PDFxStream Purchasing FAQ

Can I evaluate PDFxStream without purchasing it?

Of course! Just request an evaluation license file via the simple form on our downloads page. This license file will enable all of PDFxStream's features.

Once you are satisfied with PDFxStream's quality and performance, you can then purchase deployment licenses as required for your deployment strategy.

What if I want to test PDFxStream over a larger number of documents?

We're very happy to provide you with a trial license file so you can test PDFxStream without its evaluation limitations; just email us and ask.

Are PDFxStream licenses perpetual, or must they be renewed periodically?

All PDFxStream licenses are perpetual; in other words, they give you the right to deploy and use the version of PDFxStream that was current at the time of your purchase.

All PDFxStream licenses are sold with a support & maintenance enrollment, which entitles you to upgrade to all PDFxStream releases, patches, and bugfixes released while the enrollment remains current. Support & maintenance enrollments are typically renewed on a yearly basis, and cost a fraction of the original PDFxStream license price; once a license's enrollment expires, it will not work with any later PDFxStream releases, patches, or bugfixes.

What licensing options are available for PDFxStream?

There are five different PDFxStream licensing scenarios:

1. Per-desktop and per-server licensing, where one PDFxStream license is purchased for each machine to which PDFxStream is deployed. See here for details.
2. Cloud region licensing, where one PDFxStream license is purchased for each public cloud region to which PDFxStream is deployed. See here for details.
3. Site- and worldwide licenses, which allow you to deploy PDFxStream in an unlimited fashion. These options can provide significant savings for larger PDFxStream deployments. Please email us for more details.
4. OEM/partner licenses, which allow you to redistribute PDFxStream as part of your product or solution. Please email us for more details.
5. Free usage, where PDFxStream is used entirely in its evaluation mode. This carries certain limitations that are reasonable during a trial period, but generally not for production use.

We only need some of PDFxStream's features. Can we pay only for what we need/use?

Absolutely. Though it presents a single unified API, PDFxStream is comprised of four separate components / featuresets: PDFxStream Base, PDFTextStream, PDFImageStream, and PDFFormStream. When configuring licenses to buy, you can choose to enable any combination of features (though PDFxStream Base is required by all). You can minimize your licensing costs by opting into only those PDF data extraction features your project requires.

If those requirements expand later, you can always upgrade your licenses.

How does PDFxStream cloud licensing work?

Per-server licensing is often not a good option if you are deploying PDFxStream to the cloud. For that reason, we offer Cloud Region licenses, which allow you to deploy to any number, kind, and configuration of compute resources within a single cloud region (e.g. AWS' us-west-1, Azure's UK South, etc.). If you deploy to more than one region (perhaps to support multiple markets or for disaster recovery), then you will need one PDFxStream Cloud Region license for each region.

Here's a common licensing scenario:

An application is deployed to a fleet of EC2 nodes along with a collection of Lambda API functions in two AWS regions. Regardless of how many EC2 nodes are required, or what throughput the Lambda functions are set to support, this deployment would require two PDFxStream Cloud Region licenses.

How many server or desktop licenses do I need?

If you're purchasing PDFxStream for internal use (i.e. you won't be redistributing PDFxStream as part of your product or solution), the basic rule is: you need to purchase one license for every server or desktop machine to which you deploy PDFxStream.

Every license purchase (regardless of type) includes free usage on individual contributor environments (your laptops and workstations, etc), but every server environment does need to be licensed, regardless of the server's functional designation (e.g. "production" vs. "staging", etc).

Here's a common licensing scenario:

A web application is deployed to 'dev', a user-acceptance testing environment, and a production cluster consisting of two machines. This deployment would require four PDFxStream licenses.

What is "support & maintenance", and why should I care about it?

