Licensing

This page presents the licensing options available for users using the Syside family of tools and discusses technical differences between them.

License Types

Since version 0.8.0, Syside uses licensing version 0.3.2, which supports the following license types:

  1. Subscription licenses. With subscription licenses, Syside requires an internet connection to connect to our licensing servers to validate the license. The Troubleshooting section, License Server Connectivity, describes the steps for checking whether our licensing servers are accessible from your computer. Currently, we support three types of subscription licenses:

    1. Free. Using Syside Editor requires a free subscription license, which is currently obtained automatically when installing Syside Editor. The free license allows using Syside Editor without an internet connection for two weeks. After this period, Syside Editor is automatically deactivated. If Syside Editor manages to connect to our licensing servers, it will automatically reactivate itself.

    2. Paid: User Computer. This license type allows a single user to use Syside Modeler and Automator on their computer. It comes with Syside plans Solo and Business. With this license, every time a Syside tool is launched, it contacts our licensing servers to validate the license. After each successful validation, the result is cached to enable using Syside when the internet connection is temporarily lost.

    3. Paid: Automator in CI/CD. This license type allows using Syside Automator in CI/CD pipelines. It comes with the Syside Business plan. Similarly to the previous license type, Syside Automator contacts our licensing servers to validate the license every time it is launched.

  2. Air-gapped licenses. Air-gapped licenses are intended for environments where reaching our licensing servers is not possible. Activating an air-gapped license requires a manual process, described in Offline Installation, using the syside-license tool. When the license is activated by following the steps described in that section, Syside will not attempt to connect to our licensing servers.

syside-license and Syside Version Compatibility

Note

From Syside version 0.8.0, Syside can obtain license files itself. Therefore, from this version onwards syside-license tool is dedicated only for air-gapped environments.

For managing licenses, we provide syside-license – a tool that can be used to obtain and import license files. The version of syside-license is strongly coupled with the version of Syside. The following table shows which versions are compatible with each other.

Version compatibility between syside-license and Syside

License Checker version

Compatible Syside version

v0.3.2 and newer

v0.8.0 and newer

v0.2.0 - v0.2.1

v0.6.0 - v0.7.2

Which Licensing Should I Choose?

For all customers in non-air-gapped environments, we recommend using subscription licenses because they are easier to set up and manage. If you are in an air-gapped environment or are unsure which licensing approach would be best for you, please contact us at syside.support@sensmetry.com.