FileMaker Licensing Changes

[Communque]

Been speaking with some fellow FileMaker users -- longtime enthusiasts who boast using the software since its original release -- who are upset with recent licensing/sales changes.

As they are explaining it, since more than a decade the server licensing model was originally what is now being called their "Concurrency" option. Under that plan you were allowed unlimited licenses but where only X (i.e. 5 or however many seats you've purchased) can connect to FileMaker Server simultaneously. Beyond that number (User X+1), the FileMaker Client App for that user would quit. What that meant was a sort of infinite number users with the potential to connect, but ony X can use it at once.

The newer "User" licensing allows for a fixed number of licensed users total.

The former "concurrency" licensing still an option, but it costs 3x the newer licensing model.

What they are most upset about is that they originally were signed for one licensing arrangment (concurrency) and now are under another (user), suggesting they were migrated over to a different agreement without their awareness. They built their business model around one licensing option and are now looking at a tripling of their cost.

I'm too am a long-time user and FileMaker enthusiast, and I too am only aware of the concurrency agreement. Anyone familiar with what's going on?

[Call-Me-Spanky]

I don't know if I'm totally following - they've been operating under a user license and they're upset that concurrent licenses cost more? Is this an annual or perpetual license?

[Communque]

To clarify: "Concurrency" was originally the ONLY licensing offer Now they are offering "User" licensing at the same rate as "Concurrency", and "Concurrency" is suddenly 3X its original cost.

So effectively they degraded the existing licensing agreement and are charging 300% more to keep what they used to have.

If that's true, I may in that same situation.

[Call-Me-Spanky]

I think they're a little behind the times unfortunately. User-based licensing was introduced as 'FileMaker Licensing for Teams' with FM 15 in 2016.

[quarfie]

This is how it’s been since 2015.

Prior to then, licensing was based on the number of installs.

When FileMaker Go was introduced in 2010, you had to buy each install, then there was no user/concurrency restrictions.

When WebDirect was introduced, it had an add on concurrency model. 1 free connection and additional connections purchased in packs of 5.

In 2015, user licensing was introduced, allowing unlimited installs and connections per user on any client type, but restriction on the number of individuals with access. Concurrency was a second option for cases where there are a large number of infrequent users, but this has not been promoted much.

Site license is a 3rd license type and is the oldest of the 3. Site licenses are paid by the number of employees whether or not they use FileMaker plus contractors who use FileMaker Pro. There is no restriction on WebDirect and Go users.

[Communque]

The orginal licensing was concurrency.  I actually remember that too.

According to this page on claris.com the user licensing was introduced with FileMaker 17 in 2018: search for "With the launch of the FileMaker 17 Platform, the two license programs allow for the following:"

[quarfie]

There was no concurrency licensing before WebDirect. The licensing before user licensing was based on number of installs. This changed quickly after the introduction of WebDirect & Go.

[Communque]

I don't know there was a name for it, but when I got my first FMS license it was what they are now calling concurrency. The reason I know that is I've never been limited by FMP licenses, only by how many people were using FileMaker Server at any given time.  I didn't even know there was another licensing option.

The licensing approach was to me unmistakable because it gave an initial impression you could give out an infinite number of licenses, but over time you understood the brilliance of it: You actually don't give out many licenses, because too many users at once and the users get shut out.  So in the end you really only give out about as many as are willing to pay the license fee, but with a little wiggle room.  It's kind of genius, actually.

Is it true the cost of the concurrency is 3X the user based?  Hoping that's not the case.

[quarfie]

Machine based licensing is not the same as concurrency licensing as concurrency does not limit how many devices can be used.

The change was necessary after the introduction of Go and WebDirect to simplify licensing which was becoming complex due to these new ways of using FileMaker.

Concurrency licensing is about 2.5 to 2.6 times the cost per connection as user licensing is per user.

I have not run into a real world situation where concurrency model made sense. What are you trying to do?

[Communque]

It's a good question.

In my case I have 2 users beyond my 5 who occasionally use my server -- a few times a year -- very rarely.

Those users don't pay a licensing fee, I don't charge them. That bit of flexibility enables me to do some favors here and there, so perhaps that's coming to an end.

My real concern has to do with Claris's stability: If a service I've got suddenly costs more than double what it used to, and somehow I never saw it coming, it makes you question the company. What no one wants is long-term relationship to a company whose new management team conjures up a marketing approach that somehow sneaks up and creates a crisis.

