Your license and your updates are two different things

The two entitlements

A license is your right to run the software. Buy it once, and it is yours. It does not silently expire, and nothing you fail to renew can take it away.

Maintenance & Updates is a separate entitlement: your right to receive releases published during a window of time. It has a start date and an end date, and it is sold on its own.

Keeping them apart means the worst case is bounded. If maintenance lapses, you stop receiving new releases. You do not lose the software, you do not lose your license key, and you do not lose access to anything published while your window was open.

How access is decided: by release date

A release is available to you when its release date falls inside one of your maintenance windows. Both ends are inclusive:

Eligible ⟺ window starts on or before the release date  and the release date is on or before the window ends

This is why the comparison is against the release and not against today. Consider a maintenance window running 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026, and a license that is lifetime:

Release	Release date	Can you download it?
v4.2.0	15 November 2026	Yes — inside the window
v4.3.0	15 January 2027	No — after the window closed

Now read the table again assuming it is February 2027 and the window ended in December. v4.2.0 is still downloadable. The window has passed, the entitlement reads as expired, and the release from November is still yours — because it fell inside the period you paid for.

That is the whole point. An expiry date is a boundary on which releases you receive, not a switch that retroactively removes what you already had.

What happens when maintenance ends

• Your license stays valid. The software keeps running on your activated domains.
• Releases published inside your window stay downloadable, permanently.
• Releases published after it are not downloadable until you renew.
• Renewing opens a new window. Anything published within it becomes available.

Nothing is deleted, and no history is rewritten. If you ever need to prove what you were entitled to in a given month, the record is there.

Two common questions

“Do I have to renew to keep using the software?” No. Your license is unaffected by maintenance. Renew only if you want newer releases than the ones you already have.

“I renewed twice and the windows overlap. Which applies?” The most generous one covering the release date. Renewing early never makes you worse off than renewing late.