As longtime users of the free and open source PostBooks® accounting solution know, we've recently started requiring a license key for users of the software. Our policy has been that anyone who requires just a single concurrent user can get that PostBooks® key automatically here. For more than one concurrent user, we've been asking you to fill out the same form, and we've been following up directly with you to (hopefully) better understand your needs, and how we might be able to help.
Effective Tuesday, September 1, 2015, we're making a slight modification to that policy. Qualified companies who need two to four (2-4) concurrent users will still receive a free license key with our compliments, whether or not they choose to engage commercially with us. But from here on, we'll require that five (5) and more concurrent users purchase a commercial license to the software.
Whoa! bellowed the hordes of free software puritans across the interwebs. You can't do that!!
Sure we can. But let me explain our reasoning; it's pretty simple. If you've got five (5) or more people in a company concurrently using an ERP system in production, that's a pretty significant operation. We think it's only appropriate that you have some kind of relationship with the company that wrote, owns, supports, and continues to develop the software on which you're running your business. This is the best way to engage with us, to improve communication and collaboration, so that we can all work together to make PostBooks® better.
So that's the new policy. The "stick," if you will. Here's the carrot. Since we'll still provide a free key for up to four (4) users, we'll price the commercial PostBooks® license accordingly. That is, if you need five (5) users, you'll only pay for one (1). If you need six (6), you'll only pay for 2. And that applies whether you host the database yourself, or in our cloud service. That means you could have a 5-user PostBooks® system for just $45/month. Or $175/month, hosted in the cloud.
If you have questions, or would like to get started with a commercial license, please email xTuple Sales or call us at +1-757-461-3022, option 3. Thank you.
Ned Lilly
In October 2001, Ned co-founded xTuple, originally called OpenMFG, with the aim of bringing the worlds of open platform software and enterprise resource planning (ERP) together to solve the unmet needs of small- to mid-sized manufacturers. In 1999, he was a co-founder of Great Bridge, an early business built around the PostgreSQL database which is also the core technology for xTuple today. Great Bridge was incubated inside Landmark Communications, a mid-sized media company where Ned directed corporate venture investments, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and startup activity. Prior to Landmark, Ned worked for a regional technology group in Washington D.C. and had a brief first career in political media — television, radio and a non-partisan news wire. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from George Washington University.