Counting licensed printers for printer seat-based licensing

All Loftware subscriptions track the number of printers in use in the Licensed Printers lists in License Center and Control Center, sorted by printer name. If nobody uses a printer for 7 days, Loftware automatically removes this printer from the list. This frees up a printer seat for another printer.

[Note] Note

In Cloud Designer and Cloud Essentials, Loftware automatically removes printers from the list after 24 hours of no usage.

To create a unique ID for each printer, Loftware uses a combination of:

  • Printer model name. The model name is hard-coded in the printer driver. Users cannot change this name.

  • Printer location. How the printer is connected to your computer is irrelevant for license counting. Loftware identifies the printer by either:

    • IP address for network printers

    • Location + port if the printer is connected locally

[Note] Note

If you access a printer from more than one local port, this counts as multiple printers. If you switch from one local port to another (for example, from LPT1 to USB) and print, this counts as multiple printers.

LPR printers

Each LPR printer consumes one printer seat.

Shared printers

  • In Loftware Cloud:

    Loftware counts shared printers based on the server name the printer is shared on and the shared name. For example, if you install a shared printer from \\myServer\mySharedPrinter on multiple computers, it consumes one license seat. If you install the same shared printer on a client computer using a server alias, like \\myServer.myDomain\mySharedPrinter it consumes another seat. If you print directly to this printer on the server where it's shared, it also consumes a separate seat.