Professional and Essential licenses

You can add devices to the N-able N-central server in either Professional or Essential license mode. Professional Mode devices can use all of the N-able N-central monitoring and management features and will count towards your device licensing limit. The licensing mode of a device is assigned when the device is first added to N-able N-central. You can modify this later by editing the device's properties.

To purchase licenses for N-able N-central features, contact N-able sales. For more information on a sales office near you, visit https://www.n-able.com/contact/global.

If you have issues with your servers dropping their licenses, see N-able N-central servers becoming unlicensed.

Professional licenses

Professional Mode device licenses are per Individual Device. These licenses allocate a single Professional Mode device license for each individual device.

Use cases

Essential mode license limits

The Essential mode license provides robust options. Some services have limited scan times as outlined in the table below.

Also note the following:

• The only Automation Manager policies that may be run are:
  • List
  • Top
  • CPU-MEM
  • Processes
  • Software Inventory
• Remote Control is only available on Professional licenses.
• Patch management is only available on Professional licenses.
• Backup Exec, SNMP, and EDF monitoring are not available.
• Power Control and System Change management are not available.
• Custom services are not available.
• The device may not be used in any Scheduled Tasks.

The restriction on Scheduled Tasks is not enforced if managed services (for example, those related to AV Defender) are applied to Essential Mode devices in which case, Scheduled Tasks related to those services may be run on the device.

Changing license modes

When a service template is associated with a device that has been configured in Essential Mode, any services that are classified as Professional services will not be applied. If the device is then changed from Essential Mode to Professional Mode, N-able N-central will automatically re-apply service templates so that any services that had been omitted because they are classified as Professional services will be applied.

Licenses are applied for a minimum period of 15 days. For basic license types such as Professional licenses, the period starts when the license is initially applied, not when the device is imported.If a device’s license usage is modified, the original license usage will continue to be in effect until the 15-day minimum period has ended. Once that period elapses, the license will go back into the pool for use elsewhere.If the license is removed from the device after the 15 day period has expired, the license will immediately return to the available pool.

Feature comparison

The table below outlines the differences between the two license options.