On June 26th, 3CX published a new blog post detailing how, effective immediately, they were no longer selling maintenance agreements. This announcement caught users and 3CX partners off guard, as there had been no warnings or time given before the announcement and when 3CX stopped sales.
Maintenance agreements are important to perpetual license holders as that is the only way to get new versions of 3CX. By stopping the sale of maintenance, 3CX effectively turned all perpetual licenses into paperweights.
One might wonder why this is important. After all, for several years now maintenance has cost the same as an annual license, so there is no cost difference. However, many companies have rules around software purchases – and this change can mean that either a new agreement will have to be signed off by the business (to allow the purchase of an annual license every year vs renewing a maintenance agreement) or that they will be unable to continue with 3CX altogether (if the business requires all software to be perpetual and not subscription).
3CX only needs to take a look at other companies, like Microsoft, to see how perpetual licenses are still very important. Despite having products like Office365, Microsoft continues to sell Office 2021 as a perpetual license to this day.
3CX stated they will auto-convert your perpetual license key into a annual key 60 days before expiration. For those wishing to keep their keys and remain on V18, 3CX requires you to email them before that time to request it not be converted. 3CX has also said that you will not be able to use your perpetual key on V20, the next major release, although it’s unclear what will happen to those with years of maintenance on their existing key.
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