License Lifecycle

The portal is where a licence is born, changes edition, and is retired. This page walks through the whole lifecycle — requesting a licence, provisioning through AWS Marketplace, upgrading and downgrading, cancelling, and renewing Core — and the rules that govern each step.

The lifecycle at a glance

Stage	What happens
Request	You accept the licence agreement and submit a request from the dashboard.
Grant	The first paid licence is granted immediately; additional ones await approval.
Change	Upgrade or downgrade between paid editions; a new key is issued at once.
Renew	Core licences extend for another 12 months within the renewal window.
Cancel	The licence is cancelled immediately and access is revoked.

Request a new commercial licence

If you are obtaining a licence for the first time — free Core, an AWS Marketplace subscription, or a private offer — start from Acquiring a Licence. The self-service request below is for an existing portal account adding another commercial licence.

From My Entitlements, choose Request New License. The request is a short, two-step flow:

Choose an edition — Standard, Professional, or Enterprise — and read the licence agreement. Scroll to the bottom of the agreement to enable acceptance.
Submit the request. Your acceptance of the agreement is recorded.

What happens next depends on whether this is your first paid licence:

Your first paid licence is approved automatically. It becomes active straight away and a licence key is issued.
Additional paid licences are created with a pending status and wait for approval by the WebStream team. Self-service is limited to one active paid licence per account.

Provision through AWS Marketplace

If you subscribe through AWS Marketplace, provisioning follows the subscription rather than the request form. For the full subscribe-to-provision walkthrough and pricing, see Acquiring a Licence. In brief:

Link the subscription. AWS redirects you to the portal link page, which validates a signed handshake and connects your Marketplace subscription to a portal account. If you do not yet have an account, you register at this point.
Provision the licence. On the provisioning wizard, set the tenant identity (Company.Branch.Department), pick an edition, confirm the contact email, and accept the agreement. Marketplace usage is billed hourly against the Session_Hours_<Edition> dimension.
The licence is provisioned immediately. Marketplace licences are entitled by contract, so they are not subject to the single-paid-licence self-service limit and may include Core as well as paid editions.

Upgrade or downgrade

On an active commercial licence card, use the Change License… dropdown to move between Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. A consent dialog explains the impact before anything changes:

Upgrade — you accept that the cost of your subscription may increase as feature usage or scale expands.
Downgrade — you accept new feature and scale limitations, including reduced concurrent access capacity.

On confirmation, a new licence key is provisioned immediately.

Apply the change on your server

After an upgrade or downgrade, go to the admin panel and click ReCheck License so the server picks up the new entitlements. See Licence Activation.

Core and Commercial are separate

You cannot upgrade or downgrade between Core and a commercial edition — they are separate products. Edition changes are only allowed between the three paid editions.

Renew a Core licence

Core licences run for 12 months and are renewed from the licence card:

Use Renew (12 months) on the Core licence card. Renewal extends the expiry by a further year and re-signs the key.
The button is only enabled within the 30-day renewal window before expiry (or once the licence has expired). Outside that window it is disabled, with a caption showing the date it becomes available.

Commercial editions do not use this button — their term is managed through the subscription rather than manual renewal.

Cancel a licence

Choose Cancel License on the licence card.
Optionally record a reason, then confirm.

Cancellation is immediate and permanent

Cancelling sets the licence to cancelled, clears the licence key, and revokes access straight away. This cannot be undone — you would need to request a new licence to restore service.

Limits summary

Rule	Value
Active paid licences per account (self-service)	1 — additional requests need approval.
Active Core licences per account	Up to 3.
Core renewal window	30 days before expiry.
Edition changes	Between paid editions only; Core ↔ Commercial is blocked.
AWS Marketplace	Entitled by contract; not subject to the self-service paid limit.