Obtaining a Key for Evaluation/Community Edition [Obsolete]
You are welcomed to evaluate any Visual Paradigm software products before purchase. Without a key, you can try any edition and evaluate it for up to 10 days. If you request and import an evaluation key, you can extend the trial period to 30 days.
For those who are interested in Visual Paradigm for UML (VP-UML), there is an additional option available. You could try its community edition. Once activated with an activation key, it won’t expire. There are some usage limitations, however, and we will go over them later.
In this article, we will walk through how to obtain (1) an evaluation key and (2) an activation key.
Obtaining a Key for Evaluation
Whenever you run a Visual Paradigm software, the Key Manager will prompt you for a valid license key if you haven’t imported one yet. At which, there are two ways to enable your evaluation copy:
- Click Try without key to start the evaluation immediately for 10 days.
- Click Request Key to request an evaluation key for 30-day trial. Fill the form below and click Sign up and Request Key.
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You will then receive an email with the evaluation key file itself or instructions on downloading the file. After you get the file, you need to import it into the Key Manager by clicking Import key. Click Close to start the 30-day evaluation.
If you don’t hear from us after a while, please check the Junk box of your email program to make sure that our email wasn’t filtered out. If you have any problem getting the evaluation key file, feel free to contact our support team.
When the evaluation period expires (after 10 days or 30 days), you will no longer be able to launch the software. However, if you were evaluating Visual Paradigm for UML (VP-UML), you could switch to the community edition at this time. To do that, simply run the edition manager under %PRODUCT-INSTALL-DIR%\bin. Note that any evaluation key you imported previously, regardless of the edition it supports, is capable of unlocking the community edition. In other words, you do not need to request any key file again.
Technical support is available even during your evaluation period. You are welcomed to contact us if you have any questions or requests.
Restrictions of Evaluation
Evaluation copy is solely for evaluation purpose. Use of evaluation copy for any production or commercial purposes is prohibited. In terms of functionality, the only limitations are the patterned watermarks appearing on both image outputs and images embedded inside an output (e.g. a generated report).
Want to Evaluate Another Edition/Product?
To find out which edition/product best suits your needs, sometimes you may want to evaluate more than one edition or product.
Changing edition does not require any re-installation. You only need to run the edition manager under %PRODUCT-INSTALL-DIR%\bin to select a different edition. If you are switching to a lower edition (compared to your current edition), you do not need to request another key. Note that your evaluation period will be carried over with the switching and does not start over again.
If you want to evaluate another product, download it in the Visual Paradigm Products Download page and follow the steps described in the previous section to obtain a valid evaluation key. Note that this downloading of a different product comes with a new evaluation period.
Obtaining a Key for Community Edition
Unlike evaluation copies, the community edition of VP-UML has no time limit. You can continue to use it for as long as you like with zero cost. Note that out of the various Visual Paradigm modeling software products, only VP-UML offers the community edition.
When you run VP-UML without having imported a valid license key, the Key Manager will prompt you to import one. You can close the Key Manager by clicking Use CE without key. By doing so, you can continue running the software, but the Key Manager will prompt again after an hour. If you want to stop the prompting permanently, click Request Key to request an activation key. Fill the web form and click Sign up and Request Key.
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An email with the activation key file itself or instructions on downloading the file will be sent to you. After you get the key file, simply import it into the Key Manager by clicking Import key. Click Close to continue.
If you don’t hear from us after a while, please check the Junk box of your email program to make sure that our email wasn’t filtered out. If you have any problem activating the community edition, feel free to contact our support team.
Restrictions of Community Edition
Community edition is solely for personal and non-commercial purposes. Use of community edition for production or commercial purposes is prohibited. In terms of functionality, you are limited to create at most one diagram per diagram type only.
If you didn’t go over the diagram limit, there will be a single line watermark on the image outputs. If you created more than one diagram per type, there will be patterned watermarks covering the entire outputs.
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