Besides the Educational Edition, all others can be used for commercial purposes. Please read this article for recommendations. That means a company can legally use pretty much any edition, however there are many details to consider.

Please read carefully before making a decision

Individual licenses were not designed for use for a team at a company (Eco, Pro, Premium, Freelancer and Lifetime edition). The lack of support, security and network deployment features that are essential for proper network installation and version control could end up being a headache down the road. 

Node-locked vs floating licenses

Individual licenses are node-locked and designed for individual use, so for example having 20 Pro Edition licenses, would require a company to activate each machine individually with a different keycode. A company would have to manage which keycode is paired with which machine, as randomly using them would end up locking users out. 

Enterprise Edition uses floating licenses and the activation is done seamlessly on a local license server in the network. Animators won't need to do anything other than launching animBot to get started.

Installation and updates

Individual editions must be installed locally, on the user machine. It's designed that way so that the user has full control over installation and updates. As you can tell, it can become unbearable to manage installation and upgrading for many users. Enterprise Edition can be installed in a central location in the network, just like any other python module.

Keycode exposure risks

The keycode is much like a password for an individual license, if that eventually gets exposed to an employee, one could potentially use it at home or spread around, invalidating the activation at the studio. There is no keycode for the Enterprise Edition, the system is completely different and there is no risk of an employee using a company license elsewhere.

Internet connection

The Enterprise Edition doesn't connect to the internet unless a license administrator expressly want to. 

Individual editions on the other hand, attempt to connect to the internet in order to submit bug reports and check for updates. A company would have to block that on their end if that's a requirement for its security standards. 

Downtime risks

Activating individual licenses when the internet is not available can be done, but it takes a few extra steps. Users will be requested to validate the license, once every 30 days, which can be done at another machine or phone with internet connection. That activation is dependent on the animBot server, and although it’s fairly stable, it’s far from being a Google server and could be down or unreachable from time to time.

Enterprise Edition works completely offline and the license management is handled entirely by the RLM system, once activated, the uptime is entirely on your end. 

Support

One to one support is offered exclusively to Premium and Enterprise Edition license holders, so that I can be always here to make sure animBot is working smoothly for a company at all times. 

Pricing

The pricing scheme for Enterprise edition is also more flexible, a company can pay via wire transfer or credit card, there is no recurrent payment automatically setup, the subscription term can go from one month up to one year. There is also more flexibility on expanding and contracting the number of licenses. When adding new licenses, all licenses are part of the same term, so it's easy for a company to manage. 

For individual licenses, every purchase is a different subscription term, with a different expiration date, so the management of the amount of licenses could become very laborious overtime. 

Features

In terms of features for animators, there is no differences at this time (Eco and Lifetime Editions do have limitations, please read this article for details). In the near future there will also be differences in terms of features between Enterprise and individual editions. Team Sharing features is planned to be implemented that will allow users to share poses, settings, hotkeys, scripts, etc.

Final notes

Bottom line, I personally would say that Enterprise Edition will always be better for a company, no matter what. The return of investment is gonna be so high anyways, considering the value that animBot itself is gonna add to the company.

For a team of 10 users or less, a company could save a few extra bucks by using the Pro Edition, if willing to deal with the risks and hurdles mentioned above, but for a team bigger than that, it will definitely backfire eventually. In addition to that, Eco Edition and Lifetime Edition are definitely not a good choice for professional use, they have limitations and are designed for low income individuals and/or infrequent users only. Please read this article for more details. Also, please read this article for recommendations on how to purchase multiple licenses at animbot.ca.

At the end of the day, I just want customers to be happy with the tool. So whatever edition end up being decided and the team are happy with, I'm good with it!

If you have any additional questions, please contact me at [email protected].