General Information
The InStep Studio application comes with different options for licensing. All licenses are accessed by the application through a user account
which means that, during use, the InStep application will during first start up and then periodically afterwards need to make contact with our
server in order to validate the status. The amount of information transferred in this way is minimal and should work in any environment in which
the application can access a web page (the validation simply requests a web page which then provides information about the license status).
Important: Any license (including the Free tier) is assigned to a single user. You may not share your account access with anyone,
doing so is grounds for permanent removal without the right to a refund. Exempt from this is the Company Administrator License (see below).
The first time you log into your user account, you will be taken to the License Selection page. If not automatically, you can access this page
through License > View License > Edit License
On that page, you will be given a few options which are explained below:
Free 10-Day Trial
By default, unless you have purchased a license, the Trial option (together with the Company Supplied) is the only available selection. You can pick
other options, but they will not be made active unless you complete the payment process.
As the name implies, the Free Trial version is a fully capable version of the application with only two limitations:
- The application will strictly enforce that the latest version is being used (if we release an updated during your trial period, you will be asked to upgrade prior to continuing)
- After the 10 Calendar day period, you will no longer be able to use it (kind of self-explanatory, yes?)
This licensing option is made available to allow anyone to test the capability prior to committing to a purchase.
We reserve the right to refuse a refund to anyone that foregoes the evaluation of the application only to then later request a refund on the grounds that the
InStep application 'does not work' or 'does not do what I expected'. Please take this seriously. However, if you choose to purchase a license directly (without first using the
10-day trial) we will evaluate any requests for refunds, but please note that refunds can take up to two weeks to process as this is done
manually and we will ask for a reason, together with possible examples of any 'it doesn't work' type answers.
1-Year License (Annual)
The Annual license provides access to the application for the period of 1 Year from the date of purchase. During this time, you
have full access to updates (and any necessary and reasonable support). Renewing an Annual license
is made available within 30 days of the license expiring and extends the contract period for 1 year beyond the previous expiration date.
Perpetual (with 1-Year Maintenance)
The Perpetual license gives you access to the application indefinitely (limited only by the survival of Solveering LLC). With this license, a separate maintenance
fee is applied that is included with the purchase to cover 1 year. As long as the maintenance is maintained, you can download and use the latest versions, once
the maintenance lapses, whichever version was published at the time of the expiration will be the highest you can use. If maintenance lapses, you can renew it at any
time, extending the expiration date by an additional year, which may or may not make it current (maintenance that has lapsed for a prolonged period
of time needs to be 'caught up': paying for any missed periods).
Company Supplied
In a corporate setting, individual users may not be able to purchase licenses directly (though that would be preferred) and instead refer to an I.T. department
for purchase and allocation of licenses. If this scenario is applicable, you can set up an account and then simply select the 'Company Supplied' option which
makes your account available for administration by a Company Administrator (see below). It is important to note that your account needs to be in this mode
prior to having the Administrator assign a license to you. No other process is required of the end user in this scenario.
Company Administrator
Also see License Administration Steps
The Company Administrator License is a specialized license option which is intended for companies / corporations. With this option, a single account is in
charge of assigning (and removing) licenses from a pool to individual users. This option further only applies to the Perpetual type license
and an annual maintenance renewal is required. Two specific options are available: Site License and Bulk License.
The Site License is a fixed cost and gives you access to 999 licenses which can be assigned to users. There are strictly enforced
restrictions on this option:
- The email domain must match for the administrator and user (you cannot have an admin on bob@example.com assigning licenses to bill@some.com only to bill@example.com)
- The email domain cannot be a 'free' account (e.g. hotmail, gmail, etc.), this would possibly circumvent the above limitation
- You cannot switch from a Bulk License to a Site License (and vice versa). Whichever option you pick will be the one to work with
The Bulk License option is similar to the Site License, but allows you to purchase any number of licenses and allocate them as you see fit (no domain
limits). A variable discount is applied for bulk purchases exceeding 2 licenses (shown prior to checkout).
For any Company Administered option, you are allowed to share Admin Login information within the company, however, you are responsible for any actions resulting from
this. You may not publish login information in a public space. We further ask that you add and remove users within your license pool infrequently (i.e. do not
purchase one license and re-assign it every few minutes), otherwise we may choose to implement more restrictive policies.