What is Named-Seat Licensing?
Named-seat licensing is a software billing model where you pay for each individual user account, regardless of whether that user actively uses the system. In contact centers, this means paying for every agent account provisioned—even if agents are on leave, work part-time, or haven't logged in for months.
How Named-Seat Licensing Works
With named-seat licensing, each agent gets a dedicated license tied to their account. You pay for that license every month whether the agent works 40 hours per week or zero hours.
This creates problems for organizations with:
- Seasonal staffing — Paying for summer staff year-round
- Part-time agents — Full license cost for limited usage
- High turnover — Paying for accounts during transitions
- Training accounts — Test users that rarely log in
Named-Seat vs Active User Pricing
Named-seat licensing is simple to understand but expensive in practice. If you have 100 agent accounts but only 60 agents actively work each month, you're wasting 40% of your licensing spend.
Active user pricing solves this by only charging for agents who actually log in during each billing period.
Stop paying for empty seats. Platform28's active user pricing only bills for agents who log in. See our pricing.
Only pay for agents who work
Switch from named-seat licensing to active user pricing and cut costs by 30-50%.
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