Inflexible License Agreement?

Hi,

I have been using Acronis for a while now. (Both for myself and also for client backup solutions). However the other day I was told by another colegue that they have dropped Acronis because of inflexible licensing agreements.

They said that they had problems with a computer that included the latest Trueimage application (trueimage wasn't the cause, it was just installed on that PC), and the client decided to buy a new machine, but later found out they weren't allowd to take their license with them and that the licenses were locked into a MAC address.

I was just wondering - can someone please confirm this? This seems extremely inflexible - basically like OEM arrangements, but I haven't seen anything on Acronis's website stating that licenses are permanently locked to one computer so wanted to confirm before I start looking for another product myself. (Coz I'd hate to have to give up Acronis).

Cheers

Adam.

 

This probably has to do with a business/enterprise license for multiple copies. Or it could be a feture of a n OEM version of the software --hardware manufacturers get special deals on software they inlcuded on their machines but the they are sometimes restricted regarding transfer to other machines. Windows is sold that way on computers.

It's not a feature of the license when you by the individual ATI product for "Home" use. You can use it on only one machine, but it can be a different machine every day, if you like, or a diff machine every minute if you can uninstall and install that quickly . So far as I can tell, the Enterpise license allows for retiring ATI from some hardware and then using on other hardware. So if a seat-license was assigned to to particular MAC address, that assignment could be retired and the license reassinged to another machine.

You can read the Consumer End User License Agreement here

http://www.acronis.com/support/eula-home.html

You can read the Enterprise End User License Agreement here

http://www.acronis.com/support/eula-corp.html

Maybe your friend's enterprise arranged for a custom licensing arangement with Acronis or perhaps your firend doesn't understand the license.

 

Hi All,

I've run into the same 'licensing' problem myself.

In our case we purchased 4 licenses(Acronis True Image Echo Workstation).
These connected to the licensing server on which you had to assign the license codes to.

A couple of weeks later got a new computer to replace one of the existing ones as it was old and was being a bit temperamental.

After reading the manual, to free up a used license you must uninstall all the acronis components on the machine. After doing so this did not free up the license on the licensing server.

I contacted Acronis about the issues and was told the following;

---------------------------------------
Dear Josh,

Thank you for your message.

Please note that our license policy does not allow you to transfer license.
The serial number assigns to the MAC address of NIC and cannot be reassigned to another one. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

We are always at your service should you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Alexander Nikolsky | Support Professional Acronis Customer Central www.acronis.com/support

For more answers to your questions, try our knowledge base http://www.acronis.com/support/kb/index.html

---------------------------------------

There was no indication that this would be the case when we purchased the products. Thankfully we were within our 30 days satisfaction guarantee and was able to obtain a complete refund.

Now we're trying to find a suitable replacement for Acronis.

Thanks,

Josh.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

I suppose there is a sort of misunderstanding.

You may reassign a Software License if you retire the licensed Hardware due to permanent Hardware failure. If you reassign a Software License, the Hardware to which you reassign the license becomes the new licensed Hardware for that particular Software License.

Also this is true if you want to replace the computer with a newest one (you should completely remove the program from the old computer before you transfer the program).

To obtain a technical solution please contact Acronis Customer Central here.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Good Morning,

>>you should completely remove the program from the old computer before you transfer the program.

Just to clarify, I did uninstall all the components I could find on the client machine (as per above) hoping this would free up the license on the licensing server only to find that this didn't happen.

That is when I contacted Technical Support and asked how to go about decommissioning the computer for a new computer to be installed in it's place.

I was then told (as per the above) that the serial number is assigned to the MAC address and cannot be re-assigned. I made every effort to clarify our situation (as it seemed wrong to me that we couldn't do this) and emailed back a couple of times to confirm the scenario we were in and also put other scenario's forward too (such as an Ethernet card failure) just to make sure there was no misunderstanding.

I was told in the instance of critical hardware failure we would be permitted to transfer the license, but we would need to provide the old and new MAC addresses to tech support, however in the same email we were also told that this was NOT an option for if we simply wanted to update our existing hardware and move the license. There was no misunderstanding. Both my emails, and the replies we received from tech support were very clear.
Either the information we were told then was just plain wrong, or what we're being told here is wrong.

>>To obtain a technical solution please contact Acronis Customer Central here.

This is where I first made my requests just to be told the opposite to what you're telling me now, so unfortunately that was no help to us at all.

Either way - we know that simply uninstalling the software from a machine will not allow us to use that license on another server. Can you please tell us what other steps are involved in getting the license transferred?

Thanks & Regards

Josh.

 

Hello Josh,

Thank you for your response.

Every similar case should be taken into consideration separately, that's why these cases should be redirected to the respective persons. They will obtain a confirmation of the hardware replacement from you, and after that they will let you know the exact way to transfer the licenses.

The contact page is the same, you can contact us here with the reference to this thread.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

I didn't think Acronis could leave me awestruck anymore. But my god, what a pita. Even Windows is easier to transfer than that! Tech Support should have told him about how to transfer when he contacted them and asked about it instead of indicating that it was impossible. I can't believe how uncoordinated Acronis has become.

 

I don't see how this thread would apply to a copy of ATI Home. What problem would arise anyway? Acronis puts out a new edition every year, and appears to update the annual edition only once, so what else would require them to probe your license validity? After buying ATI 10 and upgrading to ATI 11, I made a decision to stop funding Acronis.

I bought ATI 10 several years ago, and when my computer crashed, didn't get much help from Acronis, even though it was caused by the fact that ATI 10 didn't work with my RAID installation, and corrupted my partition file in the MBR. I had to re-install Windows, losing all my work and causing me a lot of re-work.

