Unlike typical retail licensed software packages, their volume licensed counterparts offer better value in the long run. In most of the cases, there's no need to maintain a subscription, which means end users can enjoy the perpetual license through the complete life cycle of the product. They usually offer better customizability and less telemetry than the retail and OEM variants. A bulk license is also helpful for reducing the per-unit cost.
However, more and more vendors are lately moving towards subscription-based selling schemes. As a result, it becomes virtually impossible to opt for a
pay-once-and-forget style purchase. Sure, an entity like a company can still procure volume licensed products with a one-time fee, but a regular user can't get the same benefit, thanks to the artificial limitations enforced by the software vendors.
As I've access to multiple volume licensing portals, I can offer a few of such products here. My rates are in INR and you should find them considerably cheaper than the regional retail pricing. The installer files are hosted on respective software maker's website. One can easily validate the authenticity of the files by examining the digital signature and/or comparing the hashes with the publicly available indices.
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| Product | Description | Cost |
| Needs no introduction. The activation is valid for a lifetime. In case you want to reinstall, the particular Windows edition will always be automatically activated after being connected to the internet. You are also permitted to link it to your Microsoft account, so that you can reactivate it even after a substantial hardware change. |
- Automatic update: Supported (minor AKA monthly as well as major AKA biyearly ones, but no major version update for LTSB/LTSC builds)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital activation code per user and per PC.
|
- Home/Home N: ₹2000
- Pro/Pro N: ₹2500
- Pro Education/Pro Education N: ₹3000
- Pro Workstation/Pro Workstation N: ₹3500
- Education: ₹4000
- IoT Enterprise: ₹5000
- Enterprise for Virtual Desktops: ₹15000
- Latest LTSB/LTSC (LTSC 2019 at this moment): ₹5000
- Older LTSB/LTSC (LTSB 2016 at this moment): ₹4000
|
| The volume licensed version of Microsoft Office for Mac 2019 features Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and the OneDrive client. Microsoft Teams is not part of the core installer, but it can be installed alongside. Both x86 and Apple Silicon (i.e. the ARM-based M1 SoC) Macs are supported. Note that there is no OneDrive subscription associated with the license. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital license package per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹2500 |
| This is the Enterprise variant of the SQL Server 2019. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital license package with the installer per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹15000 |
| This is the Enterprise variant of the Visual Studio 2019. Note that Azure DevOps plan or any kind of trial credit is not included. This one is meant for professionals who like to avoid all the fuss and want a feature-rich IDE. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital activation code per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹10000 |
WinRAR [Platform: Windows]Paying for WinRAR might sound funny, but if you're a system admin or an enthusiastic user who wants to explore the superior self-extracting (SFX) module creation capability of this archiver without activation nags, it actually makes sense. |
- Automatic update: Supported (major version updates too!)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital license package per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹200 (regular multi-user) / ₹500 (SOHO) |
Nitro PDF [Platform: Windows]A single PDF utility to rule them all. You don't need random services in the background (*cough* Adobe *cough*) while dealing with serious PDF editing. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital activation code per user and per PC.
| ₹1500 |
| The license doesn't come with the Support and Subscription Services (SnS), which means no more email support spam. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital activation code per user and per OS, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹3000 (v16) / ₹2750 (v15) |
| The license doesn't come with the Support and Subscription Services (SnS), which means no more email support spam. |
- Automatic update: Supported (no major version update, though)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital activation code per user and per OS, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹4000 (v12) / ₹3000 (v11) |
XYplorer [Platform: Windows]A popular file manager that features tabbed browsing, a powerful file search, a versatile preview, and a highly customizable interface. |
- Automatic update: Supported (major version updates too!)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital license package per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹2000 |
| A powerful disk image maker for easy backup, restore, and disaster recovery. Can be run from Windows PE and DOS as well. |
- Automatic update: Supported (major version updates too!)
- Licensing mechanism: Digital license package per user, no bound on the number of installations.
| ₹1000 |
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Apart from the aforementioned software packages, many more are on my list, so stay tuned. I can also share genuine untouched ISO images of regular Windows consumer and server SKUs upon individual request and a small fee, but that's not the main focus at this moment.
Special discounts are available for bulk purchases. Existing customers will also get attractive rebates.