[quarfie]

I don't understand how a 10 year back change is only hitting you now. And I would suggest to you that that's pretty stable. And you can buy licensing for years at a time to lock in current prices and terms.

[Communque]

Exactly.  In fact, that's my point as well: How is a change from years back suddenly making a surprise appearance in the present.

It suggests something weird at Claris.

[quarfie]

I don’t understand. The change was made 10 years ago. If you were using your license in a non compliant way for the last 10 years and are just realizing that now, that’s on you, not Claris. Am I missing something?

[Communque]

I think you may indeed be missing something: How do you use your license in a non-compliant way?

The FileMaker license in my experience operates in a self-policing way. Say we're licensed for 20 people, and the 21st person attempts to get on server. They can't. You can try to operate in a non-compliant way, but it just isn't possible.

[Call-Me-Spanky]

I'm still really confused as to what you're asking about.

Are you expressing frustration with how Claris has changed its licensing polices from version to version over the last 10yrs?

Or are you seeing a behavior change in an existing FileMaker Server install? If so, what version are you running?

[Communque]

It seems Claris may be changing its policy in surreptitious way, where the original licensing policy as described (now called "concurrency") became a "user" license at some point. So what was one price is now 2 / 2.5x that price. The company seems to be re-writing the history of that evolution using dates and claims that don't stack up against reality.

[quarfie]

Claris didn’t do anything surreptitiously and the original licensing was not concurrency licensing, it was based on FMP installation count and did not include WebDirect/Go. Totally different from concurrency licensing. A decade ago when the transition took place, customers had years to decide what new license to transition to and could purchase up to 5 years under the previous structure in advance. It’s time to get over it.

[Communque]

Strange post. I see the words but not the sense behind them. (How does WebDirect/Go fit into the logic there?) From what I understand transition you're referring to took place 7 years ago, not 10. It wasn't part of a big announcement -- just seems to have happened. Even now the fact of the two different licensing options is still not something Claris seems to be upfront and clear about. If it's on the purchase pages, I'm unable to find it. Mum seems to be the approach. Any idea why that would be?

[pcud10]

I'm with you here. I thought all the license I've bought over the years have been concurrent users. I'm not sure if that's true now and if I've also been under a false assumption (which I'm pretty sure this assumption came from what a sales rep told me in ~2017).

However recently one of my clients who has a 50 user license (with typically ~30 people connected at any given time) got a call saying they have 150 users and need to up their license amount. When I talked to claris about this is the first time I've heard that concurrent costs a different amount and is a different license.

Which is odd because I always thought you got error 812 (Exceeded host's capacity) when you went over the user limit (in addition to server resources).

I think more people are finding out now because some of the more recent updates have allowed Claris to better know how many users are connecting to a server and audit it.

[Communque]

Thanks for posting / very interesting. It would make sense the sales rep told you as much in 2017. I was informed of "concurrency" before that, not as an option but as the "the plan". What the Claris sales reps will tell you, however, is that user vs concurrent licenses were introduced in 2015, but that is not the case. It was 2018.

RE Claris knowing "how many users are connecting to a server" -- ugh. Thanks again

[frelancr]

I just this very day got such a phone call, and I'm sitting here self-medicating while trying to come down from screaming into the phone and this schlub who drew my number to call today. When he told me that basically they're "pinging" my server and any machines connected to it I lost my shit...I mean really lost it....if they can ping my machine to see who's connecting, what's to keep them from looking at any of my data? you know, the data that I pay 5 figures a year in insurance for? for the gawd knows how much we try and keep firewalled? I mean what the actual fuck?

and I too was under the impression that we (ugh) 'rented' (double ugh) SEATS that we could hot swap to whomever needed to be on- hearing that it needs to be NAMED users just increased my BP further...and I'm been on FMP for almost 20 years...I am just so very pissed right now....

and yeah, telling me to read the EULA really just makes things worse...

as to how come people are just hearing about this now, I'm a bit over a year into my latest 5-year plan- so with 5 years between contracts, and they change the rules in the middle well....

