Update: We cancelled our Sophos Central & XG subscription on 1st May 2018. So the information in this article is no longer up to date. You can read more about the exact reasons in the following blog post: Sophos Central & XG Subscription: Service immediately discontinued

When we launched our Sophos Licensing Portal on the 12th of July 2017, we were at the very beginning of our idea to offer Sophos licenses on a monthly basis. At that time, we started with our Sophos Central Subscription, which has already inspired many new customers.

At this point we would like to thank all subscribers from all over the world! You’re confirming to us that this is the kind of service that’s needed out there on the World Wide Web. You push us every day to improve our website and do everything we can to offer you a wider range of services in the future. There are still some things on our roadmap that you can look forward to next year…

After launching the Sophos Central subscription, we had of course planned to offer monthly licenses for the new Sophos Firewall OS (SFOS) as soon as possible. We have reached this important milestone today and it’s a pleasure to introduce our new Sophos XG subscription.

Monthly billing for the most popular license bundles

With our new Sophos XG subscription, you can pay for the EnterpriseGuard, FullGuard or FullGuard Plus license for the Sophos Firewall OS (SFOS) on a monthly basis and no longer have to use one-, two- or three-year licenses. The EnterpriseGuard Plus bundle will also be available at a later date.

Monthly licenses for the UTM operating system are not offered. If you still have an SG appliance running on the UTM operating system, you will find a tutorial in our Knowledge base on how to install the SFOS on your SG.

Customers who already have a Sophos Licensing Portal account will find the new subscription under Subscriptions next to the Sophos Central subscription. To become a subscriber, simply enter the serial number of your firewall, choose your model and select the desired license bundle. The monthly price is calculated automatically. Afterwards you will receive the license key by email, which you just have to activate on your firewall.

Renewals are a thing of the past

The monthly licenses have the advantage that you never have to think about “renewals” again. The license keys will remain valid as long as you want to use the subscription.

So if you’re in a situation where your license will expire soon, just activate the XG subscription and you’ll only pay for the license as long as you need it. The same goes for those who are considering buying a Sophos XG firewall. Before you add the hardware and the license to your shopping cart, think about whether the XG subscription would be the better choice. If so, just buy the hardware and get your Sophos XG subscription on our Sophos Licensing Portal.

Pricing policy

As with the Sophos Central subscription, we are sticking to our pricing strategy with the XG subscription. This means that the current prices depend on the number of our customers. With more customers clicking their subscriptions, Sophos offers better margins. It is therefore quite likely that our subscription prices will continue to drop in the future.

Today’s official launch of our XG subscription has already had a positive impact on our beta testers, who have been using the subscription for a few months now. On the December invoice there is already a price reduction of a healthy 12 percent!