The License Manager feature is a tool whose primary function is to control the usage of your Countly licenses and their billing agreements. 

Benefits of License Manager

Enabling the License Manager will let you see how the billing metric that rules your license agreement gets affected by the usage that your teams make of Countly, ultimately determining your billing cycles and usage tiers.

You can then use this information to determine if/when your licenses need to be upgraded or downgraded. 

In addition, you can add new licenses directly from within the License Manager, control the usage history of all your licenses - active or expired - and gain an overview of the change history of your licenses. Thus, you get overarching control over everything that directly impacts your billing with Countly.

Getting Started 

To enable your License Manager, in the Sidebar, go to Management > Feature Management and enable the License Manager toggle. 

License Manager Overview

Licensing Tiers

The License Manager allows you to visualize the tiers that define the level of usage of Countly by your instance. A licensing tier gets decided when your license agreement gets signed with Countly, usually alongside your account manager. 

While tiers are different for each client, they depend on a billing metric, as explained below.

For example, Tier 1 for a client can be 1.000 data points, and for some other clients, Tier 1 can be 30.000.000 data points.

Billing Metrics

In Countly agreements, there can be five different billing metrics, with one being chosen to regulate the overall billing agreement during the licensing period:

• Unlimited usage
• Monthly active users per month 
• Average monthly active users per year
• Data points per month
• Cumulative data points per year

License Status

The License Manager lists licenses under two different statuses:

1. Active when your license is active and valid under the current terms of your licensing agreement.
2. Expired if your license still needs to be renewed.

Using License Manager

To use the License Manager feature, go to Management > License Manager, where you will be shown the screen below:

On the screen, you get access to the following:

1. + Add License button: Opens the drawer to add new licenses.
2. License Information: Shows an overview of the current license.
3. See Tier Information button:   Opens a pop-up detailing the tiers based on billing metrics and their corresponding fees
4. License Utilization tab: shows the usage of your existing and previous licenses.
5. License History tab: lists all the changes and renewals of the licenses.
6. License utilization graph: Timeline showcasing the license validity period, its corresponding tier and billing metric, and its status. Each graph varies depending on the billing metric applicable to your licensing agreement. 
7. Chart view dropdown: Lets you change your chart based on Monthly usage or cumulative Total usage. Note that its visibility also varies depending on the billing metric applicable to your licensing agreement.

Adding a New License

The + Add License button will let the global admins add a license (upgrade, downgrade, or renew). The license will be created by Countly Account Managers and delivered to the global admin.

License Information

The License Information header offers an overview with key information related to the current license. That includes:

• Current Status
• Billing Metric information.
• Billing Info shows the billing amount, according to the tier applicable for your license.
• Current Usage shows the cumulative usage percentage of licenses for the current billing cycle.
• Due Date, including the amount of time left for your license to expire.

Tier Information

When the See Tier Information link is clicked, the following pop-up will be displayed. It gives detailed tier information about the license tiers which are available for the client as determined by their license agreement, their billing metric, and billing cycles.

License Utilization

In this tab, global admins of your organization can see the utilization of their active and previous licenses. 

• The active license will be shown at the top. There can be only one active license per client.
• The expired or old licenses will be listed as individual charts in the Previous Periods section.

 Every graph contains

• The time period of the license during which the license is/was valid.
• The tier and upper limit of the billing metric that was set for the license. 

Depending on the billing metrics (as explained below), there will be dropdown selectors that affect the graph view.

There can be 5 scenarios for showing graphs according to the billing metrics. In the following sections, you can see cases for each scenario. All cases will be covered below. 

Data Points per Month

• In the charts/graphs, two views will be selectable from the dropdown, as seen above. The elements of the dropdown will be:
• Monthly Usage (first image shown above)
• Total Usage (second picture shown above)
• If the “Monthly Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like in the first image above. The data point (DP) usage for each month will be shown.
• There will be a horizontal tier limit line that will show the tier limit of the license.
• If the usage in some month(s) is over the tier limit, then the part of the bar above the tier limit line will be red.
• If the “Total Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like the above in the second picture above.
• The line chart will show the server’s cumulative DP usage.

