Collections MAX Administrator V5 Licensing changes

By Category: licensing

Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a minute to talk about something that’s been on my mind as we move forward with Collections MAX Administrator V5 — licensing.

First, let me be clear about something: I didn’t want to charge a license fee for Collections MAX Administrator. That was never the goal, and it still isn’t. The software itself remains the same great tool you’ve been using to run your agencies and manage your portfolios. Nothing changes there.

So What Is Changing?

Over the years, I’ve noticed that a growing number of vendors and agencies are building on top of Collections MAX — adding custom tables, writing stored procedures, and essentially using the platform as a foundation for their own solutions. And honestly? That’s awesome. It tells me we built something solid enough that people want to extend it.

But here’s the thing — supporting that level of customization takes real effort on our end. When custom tables and stored procedures are in the mix, it affects upgrades, compatibility testing, and the overall support experience. It’s a different ballgame than someone running the software as-is.

So rather than passing a license fee on to everyone, we’ve introduced a commercial license that only applies if you’re using custom tables or stored procedures within Collections MAX V5. If you’re not doing that, this doesn’t affect you at all.

What Does It Cost?

We tried to keep this as reasonable and flexible as possible:

  • Vendor License — $12,500 per year, broken up into 3 payments. This is for vendors who are building products or services on top of Collections MAX. One thing to note — we won’t be granting vendor licenses for products or integrations that directly compete with Collections MAX. I think that’s pretty understandable. We’re happy to support vendors who are adding value to the platform, but we’re not going to help someone build a competitor on our own foundation.
  • Agency License — $6,500 per year, broken up into 2 payments. This is for agencies that have developed their own custom tables or stored procedures within the system.

We split the payments up because nobody likes getting hit with one big bill, and we wanted to make it manageable.

How It Works — Your Options

I want to make sure everyone knows where they stand, so here’s how this breaks down depending on your situation:

If you’re a vendor — the vendor license is tied to the company that owns the integration. You’re the one who built it, you’re the one who licenses it. Pretty straightforward.

If you’re an agency with your own custom work — you can get an agency license, but it comes with one condition: that integration stays with you. You can’t lease it out or sell it to other agencies. It’s your tool for your shop.

If you’re an agency using a vendor’s integration — this is where it gets a little more nuanced. The licensing responsibility starts with the vendor. If your vendor gets their license, you’re good to go. But if your vendor decides they don’t want to get a license, you’ve got two paths:

  1. Downgrade to Collections MAX Administrator V4 — you can keep running V4 with the integration intact. Just know that V4 support and the software will expire on January 1, 2029, so this is a temporary bridge, not a long-term solution.  The download for V4 is in your license manager at collectionsmaxlicenses.com after you login under Downloads.
  2. Contact us to remove the integration — if you want to move forward with V5 without the integration, reach out and we’ll take care of removing it so you’re clean and ready to go on the new version.

Either way, nobody gets left without options. We want to work with you, not against you.

Why This Makes Sense

And finally — there’s a practical reason for all of this that benefits everyone. By tracking the licensed stored procedures and custom tables, I know exactly what’s out there. That means if I need to do a database upgrade down the road, I’m not accidentally breaking something your business depends on.

PCI compliance changes rapidly, and when it does, I have to move fast. The last thing I want is to push an update that rewrites stored procedures or tables I had no clue existed and take down hundreds of users because of a botched upgrade. That’s a nightmare for you and a nightmare for me. Licensing lets us keep a clear picture of what’s running on the platform so we can protect your setup while keeping everyone compliant and up to date.

No Surprises

If you’re not sure whether this applies to you, just reach out. We’re happy to talk it through. There’s no gotcha here — this is just about making sure we can keep doing what we do while being fair to everyone involved.

Thanks for being part of the Collections MAX community. We’ve got a lot of great stuff coming in V5, and I’m excited for you all to see it.

— Frank