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Acronis Cyber Protect Home - Perpetual license?

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Hi,

Can anyone here tell me if Acronis still offers a perpetual license (not subscription based) for its Cyber Protect Home product?  

I have been using True Image, and now Cyber Protect for quite a few years.  For my business, I supply equipment for which I configure a Windows PC to serve as the user interface.  For redundancy purposes, I supply two identical PC's - one to serve as the user interface and one to serve as a spare.  After configuring the one that will serve as the operator interface, I do an image backup and restore it onto the spare PC so that they are configured identically (except for having to activate a different windows license on the spare PC).  After the equipment is put into service, the PC will no longer have an internet connection, so subscription-based products do not work well for me.  I like to buy a perpetual license and turn it over to my customer so that I don't have to worry about the license expiring after a year.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

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Paul, Acronis no longer provide any perpetual licenses and have moved completely to an annual subscription system!

See KB 68375: Licensing change FAQ: Acronis products switch to subscription-only licenses - where this unwelcome change was announced!

Thanks Steve,

That creates a challenge for me because after I configure a PC as the user interface for a machine I supply and put it into service, I do not want to connect the PC to the internet ever again.  Once I get it working how I want for its dedicated purpose, my belief (which comes from experience) is that any software updates (Windows or other) can potentially make my interface stop working, so I avoid updates at all costs.

The way I have used Acronis True Image to this point is as follows .... When I begin work on a new machine, I purchase two PC's with identical hardware.  I'll call them PC1 and PC2.  I configure PC1 to serve as the user interface for the machine.  After doing this, I use Acronis to create a drive image backup of PC1, and I restore this drive image backup onto PC2.  This makes PC2 a "clone" of PC1 (although I do have to purchase a second Windows license for PC2 and activate it after I restore the image. This allows PC2 to be ready and waiting should PC1 ever fail.  The reason I always preferred the Acronis perpetual license is because if my customer asks me to modify the user interface at some point, I can make the necessary changes on PC1 and repeat the process of making the drive image backup and restoring it onto PC2.  If forced to use a subscription based license, it would be very likely that this would happen after the first year term of the subscription had expired.  I wouldn't want to connect PC1 to the internet just to re-activate Acronis so that I can make a new drive image backup.  Please correct me if my fear is unwarranted, but I am afraid that the re-activation mechanism used by Acronis would require me to update PC1 in some way, and I would risk "breaking" the application I worked so hard on creating.

I did an experiment today and I think it might work for me.  I purchased a one year subscription of Acronis Cyber Protect. I installed it on PC1 and created bootable rescue media.  I then made an image based backup of PC1 using the rescue media (rather than the version I installed on PC1).  From what I can tell, it seems as though as long as I keep this bootable rescue media, I might be able to use this in the future, regardless of the subscription status of the installed version. 

Do you think I am correct about this?  

If this works, I think it would solve my problem.  It seems kind of strange that I would be installing a subscription based product just to create bootable media that I can use "forever", but I think I would be ok with it if it worked.  This makes me wonder, however, if rather than purchasing a subscription for every machine I build, if Acronis offers a different type of license that I could legally use to create bootable media to serve every PC I supply for this type of application (rather than having to install individual subscription based products on each PC).  Any suggestions you might have will be greatly appreciated.

thanks and best regards,
Paul

Paul, while Acronis has abandoned perpetual licenses for its backup application many other competitors have retained a perpetual option as has been discussed in depth in forum topic: Reflecting on a Post-ATI World

The rescue media created by ACPHO during a subscription period will remain fully operational after the subscription has ended but using it may well in contravention of the license terms and conditions other than to recover existing backup images created while the subscription was valid.

Note: I have not tested the above scenario but remember it being discussed in the forums some time back where Acronis confirmed the behaviour at that time.  Whether that will remain the same into the future is impossible to say?

If your key purpose is in deploying multiple systems on a commercial basis then Acronis do offer a business application called Snap Deploy for this purchase but this is again a subscription product.

Acronis rescue media has the option for being able to inject additional device drivers during the creation process that could be used to provide support for multiple different systems from a single set of media.

Thanks Steve,

I will take a look at some of those options.  

I don't even mind maintaining (paying for a subscription) as long as maintaining the subscription doesn't mean I have to periodically update the PC's I deploy as machine interfaces.

My attempt to create a image based backup using bootable media actually failed when my previous attempt to create an image based backup using the installed version had succeeded.  I'd like to see if I can understand why that happened, although I think I will start a new thread for that.

I appreciate your help with this.

Best regards,
Paul