Cumulative Data Points per Year 

• In the charts/graphs, two views will be selectable from the dropdown, as seen above. The elements of the dropdown will be:
• Monthly Usage (first image shown above)
• Total Usage (second picture shown above)
• If the “Monthly Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like in the first image above, showing the data point (DP) usage for each month. 
• If the “Total Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like in the second picture above.
• The line chart will show the server’s cumulative DP usage.
• There will be a horizontal tier limit line that will show the tier limit of the license. (in this scenario, the limit will be the total DP number agreed with the license)
• If the DP usage exceeds the tier limit, the line will turn red.

Monthly Active Users per Month

• The graph shows the data, where every month will be independent of each other.
• A horizontal tier limit line shows the tier limit of the license.
• If the usage in some month(s) is over the tier limit, then the part of the bar which is above the tier limit line will be red.

Average Monthly Active Users per Year 

• The graph shows a monthly breakdown of the Average Monthly Active Users. The calculation for the months will be like in the next example: if we are in the 6th month of the license, the total of 6 months' Monthly Active Users count will be divided by 6 to come up with the 6th month’s result of Average Monthly Active Users.
• A horizontal tier limit line that will show the tier limit of the license.
• If the usage in some month(s) is over the tier limit, then the part of the bar which is above the tier limit line will be red.

Unlimited Usage

• In the charts/graphs, two views will be selectable from the dropdown, as seen above. The elements of the dropdown will be:
• Monthly Usage (first image shown above)
• Total Usage (second picture shown above)
• In this unlimited scenario, as an exception,  no Tier information will be displayed as it’s not applicable.
• If the “Monthly Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like in the first picture above, showing the data point (DP) usage for each month.
• If the “Total Usage” option is selected:
• The view will be like in the second picture above.
• The line chart will show the server’s cumulative DP usage.

License History

From this tab, global admins of your organization will be able to see the history of upgrades, renewals, or downgrades of their licenses. 

• For upgrades, the example format will be like this: 

• You upgraded your tier from 50,000 monthly data points to 100,000 monthly data points. 

• For renewals, the example format will be like this:

• You renewed your license for 100,000 monthly active users for the period 20 September 2022 - 2023.

• For downgrades, the example format will be like this:

• You downgraded your tier from 150,000 monthly data points to 100,000 monthly data points. 

Note that when you renew your license, the old license will be moved under “Previous Periods” in the License Utilization tab.

Similarly, when you upgrade or downgrade your license, the active license will be updated to the new threshold, and also the threshold/limit on the chart for the corresponding billing metrics will be updated accordingly. However, it will still be the same license.

On-screen Notifications

The License Manager feature displays notifications directly on Countly under two scenarios:

• Inactive licenses, if a Countly Enterprise license is either expired or not yet activated.
• Over Tier Limit, if the billing metric that applies to the license has exceeded its set tier.

FAQ and Troubleshooting

Does using the License Manager impact my data point usage?

No, visualizing any sort of information through this feature does not consume any data point.

Who gets on-screen notifications?

As explained above, notifications will be shown on Countly under certain conditions. However, the notification type changes depending on the role of the Countly user:

• Global admins will be able to log in to Countly but will then be redirected to the License Manager so they can visualize what is causing the notification.
• Other users with lower authorization levels (i.e., Admins and Users) will show an error notification upon login and be prompted to contact their global admins.

I keep getting emails, why?

The License Manager feature keeps global admins of Countly licenses informed should licenses be approaching their expiration date (i.e., Due Date) or if they are operating near or over their tier limit.

In both cases, these warning emails are sent regularly before and after those scenarios.

Who can access the information in the License Manager feature?

Global admins and Admins have the power to determine which users have access to this and any feature in Management > User Management. You can read more about user permissions here.

A test server is added to the production server. Does it require a separate license?

No, the same existing license will be re-used on the test server.

What should be done in the following scenario?

Over our Tier Limit 

An email will be sent to the global admin of your Countly instance instructing them to contact your dedicated Countly Account Manager, review your instance with them, and proceed with the best solution for your specific use case.

Reach Tier Limit

The best course of action is to contact your dedicated Countly Account Manager. With them, you can review your instance and determine the best solution