Thread

Hi.  I’m contemplating purchasing EE and have a few questions.

1.  For MSM it states that the License holder must be the owner of all Sites.  I own numerous websites but I also act as webmaster for other sites on my shared server.  For instance, I am a webmaster and site host for a non-profit and a profit company.  I do it for free because they are friends of mine.  The profit company has the domain registered by me, but I don’t own the company.  The non-profit domain is not registered by me and I’m not the owner.  Does this mean I cannot use my MSM license for these 2 sites?  What constitutes ownership?  Does the domain have to be registered to me?  Do I need to be on the Board of Directors to be considered an owner?  Is there another license to purchase that will allow me to use EE for them? 

2.  What if I want to change hosting providers?  How do I go about moving the license and websites? 

3.  What if I sell a website that is built with EE?  How does this work?  Does the new owner have to purchase a license and install EE first, then move files over?

Thanks in advance,
Sheryanne

Welcome to our community, Sheryanne!

1.  You can not use the MSM for different clients in one installation.  You’ll need separate licenses and installations for them.  There are good reasons for this, including that you can’t easily split a site out of the MSM if one client needs to move on; and that membership is installation-wide.

2.  The license is not tied to a particular site, or domain.  So long as you use each license on only one live site respectively, you can move it as needed, including to different hosts, etc. 

3.  You can transfer the license to the new owner by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - how you handle that hand-off, including billing, is up to you.

Does that help?

Hi again,

Thanks for the explanation, but I’m still a little confused.

1)  The MSM add-on allows for multiple domains, so how do you distinguish between multiple domains and multiple clients?

2)  If I have 10 websites built by me, hosted by me and managed by me, would I purchase only the commercial license for $299 or do I also need the MSM Site Manager for $199?  Trying to figure out how much it would cost me to get into EE.

Thanks again.

Hi sheryanne,

No worries! I’ll follow up.

1)  The MSM add-on allows for multiple domains, so how do you distinguish between multiple domains and multiple clients?

EllisLab won’t do anything to distinguish. The spirit of an MSM license is to allow one legal entity, a person or business, that runs several related properties to do so with one ExpressionEngine install.

For instance, many Universities use MSM to manage the various sites for the separate colleges. Or perhaps the Walmart corporation uses it to manage the site for Walmart.com and samsclub.com. They don’t but that’s a solid example.

Ultimately, adhering to the spirit of the license is up to the end user.

2)  If I have 10 websites built by me, hosted by me and managed by me, would I purchase only the commercial license for $299 or do I also need the MSM Site Manager for $199?  Trying to figure out how much it would cost me to get into EE.

Were those 10 sites built for you personally or for businesses you own? Then 1 commercial ExpressionEngine license and one MSM license would be fine to manage them all.

If you designed, built and host any one of those 10 sites for a client that pays or has paid you a service fee, than it needs a separate ExpressionEngine license.

Please, let me know if I can answer any other questions!

Cheers,

The 10 sites are built for/by me under my business.  When you say “one MSM license” to manage them all, do you mean the $49 or $199 license?

What is the incentive for buying the $199 license for 3 websites when I could buy them individually for $49 each? 

Sorry to be a pain.  I appreciate your responses very much.

Hi, Sheryanne -

Were the sites built for clients/other businesses?

For instance, if you own Joe Acme Site Design Services and you build 2 Sites, one for Rug Acme Ltd., and one for Elephants in Two, Inc. then each of those two sites would need their own license and installation, even if you built the site, own the site, and manage the site - it was built for those companies, therefore each site/business is considered its own entity and necessitates a license for that respective site.

However, if you run a site design agency but also run a marketing agency, you can run both of those as Sites under one installation using the MSM. 

The $199 license gives you the software that enables you to have additional sites.  Buying the Additional Sites is both not possible in our store, and not technically useable without the MSM expansion itself.

Does that help any further with the clarification?

Hi again.  Joe Acme Site Design has to have two separate licenses, leaving one left under the MSM.  The site design agency running a marketing agency is under one installation with the MSM, leaving two left under the MSM.  What if the Rug Acme company were to do marketing for the Joe Acme Site Design company?  If the sites are cohesive in design and give deals to customers that buy rugs to get free design services, does this allow the usage of one license?

Hi, Sherryanne,

In the example Joe Acme Site Design is building sites for different clients - they would use two full EE licenses, no MSM at all.

The Site Design + Marketing Agency could use EE (1 Site) + MSM (2 Sites on top of EE base) so would end up with a “spare” Site in this scenario.

What if the Rug Acme company were to do marketing for the Joe Acme Site Design company?

Rug Acme is 1 business, if they wanted their site on EE, they’d need a commercial license.

Joe Acme is a second, separate business it sounds like, so would also need their own commercial license.

Separate businesses with separate owners = separate licenses and separate installations.

To give a real-world example, I work for an ad agency. We build and host sites for ourselves and many clients.

Our agency site, and two related sites that focus on our services for particular niche markets all run on a single installation of EE plus MSM. The agency’s owner also has a site for his band, which is entirely separate business from the agency (even though it’s the same owner, and the agency does the band’s marketing), so the band site has a separate EE license,

We also host sites for multiple clients on our server, and each of those clients sites has their own individual EE license, and we have a few clients with multiple related sites running EE + MSM.

Hi aircrash,

Thanks! It’s always nice to have a real world scenario and your situation is a great example.

Thank you!

Cheers,

Thanks a lot to everyone for the explanations!

Hey sheryanne,

I am really glad that you are happy with the support and answers that you have received!

If you need anything else, we are here to help.

Is there anything else you would like to know about?

Cheers,

Closing thread.