Acumatica deployment licensing covers where Acumatica Cloud ERP runs and the resource entitlements that go with it. The Licensing Guide says the product “can be implemented through two models”: a SaaS Subscription, “which is the most popular choice”, and a Private Cloud Subscription (PCS). It also warns that certain editions may not be available in every model.[1] This article describes the models, the SaaS add-ons and the upgrade programs that SaaS and private customers choose between.
SaaS Subscription
A SaaS Subscription lets a licensee use the software for the life of the subscription defined in the Subscription Agreement. The SaaS fee includes the price of the software, the cost of the hardware and internet connectivity Acumatica uses to host it, the firewalls and backups, and the cost of managing the server environment. Updates and Upgrades are included, so a licensee can keep the software and infrastructure current.[1] Acumatica’s FAQ states that the service is hosted on Amazon Web Services and that Canadian customers can be hosted at an AWS facility in Canada.[6] Every subscriber’s data is stored in a separate database, which allows each subscription to be on its own version.
In SaaS, additional software such as Microsoft Windows Server or SQL Server is not required; those licences are needed only outside the Acumatica SaaS environment and are not included.[1]
Private Cloud Subscription
A PCS licence permits the licensee to deploy and manage the software on its own premises, on its own physical servers, or to have it “hosted and/or managed by their VARs (Value Added Resellers) or a third party”. Updates and Upgrades under the EULA are included.[1] The EULA licenses use “for each License Key you purchased, for the number of Tenants licensed on a single Acumatica production database”, permits a reasonable number of copies for development, testing, archival and training on non-production servers, and prohibits use of the software “for commercial software hosting services”.[4] The EULA licenses use with operating environments (cloud services, servers, database systems and operating systems) that Acumatica supports as set out in its documentation.
A licence key is required in production; licensees must not share it, and a stolen key is replaced and the compromised key disabled.[4] The product monitors user counts, transaction volumes, resource utilisation, key numbers and server IP addresses.
The Licensing Guide notes that PCS licensing includes models designed to let customers deploy high-availability configurations.[1] The October 2023 edition of that sentence added “without additional Acumatica costs”.[2] The FAQ separately says that Acumatica supports load balancing and multiple-server configurations.
Moving between models
The FAQ states that a SaaS subscription can be switched to a PCS licence, typically in three to seven business days, and that Acumatica provides a copy of the data at no extra charge to the partner for this purpose.[6] The product editions page describes the two as an annual subscription for a public-cloud deployment and an annual subscription for a private cloud with the hosting provider of the customer’s choice.[7]
Legacy perpetual licences
The EULA defines a Perpetual License as one for which the customer pays “a one-time Fee” for the right to use and deploy the software on its premises or at its preferred hosting provider.[4] Updates are provided only while the customer holds a Software Maintenance Plan and only for a Supported Version, and a lapsed plan can bring fees for the lapsed period, reinstatement fees and penalties. The October 2023 guide records that Acumatica stopped selling Private Cloud Perpetual (PCP) licences as of July 2021 and refers PCP customers to the Supplement, which licenses by logical CPU cores.[2][3] The EULA says versions are supported for at least 18 months after initial release.
SaaS Reserved Resources
SaaS Reserved Resources (SRR) “refers to a set of additional system resources earmarked for a customer”, which stay available “regardless of the overall demand by other customers in the standard cloud environment”. They raise parallelism and concurrency, higher thresholds for daily ERP transactions and Web API throughput. SRR “are available exclusively to SaaS subscription customers, and are not applicable to PCS subscription customers”.[1]
Availability by product (Table 1):
| SRR | Essentials | Select | Prime | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Choice | Not available | Optional | Optional | Not available |
| Enhanced | Not available | Not available | Optional | Included |
| Premium | Not available | Not available | Not available | Optional |
| Ultimate | Not available | Not available | Not available | Optional |
Table 2 shows the capability each SRR adds:
| SRR | Parallelism included / max | Concurrency queue | Processing nodes included / max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Choice | 4 / 8 | 20 | None / 1 |
| Enhanced | 8 / 12 | 40 | 1 / 2 |
| Premium | 8 / 24 | 80 | 1 / 3 |
| Ultimate | 16 / scalable | Scalable | 1 / scalable |
Concurrency is how many tasks can be accepted or queued at the same time; parallelism is how many are processed simultaneously.[1] With SRR, system constraints rise (Table 6B), for example lines per transaction to 4,000 for the Choice levels and 50,000 for Premium and Ultimate, Web API connections to 20 or 40 for Choice and scalable for the largest levels, and import records per day to 10,000 or 25,000 for Choice and 100,000 for Enhanced.
