„7-PDF is freeware and free, right?“ In general, most of the programs are in fact available as freeware or at least as usable shareware. If you need premium functionality that is not available in the free editions, or if you would like to use our PDF solutions commercially, you could focus on the licensed premium versions, and these are all available as advantageous „lifetime licenses“.
Because the topic „Lifetime License“ raises the question in your support inquiries, what exactly is meant by that, we would like to use this page to explain to you exactly where the advantage is!
If users and companies prior to a license purchase at 7-PDF, Germany, they are often on the terminology of the „Lifetime license". Basically they buy from us a functional unrestricted license per named user for one of the Premium PDF editions. After purchase, you will receive a license key by e-mail to activate this license within the already installed 7-PDF freeware or shareware version to switch to the unlimited premium version. The big advantage of our „Lifetime licenses“ is that even new release versions can be used with the purchased license key, without compromise and in full - so on „lifetime“. Our licensing fee for a single program is only payable once! Moreover, there is no such thing as software subscriptions that would have to be renewed again and again, perhaps you may know this from paid virus programs.
We find the software, as usual in the 1990s or early 2000s, to buy once, and good. We are not friends of software subscriptions, or an annual or monthly fee. Cloud-based PDF providers use this method of payment which usually complies with the corresponding PDF functionalities.
We would like to openly and transparently point out one exception:
For our 7-PDF Invoice Extractor – a proprietary, complex AI-powered data analysis and extraction service for automated e-invoice conversion – a classic lifetime license is unfortunately not feasible. Each invoice processing run requires considerable computing power on our server infrastructure and involves highly resource-intensive AI processes, making an unlimited flat-rate access technically and economically unviable.
For this reason, we offer the 7-PDF Invoice Extractor under a fairly priced subscription model starting at just €3.90 (net) per month, which can be cancelled at the end of the chosen term (monthly or yearly). This ensures that we can reliably provide the required computing resources while maintaining GDPR-compliant and secure operation.
It is precisely our "lifetime license" model that sets our software products apart from other PDF providers. For more than 15 years, lifetime licenses have been the cornerstone of our success. This model is cost-effective, predictable, and easy to budget for – a true benefit for you as a licensee, who knows exactly what to pay once, with no hidden costs. And we will continue to stand by this model in the future.
*We generally license according to the NamedUser principle (per Windows user, one license), which has the additional advantage that you can usually use our license parallel on your PC and also on your laptop as long as the NamedUser or Windows Login name is the same on both systems.
If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact us . We are happy to answer your questions!
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