Perpetual Licensing: How It Stacks Up

As you assess HR software solutions, you are likely to be faced with the decision of what type of licensing model best suits your organization – perpetual or subscription (SaaS).

Today we’ll take a look at perpetual licensing and its benefits.

With a perpetual license an organization can deploy the software on its premises or it can opt to have the software hosted by an outside service provider – usually the vendor of the software. In this case, an additional annual or monthly hosting fee is required to have the vendor host (install and support) the software in a secure server environment. With some vendors, an optional maintenance fee also entitles customers to free product upgrades and helpline/technical support. Since the customer “owns” the software they may move their installation to any hosting environment including in house.

On-premise deployments normally come with a ‘one-time’ – or ‘perpetual’ license fee. Companies don’t rent the system for a fixed period of time. A perpetual license is defined as a ‘one-time’ fee that entitles clients to use software perpetually.

For organizations planning to implement any type of HR software that offers multiple licensing options, both perpetual licensing and SaaS options offer unique benefits.The key is that you take the time assess which option will best address their organization’s business needs. I’d recommend that you look for vendors that offer multiple options so you are able to get an unbiased assessment of how that solution and what delivery model will work best in your particular scenario.

Tomorrow I’ll provide a run down of the two licensing models when compared head to head.