The October 2023 guide described SRR as a set of resources such as CPU units, memory and storage, but stated that the exact size was not publicly disclosed.[2] The April 2026 guide publishes the parallelism, queue and node figures above.
SRR Monthly Boost
The SRR Monthly Boost temporarily changes a deployment so that a customer can import a volume of records above the maximum daily import constraint. It is available to all SaaS Enterprise customers and to Select and Prime customers without an SRR.[1]
Processing Nodes
A Processing Node is “a logically separated application unit assigned to manage background operations and web requests”, used for OData pulls, Web API requests from integrations and scheduled batch processing, so that the primary application unit stays responsive. An embedded node shares memory and computing power with the primary unit; a separately licensed Reserved Resource Processing Node (RRPN) does not. Nodes are offered in several sizes for SaaS and PCS, and Acumatica recommends nodes with equal or higher parallelism than the base system.[1] In the October 2023 guide, nodes came in two sizes, L and X.[2]
Storage
Default database storage is 50 GB for Essentials and Select, 100 GB for Prime and 500 GB for Enterprise. The maximum is 150 GB for Essentials, 1 TB for Select, 5 TB for Prime and scalable for Enterprise, and extra capacity is sold in increments of 100 GB, 500 GB or 2.5 TB. The maximum for Prime and Enterprise includes the maximum Backup Access Service capacity. Acumatica may require data services to archive data and reduce database size.[1]
Media attachments are stored in the database by default. Customers may use an external storage provider, in which case Acumatica does not maintain the storage and standard SLAs, data privacy and performance for attachments are not Acumatica’s responsibility. The FAQ notes that snapshots count against capacity and that the Space Usage screen shows consumption, with notification to the partner at 90% of the pre-purchased limit.[6]
Sandboxes, backup access and Dedicated SaaS
- Sandbox. A copy of production for testing, training and development. SaaS customers may buy one at any time; the sandbox’s licensed storage “must be equal to that of the associated production instance”. A free 90-day Sandbox can be requested before an upgrade to the next major version. The FAQ says a sandbox cannot push changes into production, and that a refresh from backup is a manual process with rates.[1][6]
- Backup Access Services. Secure FTP download of the latest ten daily backups; it requires the same database capacity as the production instance. The FAQ, which is undated, says the optional service gives access to seven days of rolling backups, so the figures differ between documents.
- Dedicated SaaS. A personalised deployment for specific compliance needs, encryption at rest, disaster recovery metrics and specialised security configurations.
Upgrade programs
Acumatica bundles enhancements into two upgrade releases a year, delivers patches for high-severity fixes (for versions 2025 R1 and above) and expects customers to upgrade at least once a year. Each upgrade release is usually supported for 18 months before retirement.[1]
| Product | Always Current | Flex Program |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | Every 6 months, within 120 days of release | Not available |
| Select | Every 6 or 12 months (choice of half-year), within 120 days | Not available |
| Prime and Enterprise | Every 6 or 12 months, within 120 days; patches as needed | Own upgrade date before the end of life of the current version |
Under Always Current, Acumatica automatically upgrades customers that have not upgraded by their Scheduled Upgrade Date. Essentials customers must upgrade twice a year; others may switch to annual with approval and possible restrictions. Flex is a paid program for Prime and Enterprise, and Private Cloud and Flex customers may defer upgrades so long as they upgrade by the release’s retirement date.[1] If a customer does not maintain a Supported Version, Acumatica may charge a premium on 30 days notice, and the SLA does not apply to downtime caused by failure to upgrade.[5]
Service levels and exit
Acumatica uses commercially reasonable efforts to make each SaaS instance available at least 99.5% of the month. Credits are 10% of monthly value below 99.5% and 20% below 99.0%, claimed within 30 days, and a customer may terminate on 15 days notice after three consecutive months below 99.5%. After termination, Subscriber Data in the database files is available for 60 days.[5] The FAQ describes a 30-day suspension after an expiration date, after which the data is permanently deleted.[6]
Practical points
- Record the deployment model per instance: SRR, Processing Nodes and Flex apply only where the contract and deployment match.
- Check that sandbox and backup storage equal the production capacity purchased.
- Track the release in use against its retirement date; late upgrades can carry a premium and remove SLA cover.
- For private deployments, count the Windows Server, SQL Server and virtualization licences separately from Acumatica.
Out of scope
This article does not cover AWS pricing, partner hosting contracts, or the Microsoft licensing of the underlying platform.