New licensing scheme and key format

We have decided to improve our licensing scheme. The most important change is that we have extended the free-upgrade period to 18 months, regardless of the product version. This basically means that you are entitled to any product bug fixes and major versions released within 18 months from the date of purchase.

With that, we have also changed our licensing key format. The new format is longer than the old one, but needed to support the new features and to increase security. The key is composed of variable data and a purchase date. The date is separated with ‘-‘ characters:

XX−<Purchase date>−XXXXX…X

The date is also readable, so that you can easily calculate the period of its validity. For example, if the date part is 2019May28, it means that the key was purchased on May 28th, 2019, and it is valid until November 28th, 2020. For any product versions released on that day and afterwards, you will need to purchase a new key.

As noted before, the big advantage of this new format is that there is no need to replace the keys after a major version release, as was previously the case with old keys. New keys are valid for all product releases within 18 months. After that period, you will get an exception if you download the newer version for which you don’t have rights, but the older versions/dlls (older than the purchase date + 18 months) will work indefinitely with your key. You can either continue using your current license key with older versions, or purchase a license upgrade.

Please note that the 18-month free-upgrade period applies only to our products purchased after June 4th, 2019. For older purchases, we have a 90-day free major-upgrade policy.