[Licensing] Use one license on several personal computers

Doesn't seem like Parallels cares too much about their user base. I have switched to VMware Fusion (now free for personal use) and I have it installed on five computers. Granted Parallels is a bit better overall but hard to argue with FREE.

 

Captive audiences tend to do this, but simultaneously VMware just doesn't hold candle to Parallels, especially with the terrible risk that Broadcom has brought to the ecosystem. UTM is an option, but it's not as refined either.

 

Same exact use case.. work laptop and personal computer and I do the same dance of registering/unregistering when I want to use one over the other. Never both in use at the same time.

 

Started using Parallels a month or two ago, the software is great. But, as a lot of other people already said in this thread, I find having to switch licenses between my iMac and my MacBook a little bit cumbersome. You should bind the license to the user, not the computers. I, as a lot of other people here, never use Parallels in both computers at the same time.
Either that or offer a discount for the second and subsequent licenses.

 

One more vote for this. It stinks that I can only use Parallels on one machine -- like many devs I have multiple machines and I can't readily think of any other tool that enforces a strikt "one machine only" license these days.

With the new VMWare policies there is new competition, and unless Parallels finally begins supporting nested virtualization really soon, they will become a less promising solution quite quickly. The request to support multi-machine use and consider licensing per user has been open since 2018 now. High time to finally do something about it.

 

It's a shame. Still the same issues after all these years. Looking forward to other solutions.

 

I'm new to Parallels, but decided to give it a go after considering an upgrade of my Intel Mac minis (I have two, plus a MacBook Pro) to new Apple Silicon devices. I also need to be on a Windows device at times, and have for many years used Windows To Go on a good quality USB stick. That solution has been ideal, but isn't going to work on Apple Silicon. So, having seen MS now officially support Windows on a Mac through Parallels I thought this was the future. I had no idea that the licence wasn't single user, non-concurrent on many machines as, quite simply, everybody does that these days. Except Parallels, it seems. I'm not a professional, so can't afford three licenses, so now I don't know what to do. Looks like my Mac upgrades aren't going to be happening yet

 

For the sake of posterity I'll throw my hat into the ring and advocate for user vs. machine licensing. It makes no sense, on the users side, to pay 2X when they only use one license at a time. I can see there must be some analysis that says the incremental revenue is more important but given a user can activate/deactivate at will I'm not sure how important that is. I for one have always considered Parallels my VM go to but this silliness has made me aware of other options I'll check out where I would never have done so otherwise. I guess you're pretty confident!