---
url: /start/licensing.md
description: >-
  How Relyweb licences work — leased versus lifetime, cached checks, and what
  actually stops when one lapses.
---

# Licensing & updates

Every Relyweb app is licensed per installation.

## The two licence types

**Leased** — a monthly or annual subscription. Updates and support are included
while it is active.

**Lifetime** — you own the version you have, permanently. Ongoing updates come
through an **Updates** (or Support & Updates) entitlement on the licence.

Which you have is shown in the app's own licence panel, alongside your
entitlement and when it was last verified.

## What lapsing actually does

This varies per app, and the difference matters — check your app's own Licensing
page. Broadly:

* **A lifetime licence whose Updates entitlement lapsed** keeps working. Only
  installing a *newer* version is blocked.
* **A leased licence that lapses** disables the app's licensed behaviour. For a
  payment gateway that can mean customers cannot pay, so it is worth monitoring.

::: warning
Do not assume a lapse is harmless. Some apps gate customer-facing behaviour, not
just the admin area. Your app's Licensing page states exactly what stops.
:::

## Checks are cached

Licences are verified against a locally cached result rather than over the
network on every request, so a brief licensing-server outage — or a temporary
network problem on your server — never interrupts a working install.

If a licence cannot be verified for an extended period, the cached result stops
being accepted and the app behaves as it does for a lapsed licence.

The cache refreshes on admin page loads and on the daily cron — **never from
customer traffic**. An installation nobody logs into relies on cron alone.

Messages about the licensing server being *unreachable* describe this temporary
state, not a lapse. Load any admin page to refresh the check.

## Moving to another server or domain

Licence keys bind to an installation — typically its domain, and sometimes its
server IP and install path too. Moving breaks the binding.

Re-activating the key usually re-binds it. If it will not, contact
[support](/start/support) to have it released and reissued.

## Where downloads live

Release ZIPs, including previous versions, are always available from your client
area at [relyweb.co](https://www.relyweb.co/). This is why the apps' automatic
backups keep a *database* snapshot rather than a copy of the old files — your
data is the part that cannot be downloaded again.