Sometimes it can get confusing to know how many PresentationPoint software licenses you need for your project. So we decided to put together an article to help you understand which licenses are needed and how many for a range of projects.

If your project doesn’t fit any of the scenarios here, contact us or one of our resellers and we will be happy to give you a detailed breakdown of the licenses you need.

Asking the Right Questions

Successful projects start by asking the right questions. Here are some questions we ask when people come to us with project ideas:

1. # of Screens: How many screens will you be showing your information on?
2. News & Weather: Do you want to show live news and weather updates?
3. Data: Do you want to connect to and display data in real time?
4. Scheduling: Do you want to be able to have different information on the screen based on time of day, day of week, upcoming holidays, etc.?
5. Indidual Screen Control: Will you be showing the same information on all screens or do you want fine control over each individual screen?

Here is how the questions affects the licenses you need.

If you have multiple screens (question 1) AND need to have individual screen control (question 5), you will need an iPoint player for each screen.

If you need to shows news or weather (question 2), you will need to choose from either Dynamic News, Dynamic Weather, Dynamic Elements, or DataPoint to show these.

If you need to show real-time data (question 3), you will need DataPoint on the computer where you are designing the presentation to show the data. If you are showing the data presentation on different computers than the one you created the data presentation on, you will need either the DataPoint Enterprise Edition along with the free DataPoint Viewer software or you will need to use the iPoint Player for each screen.

If you need to schedule different information based on time of day or other scheduling options, you will need an iPoint Player license for each screen.

Scenario 1: Single Screen, News & Weather

Now that we have the basic questions in place, let’s look at some sample scenarios.

Jane has a bed and breakfast and wants to show local attractions in the area to her guests as well as keeping them up to date on weather conditions so her guests know how to dress.  Let’s apply the questions to her situation:

1. # of Screens:  1
2. News & Weather: Yes
3. Data: No
4. Scheduling: No
5. Individual Screen Control: No

In this case, Jane creates a PowerPoint with local attraction pictures and downloads one of our PowerPoint Weather templates to show the weather. She then uses Dynamic Weather to connect her presentation to real-time weather updates.

So, in the end, she needs a single software license for Dynamic Weather at a one-time cost of $149 US.

Scenario 2 – Digital Menu Boards

Bob has a coffee shop and wants to create a digital menu board that also shows advertising. He needs 3 screens to hold all the menu items and the advertising. Each screen will be showing different presentations – a different part of the menu.

1. # of Screens:  3
2. News & Weather: No
3. Data: No
4. Scheduling: No
5. Individual Screen Control: Yes

In this case, Bob will need 3 licenses for iPoint. By running the iPoint Player on each screen, he can control what is showing on each screen and schedule advertising. Each iPoint license costs $499 US. Bob needs 3 licenses. By purchsing 3 licenses, Bob receives a 5% discount, bringing the total cost of his digital signage to $1,422 US one-time fee.

Scenario 3 – Factory Floor

The Complex Widget Factory wants to monitor their assembly lines and factory equipment in real-time. They want to create real-time equipment monitoring dashboards and show the dashboard on 10 screens scattered around the factory floor and in the management area. Each screen will show a different dashboard.

1. # of Screens:  10
2. News & Weather: No
3. Data: Yes
4. Scheduling: No
5. Individual Screen Control: Yes

In this case, they can use DataPoint Industrial Edition to connect to their industrial equipment and to create real-time dashboards using PowerPoint and show the dashboards on all the screens in the facility using iPoint. Cost for 10 DataPoint Industrial Edition licenses is $790/month. With the 15% 10-license volume discount, this comes to $671.50 per month US. iPoint is provided free with DataPoint so there is no charge for the 10 iPoint licenses needed.

Scenario 4 – Shopping Mall

Massive Megamalls has decided to go with digital signage throughout their mall. They plan on showing:

• advertising customized for time of day and holiday season
• upcoming event information
• public service announcements
• news and weather
• localized ads, based on the location of the screen in the mall

1. # of Screens:  12
2. News & Weather: Yes
3. Data: Yes
4. Scheduling: Yes
5. Individual Screen Control: Yes

In this case, they use DataPoint to show upcoming event information and to show real-time updated news and weather. They use iPoint on each screen to control the advertising and scheduling. 

This works out to 1 DataPoint license at $449 and 12 iPoint licenses at $499 US each. The total would normally be $6,437, but they receive a 15% volume discount in this case, making their software license cost a one-time fee of $5,471.

We hope these examples will better explain how to figure out how many licenses you need. Remember that, with the exception of the DataPoint Industrial edition, all these software license fees are one-time fees. You only pay the fee once. There are no monthly fees.

Need help determining which of our software you need and how many licenses? Contact us and we would be happy to help.