English-Corpora.org

English-Corpora.org

For administrators

Frequently asked questions

For end users

Other information


Questions: admin@english-corpora.org

 

30 person vs unlimited license

Universities can obtain a license for an unlimited number of users (the typical case) or (in rare cases) for just 30 users. In many cases, universities have found that the 30 person license that they have purchased is not sufficient.

Before purchasing a 30 person license, you will need to send a short email to us, confirming that you have read the following explanation, and that you understand the limitations of a 30 person license.

The two examples below show how a (limited) 30 person license would work.

Example 1 (one year license): suppose you have a 30 person license for one year -- from September 1 through the following August 31. Suppose also that 21 students join the license in September, for a class that runs from September to December. If a teacher wants to use the corpora for 18 students in a class during the following January - April, it will look at the number of users since the license began (September 1). Because 21 of the 30 licenses have already been "used", only 9 more are available for January - August 31. So there would not be enough licenses available for the additional 18 students in the class from January - April.

Example 2 (multi-year license): suppose you have a 30 person license for three years -- from 1 September 2020 through 31 August 2023. When a person tries to join a license, it looks at how many other people have used it during the previous 365 days. So if someone tries to join the license on 21 March 2022 (about 1.5 years after the start of the license), it will look at how many other people have used the license in the preceding 365 days (since 21 March 2021). If there are more than 30 people during the preceding 365 days, the new person would not be able to join the license.
 


If you do want more than the first 30 people to have access to the license, you will need to purchase an "upgrade" to an unlimited license ($400 upgrade cost = $395 for 30 user license --> $795 for unlimited license), plus a $200 fee to change the license, reinstate any dropped users, etc. In other words, you will end up paying more to get a 30 person license and then later upgrade to an unlimited license ($995 total = $395 + $400 + $200) than if you purchased an unlimited license in the first place ($795).
 


Also, please remember that anyone who uses the corpora from on campus (or via a proxy server at your university) will be counted, even if they are not actually students or faculty at your university. There is no way for us to know (on our end) which person who connected to the corpora from a computer at your university library is from your university, and who is just a "walk in", unless you control access somehow on your end.
 


So unless you are very sure that 30 people or less -- cumulatively -- will use the corpora, it is probably best to "err on the side of caution" and get a license for an unlimited number of users. This is so that 1) you don't run out of licenses and 2) you don't end up paying more if you eventually have to upgrade to an unlimited license (see above).