Wowza Streaming Engine subscription license keys "phone home" to the Wowza licensing servers to provide the data required for populating your invoice usage.
Our licensing servers look for peak usage from any given day during your usage period. If you had additional monthly server instances running during the previous usage period, they are billed on the next monthly invoice at the then-current monthly rate. There is no need to notify us when server instances are started or stopped.
Server Instance
A server instance is a single copy of Wowza Streaming Engine running on a single physical or virtual computer. You can have multiple applications running at the same time using one Wowza instance. It does not matter how many applications are running or how many viewers are connected. We count the peak number of instances used on any given day during the month.
Transcoder Channel
A transcoder channel is a single inbound stream received by Wowza Streaming Engine where the Transcoder feature is enabled for processing. Each time a live stream is ingested by Wowza Streaming Engine, if that stream is processed by the Transcoder feature, that is counted as a transcoder channel on the invoice.
Testing Licenses
Wowza charges for all server instances and channels that report to our licensing servers simultaneously. The system does not distinguish between an instance used in production, and an instance used in a test environment. We only know the number of instances/channels being reported by your license key. Billing for license usage is calculated automatically through our billing system and charges for peak usage during a given bill cycle. For testing purposes, without charges being collected, we offer a free trial license key.