A SAN license enables you to purchase a number of unique SANs that can be used for as many unique certificates as you may need. This is an ideal fit for organizations that may issue many unique certificates for development purposes or IOT devices. You are permitted to have up to the quoted number of unique SANs on active (not expired or revoked) certificates.

Some important things to keep in mind regarding your SAN license are:

• Each unique SAN counts as 1 SAN of your SAN license.

• Once a certificate expires or is revoked, SANs in that certificate will be returned to available quota.

• Wildcard SANs typically count as 5 SANs, but this is configurable per quote.

• You may have more than 1 product taking advantage of one license.

• The higher the number of SANs in the SAN license, the larger the discount, so bundling products may be cost-effective and permit the maximum flexibility.

• Your license quota may be increased during the active license period if you find you need more SANs.

• The price for an increased SAN license is prorated to align with the active license pricing.

• The SAN license may be renewed up to 30 days before (or, in some exceptions, after) the initial license expires.

• A SAN license may increase or decrease its quota or limit upon renewal.

• As customer requirements change or as new TLS products are launched, new products may be added to an existing license (assuming they are of the same or lower tier or price).

• TLS customers want to issue multiple Certificates to the same FQDN for load balancing, reissuing, and other applications, but they only want to be billed for a single SAN.
  • We will permit multiple TLS products (services) to be included in one SAN license.
• This model is good for customers that have a high turnover of SANs within their dev environment or for customer demos or trial purposes (stand up servers, tear them down, and do it again with the same or different SANs).

SAN licenses are not the same as product packs. Although both have associated pricing, quotas, and products, they use different consumption models. Product packs draw down from a fixed annual allocation, whereas SAN licenses continuously track the number of active SANs during the service period.

We count the total number of unique SANs in non-expired and non-revoked Certificates across all of the services that are specified by the SAN license. Specifically, we will count unique values from:

• SAN:DnsName
• SAN:IpAddress
• SAN:RFC822 (email addresses)
• SAN:OtherName:UPN - These are typically found just in client authentication Certificates.

Wildcard SANs will be counted as separate SANs. Typically, they count as 5, but this can be customized as part of your SAN license quote.

example.com and www.example.com count as two unique SANs. We will do case-insensitive matching when computing the number of unique SANs (e.g. WWW.example.com and www.example.com will count as one SAN).

The CN will always have a corresponding SAN value, so we don't need to count CNs.

As in the case of revocation, once a certificate expires, all of the certificate’s SANs will automatically be returned to your SAN license count.

Secure Mail SAN License is a GlobalSign service that sets a maximum number of unique SANs (mailboxes) across active S/MIME certificates for a bulk, fixed price — effectively SAN Licensing adapted for S/MIME.

Some important things to keep in mind regarding Secure Mail and Secure Mail Enterprise SAN license are:

• Seat count is based on unique email addresses in the SANRFC822 field.

• Unique "SAN" value = unique email address per customer, not FQDN.

• Instead of FQDN/SAN swaps, customers can reuse a returned S/MIME seat to issue a new certificate for another email address.

• Customers can revoke a certificate even while it still has remaining validity.

• To revoke, the customer can select the certificate to see the serial number, just like in TLS SAN. Revoking the certificate will get your seat back in the pool for reuse. 

• At quote creation, attributes like wildcard multiplier don't apply, since wildcards are not supported for S/MIME certificates. Note that the wildcard multiplier field may still display "1" in the UI.

Secure Mail SAN License is particularly well-suited for organizations with dynamic workforces and high certificate turnover:

• Certificate reuse for departing employees: Attrition & workforce change

  • Revoked or cancelled certificates (e.g. for leaving employees) return to the pool and can be reused within the same seat count, avoiding waste and cost inflation.

• Fixed-cost planning: Budget predictability

  • Customers can plan and budget around a fixed number of certificates for the product pack period with a known annual fee, improving cost predictability for IT procurement and finance teams.