Should I buy Perpetual or Subscription?

Both routes offer the same product – the difference is whether you want to buy the software and then use it forever, or rent the software on a yearly basis.

The cost of the perpetual licence is just over 2 ½ times the cost of a subscription in the first year. After the first year, you will only have (optionally) to pay the support and product maintenance for the installation. This is a lot cheaper!

The graph below illustrates the differences over 5 years for 50 Professional Edition mailboxes with premium support.

The Perpetual licence becomes lower total cost at the 3rd renewal . The actual breakeven point varies according to product type and number of mailboxes but this is a good assumption. We would be happy to provide bespoke illustrations for your proposed installation size. We do not account here for price increases.

You can’t mix and match Perpetual and Subscription contracts for the same installation, nor can you convert a Perpetual to a Subscription. In rare cases, we have seen Zimbra allow an unused portion of a subscription be creditted against a Perpetual purchase by the same End User.

As well as access to Zimbra Support, the optional Perpetual Support and Product Maintenance (SnS) for the first renewal and beyond allows the software to be upgraded, all major and minor releases as well as bug-fixes and security patches. Without this in place your installation becomes static. If your support lapses and you need to upgrade, you will have to reinstate the support contract including all back payments to the end of contract date and pay a minimum 20% reinstatement charge.

If your Subscription lapses, which happens if you don’t renew intime, you will get some expiry notices to begin with.. If the new licence is not installed in time, the Network Edition functions will cease to work within 30 days of the licence expiration, reverting to the Open Source version features. After expiration, you will not be able to add any more users to the server even if you have spare mailbox capacity. A renewal after expiry will usually be for the expired contract end date.

If you purchase a number of Perpetual mailboxes, and some years later decide you have too many, you can complete a legal process to destroy a portion of your licence, thus reducing ongoing Support and Maintenance payments. This really is a one way process and if your requirement grows again, you will have to re-purchase those perpetual mailboxes. Mailboxes can be added to a perpetual licence at any time as long as the SnS is current.

A Subscription contract can reduce mailboxes at the contract renewal date with no penalty and can increase at any time.