I thought about going to Norton Ghost, but checked their user forum first. It appears similar complaints of poor operations were lodged against Symantec, so I figured I would just be jumping from one mess to another, so I reluctantly stayed with Acronis. I considered that if another product came on the market to compete at the price, I would be gone in a heart beat.

In the meantime, I now use Acronis sans Recovery Manager/Secure Zone. Acronis still has not published the fact that the Secure Zone alters the partition table, and in some cases make restoration of a crashed Hard Drive impossible unless one has the foresight to save a copy of the original partition table when Windows was first installed on a separate disk.

I have invested too much time learning this piece of crap software to move to another... old sage wisdom is that moving to another software product usually just swaps one set of problems for another. At this point I have decided that this is too much wasted time, and time is money, so here I sit.

I think it would be entirely unreasonable to tie a license agreement to the NIC card. I upgrade NICs regularly, and it does not affect my OS agreement nor my OS installation. Why would it have any bearing on my license for a backup software product? The EULA I agreed to does not mention this at all. If Acronis tried to use this excuse to void a license, they would be guilty of violating their own EULA.

 

Hi All,

And thanks for your replies. From what I can see, it would appear as though the Acronis licensing is at the least cumbersome, and rather inflexible as I was first told from the begining - so I appreciate the responses to confirm this.

Oleg - thanks for your replies in particular. It can't be easy responding to a public forum having to represent a company that looks like it's slowly annoying more and more legit customers (from this and other threads I have read), so thanks for taking the time to respond on behalf of Acronis.

Is there any chanse that Acronis may reconsider changing their licensing locks? As shieber stated, even Microsoft is easier to transfer and I'm just not interested in going down the path of fighting licensing arrangements with a company everytime we update hardware.

I've been looking for other options, and as retread also stated, Symantec isn't the answer. The only other product I've found todate is 'Image for Windows'. It's not as neat as Trueimage (although the price is much cheaper, and is the same price for workstations and servers which makes it quite appealing!!). However, I'd like to save going to a new product if possible - so if there is any chance or indication that Acronis is going to drop this appauling 'NIC MAC Address lock' on it's products - I'd be interested to hear before I make the change.

Cheers

Adam.

 

I've beem using Powerquest V2i for ourselves and our customers but unfortunately Powerquest are no longer in business. (Sold to Symantec). We're currently looking for a replacement software too. We've checked out Symantec, but looks like they've destroyed anything that was good of V2i so don't want to go near them.

We found Acronis as an alternative and have been looking to see if it might be viable, but after seeing that they have a license lock that works on NIC's it looks like we'll need to continue our search for another product.

All this lock seems to be doing is getting rid of potential new customers (not to mention existing ones). Pirates will probably be using cracked versions which won't be affected by this lock to start with, so all it's doing is causing problems for legitimate customers. Acronis seem to have a nice product but are screwing it up with the relations between them and their customers. Very bad marketing strategy!

I accept the need for a lock, but have it at the server as a max clients lock, allow the admin to remove dead clients from server.

Cya

Andrew

 

Good Morning,

Firstly I'd just like to thank Oleg for his time and being involved in this thread. As Adam stated, it's probably not easy coming to a public thread trying to help customers and keep up good customer relations when the support department and company policies are doing the opposite, so your time is appreciated.

However, as already advised I contacted Acronis support with what you have already suggested to try and work through the problem and had no success with a few different emails. I don't see how contacting them yet again is going to make any difference. As for the client the 4 purchased licenses have been returned for the money back guarantee and we will not be purchasing any more licenses unless something is done about the product. (As we've lost faith in customer support after our dealings).

I agree with what Adam has said. Could Acronis please consider changing the way that the licensing works. Or is there something already in progress for removing these locks, because while this inflexible locking method and licensing policy is in place, we won't be considering Acronis anymore ourselves, nor recommending them to any more customers. (We really have looked a fool with our previous customer after this licensing issue).

Agco raises a good point. Pirates would have bypassed this security with cracks to start with so all it's doing is causing problems for paid customers (like us) and is causing us to look elsewhere as we have had to do.

Simply having to re-contact customer support again and again and again repeatedly until we get the answer we want (if we ever do) is just a time waster, and not a good strategy for us. In my opinion a poor recommendation. (Although I understand it's probably the only one you can give). The time we've already wasted trying to get support to listen to us was too much already - we will not be going back there yet again.

Thanks for your suggestion Adam. We will check this out and see if it meets our requirements. I agree with what the others have said about Ghost and won't be using them either.

Thanks & Regards

Josh

 

Hello all,

Thank you for your feedback.

I am creating a request to the respective department, maybe, the algorithm of the License server management will be improved.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Hello all,

lourensz777, could you please provide me with your Support case numbers (via PM). I would like to investigate it.

Thank you,
Michael Levchenko

 

Good Afternoon Michael,

I have sent you a PM message with details.

Thanks,
Josh.

 

Dear Acronis, Please keep in mind that your customers buy your SW for backup and disaster recovery, and part of that routinely involves imaging PCs ... sometimes for routine HW upgrades. It's ironic that you have have great imaging SW, you just can't get it licensed on the new PC.

Thanks,

Chuck

 

Hi Josh,

Just wondering if you have received any follow-up from Acronis regarding this, and if you would mind sharing with the rest of us.

Very concerned about this policy of Acronis. (As we are currently looking for a good reliable imaging backup solution to sell to and use for our customers too).

Thanks in Advance....

Adza

 

Hey Adza,

At this stage I haven't received anymore correspondence from Michael or Acronis regarding this issue.

If I receive any additional information regarding this I will post another reply here.

Thanks,
Josh.