What Are The Differences Between Sage 100 Perpetual and Subscription Licenses?

Sage has been urging their Sage 100 customers to migrate their perpetual licenses to subscription since launching Sage 100c in November 2015.

This release was primarily a subscription version of their Sage 100 perpetual license.

Prior to the introduction of subscription pricing, Sage 100 modules had been sold as perpetual licenses meaning a company would pay a larger up-front initial license fee and a somewhat optional annual maintenance fee which covered upgrades and Sage support.

While the ongoing costs were typically the same the subscription ( Sage 100c ) version offered a much lower initial purchase price.

The biggest difference initially between perpetual and subscription was that if you stopped paying your subscription license fee the Sage 100c offering would go into read-only mode.

Over time Sage adjusted their subscription offer. First, by rebranding Sage 100c as Sage 100cloud in November 2018. Next Sage signaled that they would likely do away with the confusion over the cloud brand and simply refer to their Sage 100 offers by three broad brands.

1. Sage 100 Perpetual
2. Sage 100 Subscription
3. Sage 100 Partner Cloud ( Subscription – partner-hosted on Azure )

What Are The Differences Between Sage 100 Perpetual and Subscription

Sage 100 Perpetual offers a somewhat limited number of modules than either Sage 100 Subscription or Sage 10 Partner Cloud.

The biggest current feature difference is that Sage 100 Subscription ( including Partner Cloud ) offerings provide access to multiple bin usage for inventory items.

Many companies assign multiple bin numbers to the same inventory items for a variety of reasons – including inspection, committed quantities, and other requirements.

The most important distinction between the perpetual and subscription license is that Sage indicates perpetual licenses will receive maintenance and compliance updates only.

New feature releases will focus on enhancing or developing features for Sage 100 subscription licenses only.

Here Are The New Features Added To Sage 100 Subscription Only In 2020 and 2021

During 2020 and 2021 Sage has added a number of new features which are exclusive to their subscription license.

Some of these features – such as pre-defined role security templates – are slated for release in the upcoming 2021 release.

Prior to Sage 100 2020, there were a number of features and add-ons which were exclusive to subscription – including

Moving forward all of Sage’s development efforts for Sage 100 will center on the subscription version of the solution which is less costly to acquire and also less expensive in most cases to add or remove user licenses.

For more information on the new features in Sage 100 subscription please see this Sage brochure.