The trial works beautifully, the invoice arrives, and somebody discovers that servers are not workstations and three PCs were never covered at all. Licensing is boring right up to the moment it is expensive.
Site Manager's licensing is not complicated, but it is per computer, and the details have changed names over the years — which is exactly how offices end up under-licensed without meaning to be. Older Site Manager licences were bundles called Macrium Agent Licences; the current name is SiteBackup seats. One seat covers one agent computer. That is the whole model — everything below is the consequences of that sentence.
Every computer with a Site Manager agent installed and backing up consumes a seat. Workstation seats cover desktop and laptop Windows; server seats cover Windows Server machines, and a server cannot quietly borrow a workstation seat. This is the most common counting mistake in small offices: the fleet maths is done on PC count alone, the file server gets added "because it is just another machine", and the console reports an unlicensed agent that then does not back up. Count your servers separately from the first sketch of the project.
Starting the trial from the first run wizard creates 30 day trial seats — a small bundle of workstation seats plus a server seat — so you can prove a mixed fleet, not just desktops. Use the trial properly: one pilot workstation, one server if you have one, the real repository, the real schedules. Thirty days is enough to know your image sizes, your backup window and your restore time. What the trial is not is a deployment plan for 40 machines — it will end mid-rollout if you treat it as one, so time the purchase before the big waves.
Offices often arrive with a few standalone Macrium Reflect licences already owned. A computer running standalone Reflect with the Site Manager agent alongside can satisfy its licensing through that standalone licence — the console tracks these on its own page. The practical advice: keep a simple written count — seats owned, standalone licences in play, computers connected — and reconcile it against the console's Licences page after every change. When Macrium moved from Site Manager 8 to the current platform, old agent licence bundles converted automatically into seats; if your console shows numbers you do not recognise after an upgrade, that conversion is the first place to look.
Server install, agent push, backup definitions and schedules — the whole Macrium Site Manager deployment, live and step by step.
▶️ Watch Full VideoThe console is the management platform — the cost sits in the per-computer seats for the machines being backed up. You pay for protected computers, in workstation and server classes, typically as annual plans through Macrium or a reseller. Confirm the current structure on Macrium's site or with your reseller before budgeting, because packaging names have changed before.
New agents connect but sit unlicensed, and unlicensed computers are not protected by backups. The fix is simply to add seats — they can now be bought individually rather than in fixed bundles, which makes small top-ups painless. Until then, prioritise: servers and the machines holding unique data get the seats first.
No. Macrium converts old agent licences into SiteBackup seats automatically during the platform upgrade, and unconverted licences continue to work on the older platform. If your counts look wrong after upgrading, check the Licences page and talk to Macrium or your reseller with your original licence details in hand.