As the name implies, there are two parts to it:

• Support is technical support: when you run into a problem with PDFxStream, either while developing with it or an operations issue, we'll have your back. Whether that means explaining how PDFs and PDFxStream work in detail within the context of your problem, identifying corrupted documents or bugs within PDFxStream, or simply pointing out the right method call to use, we'll do everything we can to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

  We do the same for those without an active support & maintenance enrollment (e.g. for those just starting to evaluate PDFxStream), but current customers with active enrollments absolutely get priority, and extra effort on our part.

• Maintenance refers to your continual, free access — with an active support & maintenance enrollment — to all new PDFxStream releases, patches, and bug fixes. If you let your enrollment expire, then you'll be stuck with the last version of PDFxStream that was released publicly before your enrollment's expiration date.

  For example, if you purchase PDFxStream when v3.1.0 is current, and you allow your enrollment to expire when v3.5.5 is current, you'll not be able to upgrade to v3.5.6, v3.6.0, v4.0.0, and so on.

  This is particularly important if you hit a problem caused by a PDFxStream bug. With an active enrollment, you'll get the first look at a patched PDFxStream build, long before the fix lands in the public release.

Do you work with any resellers?

Yes, if your organization retains a software reseller as a matter of practice or policy, we'll be happy to work with them to settle your PDFxStream purchase. Please note that we don't "authorize" any particular resellers, and we do not provide any reseller discounts beyond those we offer ourselves.

Do you offer any discounts?

Yes!

• Purchasing PDFxStream Complete, the "wildcard" PDFxStream license option includes all current and future PDFxStream components. Its benefit is that, when additional features are added to PDFxStream, your existing licenses will allow access to them immediately and with no additional cost.
• Our cloud region licenses provide you with limitless usage (within a single region), and usually represent a huge discount compared to purchasing licenses on a per-server basis, since most cloud workloads are variable, either thanks to elastic load balancing, spiky batch processing, or because of use of non-server compute facilities like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, etc.

Can I resell PDFxStream to my consulting client(s)? If so, how?

Yes! We love working with consulting and solutions firms. Once you identify PDFxStream as a solution to your clients' PDFxStream data extraction challenges, you can purchase PDFxStream licenses and support & maintenance enrollments on their behalf. These assets should be delivered alongside your broader solution.

When ordering PDFxStream, please let us know that you are planning on reselling the purchased licenses to your client, so we can key the generated license file(s) in their name.

Can I get a quote for my procurement department?

Yes! Head over to our purchasing page, and fill in and submit the RFQ form there. We'll reply in no time with a quote that you can save, print, and forward to colleagues; and, when you're ready, that quote can be accepted to produce an invoice you can pay online with any card or your bank account to receive the PDFxStream licenses you need.

Will you accept our purchase order?

Yes, though we will extend net 30 terms only to certain organizations, which we determine on a case-by-case basis. In general, if your organization is a large corporation, non-profit, or governmental entity, then we will accept your purchase order and extend net 30 terms. Otherwise, we will accept your purchase order, but require prepayment before delivering license files.

What will you do if we are displeased with PDFxStream after purchasing it?

We guarantee that you will be happy with your purchase of PDFxStream. If you aren't, let us know within 30 days after your purchase of a PDFxStream license. If we can't resolve the problem, we'll be happy to issue you a refund.

Please note that PDFxStream is free to use for single-threaded applications (you can download it over here), so you should evaluate it thoroughly prior to your purchase.

Can we add components/features to a previously-purchased PDFxStream license?

Yes! This is a common situation: you might have started out with, for example, just PDFTextStream to handle PDF text extraction, but have a new requirement to support PDF image extraction as well. You don't need to buy a totally new license; you can simply upgrade your existing license to add the additional capability/capabilities.

Note that license upgrades like this cannot currently be done online; contact us to get the ball rolling.

Finally, note that if you purchase PDFxStream Complete licenses from the start, you'll never need a license upgrade: assuming you keep your support & maintenance enrollments current, PDFxStream Complete licenses allow you to use all PDFxStream components / features that are available now, as well as all PDFxStream components released in the future.