Postpaid IDE billing
Postpaid IDE billing allows you to use JetBrains IDEs without purchasing subscriptions upfront. License Vault supplies IDE licenses on-demand, exactly when your team needs them, and automatically frees up the licenses when they're not in use.
Postpaid IDE licensing can help you:
Easily get started with JetBrains tools. You don't need to pay for your subscriptions upfront or try to figure out how many of them your team might need. With postpaid licensing, you can get any number of licenses on-demand.
Save money by using temporary postpaid licenses instead of buying annual subscriptions that will only be in use for a couple of weeks or months.
Save time by handling your subscription payments at the same time at the end of the billing period instead of going through tiresome paperwork for each individual license.
Scale your team quickly and seamlessly, providing licenses for new users on the fly.
Avoid interruptions to your team's work during peak usage times.
You can choose a fully postpaid IDE licensing and a mixed licensing model. Both these options are only available with the pay-as-you-go billing model.
- Fully postpaid IDE licensing
License Vault supplies IDE licenses automatically when your team needs them. At the end of each billing period, you pay for the exact number of licenses used.
- Mixed IDE licensing
With this option, you get the best of both worlds. You can add your previously purchased IDE subscriptions to License Vault and then set up additional postpaid license pools. These postpaid pools will help you accommodate temporary peaks in license usage and provide licenses to new employees on the fly.
How it works
From the user's perspective, a postpaid license is the same as a regular prepaid one. However, there are a couple of important differences from the administrator's point of view:
Postpaid billing: You pay for postpaid licenses at the end of the billing period in which you used them. If you didn't use any, there's no charge.
Floating mode: Postpaid licenses are always distributed in Floating mode, regardless of your license plan. A postpaid license that is no longer in use is automatically released after 20 minutes.
In every other aspect, a postpaid license works just as a regular prepaid one would.
License distribution with mixed IDE licensing
With mixed IDE licensing, you can have both prepaid and postpaid licenses available at the same time.
Postpaid licenses remain unallocated as long as regular prepaid licenses are available. Once all regular licenses for the product are in use, License Vault automatically starts to allocate postpaid licenses to new users.
To learn more about the distribution order, refer to License allocation priority.
How much you pay
At the end of each billing period, you're billed for any postpaid licenses you used during this period. We calculate the payment independently for each product, based on its monthly subscription price. Here's how we do it:
We divide the billing period into calendar months.
For each month, we figure out the maximum number of postpaid licenses for this product that were simultaneously in use.
We add up the numbers we got for each individual month.
We multiply the monthly subscription price for this product by the total number of licenses.
For example, let's say you're billed quarterly, and you used 19 postpaid licenses for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate in January, 17 in February, and 29 in March. Your payment for this billing period will amount to: (19 + 17 + 29) * $59.90 = $3,893.50
To start using postpaid IDE licensing
Make sure you are using the pay-as-you-go billing model for your entire IDE Services suite. Postpaid IDE licensing is not available for prepaid IDE Services instances.
Enable License Vault and, if necessary, set postpaid license limits. Refer to Manage IDE Services products (Pay as you go) for instructions.
Share the IDE Services URL with your team. License Vault will automatically provide licenses to all authorized users.