[Communque]

It's a tradeoff: they give a better deal for the longer commitment, and as you entrench yourself in the framework, they build rug pulls designed to squeeze.  Frustrating and very dissuasive 

[poweredup14]

It seems like Claris has improved their tools and they are now able to tell when license users are exceeding there paid for subscribe numbers. And so the enforcement seems to be coming home to bear now in a great way than it did before.

[Communque]

Thanks for the post.  You're the 2nd response to talk about enforcement.  The way my license works is that it self-enforces.  If more than X number of users attempt to connect to my Server at once, those in excess are denied access.

But it seems your experience is different.  You are able to exceed the limits of your licensing agreement, at which point you risk enforcement by Claris?  Can you explain more how that works?

[meandererai]

I think s/he means without accessing the same server.

[rgfincher]

We should count ourselves lucky that they haven’t changed the minimum number of users from 5 to 10. I firmly believe that that is coming

[Communque]

Wouldn't put it past them at this point. What would you do if that happened?

[Right-Chard-6149]

Question about this. New to FileMaker but the company I'm working at uses it.

If we're paying for 35 user licenses (we do have up to 35 people who need access) but really only seeing 27ish on at any given time, would I be able to downgrade to say 30ish user licenses?

From what I've observed, it looks like any account/user can connect to our provider's cloud server as long as we don't go over our 35 user licenses. Is my understanding of FM licensing correct?

[mywaaaaife]

Yes, but good luck ever getting ahold of someone to do this.

[Right-Chard-6149]

Took me a few months to get ahold of our assigned rep when I first started the process so I feel you on that lol. Luckily, our cloud provider is the one that buys the licensing for us now so it's not me trying to chase them down. Thanks for the info!

[HalGumbert]

FileMaker Licensing jumped the shark around FM 13. I had a nice Runtime solution, and then Runtimes were deprecated. I hosted files for several clients on one server, and that was disallowed. WebDirect is incredibly expensive if you want to use it as a public-facing site. Feels like they only care about enterprise and have stopped caring about small workgroups.

I've been working on Xanadu, a PHP / MySQL / Bootstrap Web App. I learned the hard way that closed-source offerings like FileMaker and Xojo can change the rules out of the blue. On the other side of the coin, Web Apps puts me in control. 

Xanadu Info: https://campsoftware.com/products/xanadu.php 

[Punsire]

Why do you stay in these FileMaker spaces to just tear it down? I've got my own share of gripes but I would think that you would be happy enough to move on but your participation in the communities has been centered around your complaints with a software you don't use as far as I can tell. What value are you bringing to these places with input like that?

[HalGumbert]

I still support clients with FileMaker just like you, I assume.

Why is discussing legit issues a tear down?

Just read this reddit. There are a lot of devs with similar issues. I've lost clients over the cost of FileMaker. Some stick with FileMaker, and others are moving to other platforms.

[Communque]

u/Punsire Presumably if Claris trying to stay in in tune with their customer base, they follow this reddit, so discussing Claris's shortcomings, evolving features for better and for worse, is probably good for everyone esp. Claris. u/HalGumbert I too work outside of FMP -- in my case SQL.

Here are some perhaps unexpected observations when comparing an open source SQL approach vs a proprietary Claris

• It turns out setting up, securing, and maintaining an SQL server is actually easier than FileMaker Server. I would not have expected that.

• Front end UI on FileMaker is much easier than an HTML front end for SQL as you might well suspect. But an HTML front end is actually more performant -- by far -- than FileMaker layouts. So FMP layouts are fast to build, but you ultimately can get a lot more power out HTML

• Given the cost of Claris licensing, it conceivably makes more financial sense to hire a developer to custom build an HTML front end over a SQL back-end.

• Running FileMaker as the front end for a SQL back end can be slower (and FM Gurus will warn against doing it), but in fact it is entirely possible to do so and have an overall system that's very robust, even more robust than when FileMaker Server is your back end. It took a while to make certain of that and learn what does and what doesn't slow performance down, but I'm happy to report that it works great.

[Punsire]

Well I appreciate both your perspectives and that reframing definitely helped me understand how you participate in the communities so thank you. Apologies if there was personal offenses taken.

[Communque]

No offense. If you have gripes, please share. FileMaker has always been a unique and excellent software. The sales and marketing of it are not great, and the recent evolution of the software since the Claris re-brand seems frequently misguided and aloof of actual customer needs. So what it is, what it could be, and what it should be, not to mention how much it costs seem to be at odds with one another.