Knowledge Base

Plesk License Multi-use Prevention for Partners: billing after 30 days of multi-use

To prevent the usage of Plesk licenses on multiple servers (which is against the Plesk End-User License Agreement), the algorithm for identifying such licenses was optimized from November 2020. As a result, from December 2020 onwards, mid-month, Plesk notifies Partners about which licenses from their inventory are used on multiple servers.

Note: If multi-use is established as having continued for more than 30 days, the corresponding license fee will be charged for each server that uses the same license.

Report Interpretation

The reports delivered to the billing addresses mid-month include a list of all licenses identified for multi-use at the moment when the check was performed.

If the multi-use type corresponding to a license is marked as "confirmed", the situation has been ongoing for more than 30 days and will be correspondingly charged for, as described above.
The licenses used on multiple servers for less than 30 days are marked as "potential" multi-use. They will not be charged, however, they are a warning.
If no report is received, it means no multi-use licenses were detected for the respective account.

Note: If a license is used on multiple servers even for one single day, it already violates the Plesk End-User License Agreement. The 30 days established threshold was set to confirm license multi-use, as well as act as a buffer period to adjust the situation. 30 days is a sufficient time period for Plesk to confirm multi-use, as well as for partners to stop multi-use and/or to forewarn their customers about extra billing. However, mind that Plesk is constantly improving the frequency and accuracy of server reporting. That is why the duration of allowed multi-use, which is 30 days at the moment, can be changed at any time.

Note: Potential multi-use licenses should be checked in Partner Central > Manage Licenses > PLSK.01234567.0000 > Instances tab. Check how many servers are running this license and for how long (check IP address and last date columns). Actions should be taken to the licenses, which run on 2 or more servers simultaneously up to the date the check is done.

Note: Potential multiuse is counted for 42 days. Within these 42 days, it might be not simultaneous, but if more, than 1 server was used for more, than 5 days - it will be counted as potential multiuse.