an annual fee, i wouldnt have paid for the perpetual license. The only maintenance that was done was when the 3cx SSL certificate was expiring and couldnt be reactivated upon a re-install. So i was forced to update to make sure if something happened i would be able to reinstall. Why do you believe the license should have changed from perpetual to annual or did i miss something?

Hi Travis,

Could you please send me the first 8 digits of your License Key so that I can check. I do have a feeling however that ~1 year ago, your Maintenance had expired, and you used an option where you would trade it your Perpetual License for an Annual one, with the benefit of getting 1 year free maintenance.

I can't say for sure though, once I have the key I should be able to shed some more light on the matter.