Bentley Systems Inc, Exton PA

2023 Update:

This is my 5 year anniversary bringing attention to this issue! Obviously this issue has still not been addressed. We still get random overage charges despite getting no notifications of going over our license count.

For those who have the ability to avoid this company, I highly encourage you to choose another route. Sadly, for me, I will just keep screaming into this empty void in the hopes that Bentley hires somebody with a brain and fixes this problem because clearly the person in charge of this overage policy doesn't have one.

2022 Update:

Shady billing practices have still not been addressed. We are still unable to prevent our own users from going over our license count and causing us overage charges. Talked with Bentley representatives multiple times and it is clear leadership at Bentley has no interest in changing this clearly ridiculous practice. If you can avoid doing business with this company I would highly advise you do so.

2018-2021:

We use the RAM products extensively at our firm and well the software and support have been great, their licensing on the other hand not so much. There licensing is extremely confusing but basically after you purchase your set number of licenses they still allow for users to bypass this license limit because they want to "ensure that access to our software is available at any consumption rate, 24/7/365". Well, I understand this approach and think that for some organizations this would be great, for my organization and probably many others this is a huge problem because this causes us unpredictable quarterly overage charges, why not give organizations the option to choose which strategy works best for them? The most baffling thing is that they already have a license alerting feature which sends alerts to the user that we have reached our license limit but still gives them the option to continue (which all users inevitably do anyways), It seems like such an easy fix for Bentley to allow admins to disable the "continue button" in the licensing alerting feature. After talking with multiple support people and reps, I walked away with the feeling that either nobody at Bentley is capable of figuring this problem out or that this shady business practice was deliberately put in place to get a little bit more money out of customers each month, either way it's not a good look.

Microstation may be the worst 2D drafting software that money can buy. The fact that anyone not only uses it but PAYS to use it is a testament to their sales staff. This is where productivity goes to die.