Overview
Netwrix Password Secure supports two licensing models, Perpetual and Subscription, each with its own license method(s): Online License, Offline License, and License File. Knowing which model and method your installation uses helps you understand what's required to keep it licensed — for example, whether it needs an internet connection, what happens if that connection is lost, and how renewals or user changes are applied. This article compares both models and explains each license method, and shows where the editions fit in.
Key Points
Licensing models
Password Secure installations use one of two models:
- Perpetual — licensing is required per user (Basic User or Advanced User) and per server, so adding a server or a user requires a corresponding license. Available in the Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions, which determine the feature set you have access to.
- Subscription (File-based) — licensing is required per user only; server usage is unlimited, so you can scale out your server infrastructure without needing additional licenses. A staging license is included for test environments. Subscription is always offered at the Enterprise Plus feature level — there is no separate edition choice — though users are still limited by user type (Basic or Advanced).
If you're not sure which model or edition applies to your installation, check your license agreement or contact your Netwrix account manager.
Online License (Perpetual)
The more convenient option if your server has internet access:
- Requires an active connection to license.passwordsafe.de, which the application checks hourly.
- If the license server becomes unreachable (for example, due to a lost internet connection), a 30-day grace period applies before the service shuts down — giving you time to restore connectivity.
- Benefit: the license updates itself automatically on renewal or when changes are made (for example, additional users), so there's nothing to do manually.
Note: Breaking the TLS certificate chain (for example, through TLS inspection or a proxy) is not supported and prevents the license from working. Make sure any network security appliance allows a direct, uninspected TLS connection to the license server.
Offline License (Perpetual)
Intended for air-gapped systems with no internet access:
- Not enabled by default — contact your Netwrix sales representative to have this option enabled for your account before you can use it.
- Activation uses a challenge/response that you exchange manually with the Netwrix license server.
- The license is tied to the hardware ID of the application server, so it doesn't transfer automatically if you move to new hardware.
Note: Renewing or changing the license — including deactivating it — always requires checking the license out and back in through the challenge/response process. Plan for this manual step ahead of a renewal or a planned change.
You can view and manage both Online and Offline licenses, including checking them in and out, at https://license.passwordsafe.de/kis.
License File (Subscription)
The license method used with a Subscription license:
- Works similarly to the Offline License, but does not require a check-in step to deactivate the license.
- When the subscription ends, the service shuts down, so make sure a renewal is in place before the current subscription expires.