CQC Drivers, License and Upgrades

[simplextech]

The Tier structure of CQC around drivers and clients leaves me with some questions about initial deployment and growth/upgrades.

I'm assuming a YES to these questions but I prefer to ask and verify than to assume.

• Do CQC functional Drivers count towards license limit? Example being the CQC Variables driver
  
• Some Drivers require multiple instances such as the Sonos Driver.  In this example there are 5 Sonos speakers and each one will require and instance.  So each one counts towards a driver license?  If using the Sonos "player" for interacting with Sonos functions and the Sonos Renderer for general media functions now the drivers are doubled. 
  
• The same duplication exists for things like Roku players.  A driver instance is required for each device.
  

Or does a "Driver" count as a Device Family such as with Sonos or Roku the license covers each instance?  Doubtful but this ideally would be the best consumer approach and make things far more appealing without the sense of being nickled and dimed.  However that's why there's higher Tiers and ability to buy additional drivers right? 

Is there an option to upgrade from Tier to Tier?  A typical tier upgrade would be the next Tier Cost minus Current Tier cost would be the upgrade fee.

[gReatAutomation]

I had the same questions many moons ago.

License tiers are on the About page on the web site: http://charmedquark.com/

Yes, drivers count towards license limit.

Yes, multiple instances of the same driver (eg, SONOS) count towards the license limit

Yes, you can upgrade and they will calculate the cost, etc. I've purchased the All Components, and then upgraded my tier which included all components and they recalculated everything for the license cost.

[simplextech]

I had the same questions many moons ago.

License tiers are on the About page on the web site: http://charmedquark.com/

Yes, drivers count towards license limit.

Yes, multiple instances of the same driver (eg, SONOS) count towards the license limit

Yes, you can upgrade and they will calculate the cost, etc. I've purchased the All Components, and then upgraded my tier which included all components and they recalculated everything for the license cost.

I've read through all of the about page and Tiers which led to my questions.  As I figured the duplicate instances do go towards the Driver count.  That's business but a harder sell really.  

I'm very glad to hear about the Tier Upgrade though as that's a larger selling point of being able to get a base system deployed always leads to a upgrade of wanting more...

[Dean Roddey]

The other thing is that there's a $95/year coverage for upgrades. As long as you are covered you can upgrade to any version that comes out during that time. But, once any given year's coverage is done, it goes into onto your tab to be used for tier upgrades as well.

Also, something a lot of folks are confused about is that Z-Wave is one driver. An Elk is one Driver. A Hue or ISY is one driver. Since most folks have something of that sort at the core of their system, that gets a lot out of one driver.

[simplextech]

The other thing is that there's a $95/year coverage for upgrades. As long as you are covered you can upgrade to any version that comes out during that time. But, once any given year's coverage is done, it goes into onto your tab to be used for tier upgrades as well.

Also, something a lot of folks are confused about is that Z-Wave is one driver. An Elk is one Driver. A Hue or ISY is one driver. Since most folks have something of that sort at the core of their system, that gets a lot out of one driver.

The annual subscription for upgrades as great as it provides a nice assurance about upgrades and incentives.  

The larger core drivers like Z-Wave, ISY, Lutron, ELK, etc are great because those drivers encompass a huge amount of sub-devices.  I suppose what spurred the question was in my testing with Sonos and seeing that I have 5 players and to fully utilize the capabilities I would need the Sonos Zone Player driver and the Sonos Renderer driver for EACH speaker.  That's 10 drivers just for speakers

That makes it hard to do a Bronze sell for "entry" knowing I would already have to up-sell additional drivers to have an actual working system beyond the Sonos speakers.

I'm looking from two angles... customer angle as I'm looking to move my system to this and from an integrator perspective.