SimpleHelp Licensing Updates

We are making a few changes to SimpleHelp licensing. Most customers who renew each year will see little or no change, but we want to explain what is changing and why.

The short version:

- Business renewals are increasing from $180 to $200 per session.

- Standard and Classic renewals are increasing from $120 to $140 per session.

- In the upcoming months, new Standard and Business licenses purchases will use flat subscription which is the same as the renewal cost, but this will not generally affect existing customers. This does not affect renewals or upgrades to existing licenses.

- Renewals will always remain cheaper than new license purchases, but if a license expired more than 15 months ago the discount will begin to taper off.

- SimpleHelp servers will now retrieve their license from our site and check in periodically, with a long grace period to ensure our site availability has no impact on your server.

- Fully offline servers are still supported for customers that want to run this way, and we intend to support this ongoing, but offline licensing now needs to be requested and manually approved by SimpleHelp (see below).

License Pricing

We have kept SimpleHelp pricing stable for a long time, the price of SimpleHelp licenses has remained unchanged for a decade now, and during that time we have done what we can to avoid increasing costs for our customers.  During that decade however, costs across the world have risen due to inflation and as a result we are making a change to our Business license cost and to the renewal schedule.

This change helps us continue investing in the platform while keeping pricing simple and predictable.

Business License Pricing

The renewal cost per session for a Business license is increasing per session from $180 to $200.
We believe this change represents a modest cost increase that won't generally affect our customers, and still represents very good value in our industry.

Renewal for Older Licenses

Renewing an existing license will always be cheaper the new purchase price, the renewal price will be lowest for users that regularly renew (a 60% discount compared to the new purchase price).

Previously, a customer who had not renewed their license for three, five or ten years (yes it does happen) could still receive a 60% discount from their older license when they were renewing.  We understand some customers want to budget this way and we still want to continue to give those customers a good deal, but we feel it is fair to give customers that renew every year more effective value for keeping their license in support.  Under the new policy, customers that renew within 15 months will still receive the full 60% discount for the additional year of new version access and support.  Beyond that, renewal credit will then taper down to a minimum of 20% discount when a license hasn't been renewed for over 3 years.

This brings the renewal policy closer to how the product is maintained in practice. Customers who renew each year help fund ongoing development, security updates, platform improvements, and support. Customers who skip several years of renewals will still get value from their existing license when they come back, but the discount will now to some degree reflect the time since the license was last renewed.

For most customers who renew every year, this change makes no practical difference.

For customers who choose to renew every 2 or 3 years to save on costs, this will still be cost effective, but the saving won't be as large.
If you have an older license and are not sure how this affects you, contact us and we will confirm your renewal price before you make any decision.

License Registration and Server Check-Ins

SimpleHelp licenses will now be registered with our site, and SimpleHelp servers will check in with our site to confirm the license.

This is not about taking away control from our customers. SimpleHelp remains self-hosted. You still run the server on your infrastructure, you still control where your data lives, and we still support customers who need isolated or offline deployments.

The reason for this change is misuse. Like many remote access products, SimpleHelp has been abused by criminal organisations who deploy remote access tools on systems they do not own. We have already added security measures in recent releases to make that harder, including server verification and stronger user approval flows. License registration gives us another way to identify and stop misuse without changing how legitimate customers use SimpleHelp day to day.

This is a one-off change, and we do not anticipate further changes to how licensing works regarding misuse, and we do not intend for this to affect how any of our customers use SimpleHelp, including customers that want to run fully offline servers.

Fully Offline Servers Are Still Supported

Some customers need to run SimpleHelp in networks with no internet access. We understand that and fully support it. Offline deployments are still very much supported and will continue to be.

The change is that fully offline licensing now needs to be requested and manually approved by SimpleHelp. This is a simple and quick process.  If your SimpleHelp server cannot check in with our site, contact us at [email protected] and we will work with you promptly to approve the offline setup.

If we find there is significant demand for this we will automate the process to make it more streamlined for customers.

One more upcoming change to new licenses

We plan to implement a further change in the coming year which will apply to newly purchased licenses.  The Business license will be switched to a flat subscription at the renewal price, with no up front cost.  This change does not affect existing licenses.

We believe this simplifies our offering even more and will lower the barrier for new customers who want to use SimpleHelp and encourage customers to remain always in a support period.

We will not transition customers from their existing licenses to subscription licenses unless they want to or unless it is required by law in their region.  EU CRA law when it is fully implemented may require that we provide updates to EU customers ongoing at no cost, in which case EU customers would be required to transition to a subscription license at no additional cost. This would not affect customers outside the EU.

What You Need To Do

If you:

- renew every year: you should not need to do anything different. Your renewal process will continue as usual, with the updated Business renewal price
- have an older license that has not been renewed for several years:  contact us before renewing and we will confirm your renewal price.
- have a server that runs in a fully offline environment: contact us so we can manually approve offline licensing for your deployment.
- have questions about the pricing change, renewal credit, or offline approval process, email [email protected].

SimpleHelp is a unified remote support and RMM platform, built as a single application since 2007. Learn more at simple-help.com.

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