Am I being told that I will soon no longer be able to use the permanent licence?


How do I get rid of this annoying message that pops up every time I start eM Client?
The dock icon is also jumping like crazy.

eM Client has been unable to contact the update server for at least 10 days. To be able to continue using this product, please ensure that the server is accessible from your network.
Last attempt resulted in the following error:
RetrieveLicenseXml failed

I purchased the licence as a one-off payment and plan to buy the Lifetime Upgrade option for the next major update if I am satisfied.
A constant licence check is therefore unnecessary.




(VAT shifted)

I don’t like it when apps call home unnecessarily. I think I had to allow the connection once for licence activation.
I have forbidden eM Client app any further connections to emclient.com.

How do I get rid of this message that pops up at every start without allowing the app to phone home? The dock icon is also jumping like crazy.

I update software and allow the connection when a problem occurs and before I complain. No update was available today.

I would agree lifetime-purchase software shouldn’t still need to connect home every few days.

To give you some history with other software, I too went down the path of a lifetime licence for eM Client because I have been stung in the past. I once bought (very!) expensive software through work and didn’t know it would dial home. With bad luck, within a couple of months, the company collapsed and then it was a matter of months before their server went offline. This meant there was no way to keep approving the use of the software. So the expensive purchase became useless within months and I felt badly burned.

I can appreciate that the company needs some way of ensuring a valid licence, that is entirely reasonable for a business model. I would much prefer that a purchase provides a code to unlock lifetime usage or, if that might be deemed too risky, that the software is authenticated by a server just once. As well as feeling much less intrusive, it can feel a lot more reassuring for customers.

1 Like

Could be eM Client isn’t reaching the licensing Server, or the Cryptographic services and CNG Key Isolation are not running.

See @Gary post below from the following thread

(Gary’s post)

“eM Client needs to periodically contact the license server to validate your license. If you have a Firewall or VPN that is blocking the connection, then eM Client will eventually be disabled”.

“Can you see if these links open in your web browser”:

https://licensing.emclient.com
https://licensemanager.emclient.com
http://emclient.com

“If they don’t open you need to configure any Firewalls or VPN’s to allow eM Client access.

“If you can reach those web pages, but the license server still cannot be reached, then it may be that some apps turned off specific services that are required”.

So if you have Windows “Click on the Windows Start button and type Services" and Open the Services option from the results”.

Then “Check that both Cryptographic services and CNG Key Isolation are running. If they aren’t, start them”.

Also see this thread.

Clearly you haven’t read parts of my post.

The program attempts a license check with the License server once every 24 hours, this not only checks for updates for the program on your device, but also works as a check that the device is activated on the correct number of devices.
For business licenses it also makes features like Server Settings possible.

If the license check is not successful at least once every 14 days, the program will be turned to offline mode until it can make contact.
Unfortunately this behavior cannot be changed at this time, so we’d recommend allowing the eM Client app to connect to the eM Client license server.

1 Like

Thank you for the quick but unsatisfactory answer.

You could simply increase your count of enabled devices at the time of activation.

I am very happy with eM Client contacting emclient.com once at this point.

Anything else is not necessary in my humble opinion for perpetual licenses.

For me as a perpetual license customer, this behavior feels threatening. :dotted_line_face:

For me the Lifetime Upgrade is on hold for now.

Please consider changing this behavior of the application.

Thank you very much.

We don‘t plan to change this behavior as it is the only way how we can reliably protect us against unauthorized use and it is well described in our terms of use and almost all the commercial apps do something similar. We use the data only for the license validation, we never send home any user data to use them commercially.

2 Likes

Oh, the CEO himself. I feel honored. :blush:

This is sad.

this sounds good

and would sound even better this way:

we never send home any user data

But I believe you that there will be no transfer of mail content other than the mail correspondence with you as long as I do not use AI features.

Actually I didn’t know about your pledge before.

Good that we are both in the EU. So we always have the General Data Protection Regulation to rely on as a last resort.

I am not happy that I depend on your servers to run the app, but there is always a backup client on my side. :blush:

Overall I am very happy with eM Client especially with composing mails and amazed by the crazy amount of details you guys have to think of.

So thank you very much.

1 Like

Our servers are used only for these purposes:

  • License activation and validation
  • Updates
  • Server settings feature
  • Message translation (we don’t store any data here and communication is encrypted)
  • AI features (we currently use ChatGPT in a way that no data are logged or stored and the data are not used to further train the LLM)

And yes we are fully GDPR compliant.

In case eM Client as company stops existing (we really don’t expect that) I can promise we’ll release a version with no regular license check to remain working for customers with Lifetime upgrades.

3 Likes

Glad to hear that :hugs:

Thank you, Michal! I really appreciate this and it is exactly the reassurance I was after.

Although, of course, I’m hoping eM Client is not going anywhere! :smiling_face:

2 Likes