Number of licenses required

I am at the point of deploying an app with 2 users on the PRO Plan. They will not have Author Access but only log in with User access
As Author I will not use the App as the Users would, but will stay on as Author if they need enhancements or if they experience any issues.
My questions is: Do I need 3 PRO Licenses which includes me as Author or only 2 for the Users that will log in?

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13 REPLIES 13

Steve
Participant V

This question would be well addressed to sales@appsheet.com.

I have the same question.

LeventK
Participant V

@Henry_Scott
As long as you donโ€™t run the app on your mobile device or on your desktop, just access the app thru the appsheet editor, then you need only 2 Pro licences. Bear in mind that even-if you launch the app as full screen preview from the editor, than it will be logged as a distinct user and therefore require an additional licence.

Sooooo, develop app to use in full screen mode require an extra license. How can we test the layout in full screen mode, without RUN the full screen mode ???

And also a miss click while developing the app will require an extra license too, as we know, the user count are made by monthly unique users that logged in at least one time.

As a long time appsheet developer, i think this โ€œnewโ€ developer account user license policy are not fair.

@Diogo_Cacho You can test the full screen functionality when the app is in a prototype mode.

So that means you cannot test any new functionality in fullscreen on a deployed app?

I think this is something that needs figured out better. I know about the Manage->Monitor->Usage Statistics screen to see who all is using the app, but is there anywhere to go in the editor that shows all license-required users?

I have a client who messaged me about a license upgrade email, and it appears I have been included in the user count, even though Iโ€™m just the developer. I will follow Steveโ€™s suggestion and email sales about this.

Yes thatโ€™s correct. When you use the app as a developer, you will be counted if you use the app with the Appsheet app or with the full screen view and the app is deployed.

Iโ€™m afraid we donโ€™t have that kind of list because your licenses are not tied to any user. We donโ€™t count users in that way.

Iโ€™ve just noticed this recently. I think there should be an exception if the developer is using delegated billing though. Once the partner account is linked to the clientโ€™s, it should be easy to filter those users out, right?

It was also very confusing to my client as to why I had to charge them for two licenses when they only had a single user. I didnโ€™t realize this at first either, and misquoted them on the monthly cost.

Aslo, since the partner developer is the one directly charged by AppSheet, itโ€™s as if we have to pay to subscribe to our clients! I just pass the fee along to them now that I know this, but it confuses new clients all the time trying to explain why.

@Aleksi, any chance that partner developers could get a free pass, since you do have the ability to filter our email addresses? This could encourage more devโ€™s to become partners!

This makes a lot of sense, I think we need to consider clearer licensing rules for partner development soon, but itโ€™s currently dependent on how our user metrics are setup and tied to mobile/browser app usage - I donโ€™t believe anything has changed recently, but let me know if youโ€™re seeing discrepancies. Like @Steve mentioned, situations/questions like this should go to sales@appsheet.com, theyโ€™re best equipped to help with licensing requests.

Well thatโ€™s news to me. So what sort of process does the Appsheet team intend for app developers to take when adding new features or making edits to a deployed app?

Let me add some color to this. It is a complicated thing to track app usage. The code we have to do this has not changed in quite a while.
Basically, we want to avoid counting โ€œdevโ€ usage but we want to count โ€œend-userโ€ usage. So we approximate that to assuming that anyone using the app in the editor is a dev and anyone using the app in a full-screen browser or phone is an end-user.
Of course, this can get it wrong on the fringes in both directions โ€” sometimes it overcounts and sometimes it undercounts.
However, we never alert on an account if it is 1 over its user count. There is always some โ€œslopโ€ provided so that we donโ€™t get too noisy in the alerting. So if it is only one extra developer who happens to access the app full-screen, then you should not see an alert on account of this.
Thanks

Thanks a bunch for that extra info @praveen, it helps a lot.

Good to hear about the 1 user wiggle room. Makes sense as to why Iโ€™ve not heard from other clients before, but this particular one was asked to upgrade from 3 to 5 licenses.

Might I suggest a separate, but mostly identical, fullscreen app emulator accessible only from the editor?

I agree with @Marc_Dillon. Itโ€™s difficult/impossible to test dashboards in anything but a full screen view. I Like @morganโ€™s new โ€œquick switchโ€ emulator from Mobile to Tablet. A fuller screen version would be nice. Something that fully hides the Central editing controls and gives 80-90% screen real estate to the emulator.

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