Frequently Asked Questions

Duende Software purchasing, licensing, renewal & expiration, legal & compliance, and implementation & training

Duende Software |

Can't find the question you’re looking for? Contact us and our team will reach out to discuss your needs.

Procuring a License

How do I purchase Duende’s software?

  • Complete the questions on our sales form.
  • Upon completion of the relevant information about your company, email, and product needs, our Sales team will respond to your request within 1 business day.
  • If you have specific questions, please contact us. Our Sales team will respond to your request within 1 business day.

Where do I find pricing information?

Pricing can be found on our product pages:

License & Usage

How do I know which license I require?

Review our licensing packages on the Duende IdentityServer, Duende IdentityServer for Redistribution, and BFF product pages. We offer a variety of licensing options designed for your architectural and business requirement needs. Not sure which license is right for you, or require a custom package? Reach out to our sales team to learn more.

If you are a current IdentityServer4 user, you can book a free 30-minute assessment with our experts to walk through your upgrade path.

Do you offer trial or development licenses?

You do not need a license for development, testing, or trial. Download and use our library from NuGet and get started with trial mode. Start learning with the Duende IdentityServer quickstart tutorials.

What if I want to upgrade my license in the future?

You can upgrade the license at any point in time. We will issue you a new license for a new term and provide credit for the remaining time on any existing licenses on a prorated basis.

How do I obtain a license agreement and license key?

  • Decide on a License: Review pricing and licensing on our product pages: Duende IdentityServer; Duende IdentityServer for Redistribution; Backend for Frontend (BFF) security framework.

  • Request a Quote: Once you’ve decided on a license, reach out to our Sales Team to request a quote.

  • Sign the Quote or issue a Purchase Order: Our team will respond to your request within 1 business day with a quote. Please review the licensing agreement and sign the quote to confirm your order. We also consider your Purchase Order as quote acceptance.

  • Invoicing & Payment: After the quote is signed, we will prepare and send you an invoice with instructions for payment. Once payment is received, we will issue and send the license key.

  • Obtaining a License Agreement and License Key: Your license key will be issued and sent to you via email.

What is a Client?

A client is a piece of software that requests tokens from your IdentityServer - either for authenticating a user (requesting an identity token) or for accessing a resource (requesting an access token). A client must be first registered with your IdentityServer before it can request tokens.

While there are many different client types, e.g. web applications, native mobile or desktop applications, SPAs, server processes etc., they can all be put into two high-level categories: Machine to Machine Communication and Interactive Applications.

What is a Deployment?

What does Duende mean by deployment:? A single deployment acts as a single OpenID Connect / OAuth authority hosted at a single URL. It can consist of multiple physical or virtual nodes for load-balancing or fail-over purposes.

What’s Duende’s policy on non-production environments?

Duende IdentityServer is free for development, testing and personal projects, but production use requires a license.

What is trial mode?

When operating non-production environments, such as development, test, or QA, without a valid license key, you will run in trial mode. IdentityServer is free for development, testing and personal projects, and we support using your production license in these environments when trial mode is not sufficient. If you have feedback on trial mode, or specific use cases where you’d prefer other options, please open a community discussion.

What is the difference between “self hosted” and “redistribution”?

Our definition of “self hosting” means that you are hosting IdentityServer on your own infrastructure (e.g. your own data center or cloud subscription that you own), e.g. a SaaS. Our standard licenses don’t allow for redistribution. Therefore, if you want to redistribute Duende IdentityServer as part of a product to your customers, you'll need a redistribution license.

The redistribution license is bound to a product you create and allows for both self-hosting (SaaS, or on behalf of your customers), as well as redistribution to a customer’s on-premises or cloud infrastructure (or combinations of that). It can not be used as a generic identity provider for applications outside of the product it is bound to.

Renewal & Expiration

What is the renewal process?

  • Notification: We will email a renewal notice 90 days before your license expires.
  • Action: Please ensure your contact information is current so you receive this notice.
  • Support: If you need to update your details or have questions, please contact our operations team.

Can I install the license key prior to expiration?

You can configure the new license before the old license expires. While the expiration timestamp of a license is used to validate a license is active, the start date is an administrative data point IdentityServer does not take into account for license validation. In other words, you can safely configure the new license before the old one lapses.

See documentation for more details.

Legal & Compliance

Can we make changes to the standard Duende Software license agreement?

We only will consider modifications or additions to our standard license agreement for the Enterprise Edition and above. Please have your legal representative contact us to discuss any potential concerns with our standard agreement.

Implementation & Training

How can I learn to use the software?

Thank you for your interest in our software. Depending on what you want learn, we recommend a few channels to learn more:

Where should I go for technical questions about Duende IdentityServer?

A good place to start is our documentation. If you have additional questions, please contact us or open a discussion in our community. We will make sure an appropriate team member responds to your request as soon as possible.

Is there information about remote training?

Training is the most cost-effective way to learn about OpenID Connect, OAuth, ASP.NET security, and identity architecture. We have several training sessions to suit your needs:

If you have additional questions, please contact us.

We need additional expertise to help us with an identity solution (or project). Do you have available services or partners?

We have a global network of trusted partners that can help you with your identity projects. Explore our partner tools, components & solutions. If you have additional questions, please contact us.

Frequently Asked Questions