The Explainer explained

Q. If we purchase the Datacenter Unlimited Website licence and create a site from  the software and then want to re-sell that are there any financial implications to that in terms of paying back to clearString ?

A. To understand this we need to separate out the concepts of 'site' and 'server'. In order to run a neatComponents or clearString website you need it to be run from a server, which has the software installed on it.

There are the different types of license shown above - for example, the Single Website license type will only allow a single site to be run using it, whilst the Datacenter licence will run an unlimited quantity of sites.

This means you can create a site, and sell it to someone else. However, for them to run the site, they will either need it to be on a server of their which has a license - which they would need to buy from us, or it would need to be hosted on your server and they would pay you a fee for hosting it. You need to factor the cost of the license into your pricing for the job. clearString neatComponents saves you days of work so your construction charges will be much lower than your competitors - but you will need a license.

Using the Free License
There is also a special type of license, called a 'Developer' license. This is free, and is designed to be used by developers - like you - to create sites before they go live. Its 'rate-limiting' allows it to function whilst you are developing the sites, but makes it unsuitable for running busy sites - when lots of different people will be visiting them.

Q. What is a typical scenario?

A. So a typical scenario would have the developer running a free Development license themselves, and each time they sell a site, they export it onto their customer's machine, and purchase a single-site license for it.

Q. Which license should I buy?

A. Where there are lots of sites involved, and if the developer wants to profit from the hosting side of the business, the developer can purchase a Datacenter Unlimited Website license, and then host lots of live sites on it.

If you don't want to get an income stream from hosting your clients' websites then you should bundle the price of a Single Website license into your job.

Tip: Pay-as-you-go payment options are available for both types of license to keep up-front costs to a minimum and ease cash-flow though your business and theirs.

The choice of which license route to take is a business decision that you have to make, based on the quantity of sites you are looking to create, how much you can charge for their hosting, etc.

Further information
If you are still unsure as to how licensing works, or what is the best license choice for your application, please contact us and we will be pleased to advise you.