FileMaker Licensing Case Study

This post is the second part in a series. If you haven’t already, please take a look at part 1.

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Case Study

What if you are currently using perpetual (VLA) or annual (AVLA) licenses? Should you switch to FileMaker Licensing for Teams (FLT)?

Consider the current and future states of who your users are and how they access FileMaker. Then price out each licensing option, keeping the following in mind:

• Price alone is not the only indication of what the best licensing option is.
• There are no guarantees that the price won’t change.

Here’s a case study of the situation that one of our clients faced:

• Purchased perpetual licenses
  • 4 Pro – Nov. 2014
  • 1 Pro – Dec. 2014
  • 1 FMS – Jun. 2015
  • 5 concurrent connections (Go/WebDirect) – Aug. 2015
  • 3 Pro – Aug. 2015
• Users
  • 8 total Pro users, unlikely to increase.
  • 23 potential Go users, but only 8 active currently.
  • Go users work on a local file, then connect to FileMaker Server (FMS) to sync. Their connection to FMS is infrequent and doesn’t last a long time; i.e., a concurrent connections 5-pack is sufficient.
• Maintenance contract is current for Pro but expired for FMS + connections.
• Currently on v14. Would like to upgrade to v15, but cannot because of expired maintenance contract.
• In addition to upgrading to v15, our client wants to be able to upgrade to future versions as those get released.
• What to do: Switch to annual? FLT? Stick with perpetual (VLA)?

How to determine what to do? Begin by pricing out each option for the next several years.

Switch to FLT – new licenses:

• Named users: 8 Pro users + 8 Go users
• 16 users: requires 20-user pack = $2,508/year
  • The $2,508 amount is from the FileMaker Store website

Switch to annual (AVLA) – new licenses:

• 8 Pro users = $864/year
  • $864 is from the FileMaker Store website
• 1 FMS + 5 max concurrent Go users: 5-user pack = 3 x FLT price ($888) = $2,664/year
• Total: $3,528/year

Stay with perpetual (VLA) – existing licenses:

• Renew expired maintenance for FMS + 5 connections: $994 one time
  • We were able to renew the expired maintenance, because it expired after v15 was released, and v16 is not out yet. Otherwise, our client would have had to pay the entire upfront price again.
  • Renewing an expired maintenance contract costs twice as much (40% of the initial upfront cost).
  • Why $994?
    • 40% * ($1,044 FMS + $1,440 Connections)
    • $1,044 is from the FileMaker Store website
    • $1,440 is the old price for a perpetual 5-pack of concurrent connections:
      $8/user/month * 12 months * 3 years * 5 users
• Ongoing maintenance for 8 Pro + 1 FMS + 5 connections: $1,015/year
  • Why $1,015?
    • 20% * ($2,592 Pro + $1,044 FMS + $1,440 Connections)
    • $2,592 is from the FileMaker Store website
  • This will increase to $2,326/year when the grandfathered concurrent connections price lock expires in May 2018.
  • Why $2,326?
    • $20% * ($2,592 Pro + $1,044 FMS + $7,992 Connections)
    • $7,992 is the new price for a perpetual 5-pack of concurrent connections:
      $44.40/user/month * 12 months * 3 years * 5 users

Projected cumulative cost for the next five years:

Year	FLT	AVLA	VLA
2016	$2,508	$3,528	$994
2017	$5,016	$7,056	$2,009
2018	$7,524	$10,584	$3,024
2019	$10,032	$14,112	$5,350
2020	$12,540	$17,640	$7,676

Recommendation to our Client

For our client, given the parameters that we outlined at the beginning, it made sense to stay with the perpetual license model.

Notes:

• If you have perpetual (VLA) licenses, you will not get any credit or a discount when switching to FLT or AVLA.
• The amounts shown above (and elsewhere in this blog post) are based on list prices available from https://store.filemaker.com and current as of November 2016.