How VECHR MES pricing works: three separate lines, two tiers, no surprise fees.
How VECHR MES is licensed, in plain terms. Prices come in a written quote after the Workshop Assessment, sized to your actual plant.
There is no price list here, on purpose. Your figures come in writing after the Workshop Assessment, because cost depends on your plant's scope. You pay for implementation once, and for the licence either yearly from go-live (subscription) or once (perpetual), with support alongside. Standard covers a right-sized deployment. Enterprise unlocks everything.
Three things you pay for. Never blended into one number.
- One-timeImplementation A fixed-price project that gets you live: configuration, integration, training and go-live support. Paid across four milestones.
- Yearly from go-live, or onceLicence The right to run the software, sized to your people, the capabilities you choose and the machines you connect, across as many sites as you run. Rent it as a subscription, or own it outright.
- YearlySupport Response commitments, every software update and licence renewal. On a perpetual licence this is called maintenance.
Two tiers. Settle the tier before anything else.
| Standard | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Made for | A right-sized deployment, usually one plant getting execution and traceability in order | The full platform: scheduling, maintenance, assets, integration, AI and multi-site rollouts |
| Capabilities | A fixed set of four | No cap. Any capability, in any combination |
| Term | Annual subscription, or perpetual with annual maintenance | Annual subscription with multi-year prepay options, or perpetual with annual maintenance |
| Upgrade | To Enterprise, at any time | — |
It's an Enterprise deployment if any one of these is true:
- You need ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) integration or API access
- You need scheduling, maintenance, asset monitoring or OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
- You need operator hours for incentive pay
- You want AI
Rent it or own it. One licence, two ways to pay.
Tier, capabilities, seats and connected machines are identical either way. Only how you pay for the licence changes.
| Annual subscription | Perpetual | |
|---|---|---|
| You pay for | The right to run the software for a year, renewed every year | The right to run the software for good, paid once |
| Support and updates | Annual support | Annual maintenance: the same support, plus every new release. Included in year one |
| If you stop paying | The software stops at the end of the term | The software keeps running on every release published while maintenance was active |
| Suits | Operating budgets, and the lowest first-year cost | Capital budgets, and plants that will run the system for many years |
| Lower total cost | In the first few years | From around the fourth year |
| AI capabilities | Annual | Annual. AI is never perpetual |
What "keeps running" means: every release carries its publish date. A perpetual licence runs every release published up to the end of your maintenance, for as long as you like. A newer release asks for maintenance to be renewed first. Nothing already running ever stops.
On a subscription, renewal starts ninety days out.
An expired subscription stops the software. There is no read-only mode and no grace period, so the calendar leaves a full week of buffer.
| Step | Timing |
|---|---|
| Renewal notice issued | 90 days before expiry |
| Second notice, escalated to your named contact and commercial owner | 45 days before expiry |
| You raise the renewal purchase order (written into the contract) | 30 days before expiry |
| We issue and deliver the renewed licence | 14 days before expiry |
| You confirm it is installed and working | 7 days before expiry |
Renewal uplift is capped in your original contract, not decided at renewal. A multi-year prepay locks your rate for the whole term.
Eight capabilities, not fifteen line items.
Capabilities are independent of each other. Within a capability, it is all or nothing.
| Capability | What it does | Standard | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Operations (mandatory) | Access control, master data, the routing designer, orders, stock and every shop-floor action. Automatic hold on a failed check is included. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Operator UI | The dedicated terminal screen operators work from. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Traceability & Reporting | Unit, batch and lot genealogy through splits and merges. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Process Orchestrator | No-code automation that reacts to machine events, and the connection to your machines. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integration & API Access | Programmatic access to every capability. The path your ERP integration runs over. | — | ✓ |
| Advanced Operations | Finite-capacity scheduling, maintenance, asset monitoring and OEE, as one bundle. | — | ✓ |
| Labour Tracking | Actual operator hours by person, job and activity, for payroll or incentives. | — | ✓ |
| AI Insight & AI Agent | Plain-language questions over your data, and drafts a person approves. | — | ✓ |
Your headcount is not your seat count.
A seat measures people using the system at the same moment, not user accounts. Create as many accounts as you like.
- Named seats For office roles: planners, quality, engineering. The same person on a laptop and a tablet counts once.
- Concurrent seats For the shop floor. One seat serves a station across a rotating roster. Idle sessions release themselves.
Worked example: 15 office staff and 120 operators across three shifts of 40 come to 61 seats, not 135.
Machines are counted the way you count them on the floor.
Seats measure people. Process Orchestrator also drives your equipment, so its licence carries a second number: the machines you connect.
- A machine counts once However many connections or protocols it has. A press on OPC UA and MQTT is one machine.
- Only once it is live It counts when its connection is enabled and assigned to an Edge Agent on site. Configured or test-only machines count for nothing.
- Cheaper at volume The first few machines come with Process Orchestrator. Each further machine steps down in price as you connect more.
- One tag pool per plant Every machine adds a small tag allowance to one shared pool. A complex machine can use what simple machines leave unused.
- More data, more tag packs If the plant total goes beyond the pool, add tag packs. Thousands of signals is a historian need, priced as data.
- A firm limit, like seats A machine or tag past the licensed number is refused, never silently billed. Disabling one frees its place at once.
Worked example: you license 20 machines.
Each machine adds 20 tags to the pool, so the plant can use 400. Then the engineers want 200 tags on every machine, 4,000 in total.
- 1 Tags 1 to 400 are added Normally, on any machine.
- 2 Tag 401 is refused With a clear reason: the licence covers 400 tags.
- 3 Production keeps running Only the extra tags are not collected.
- 4 You choose Switch off tags nobody uses, or add tag packs. Four packs of 1,000 make the pool 4,400.
No surprise bill. The system stops at the licensed number and never charges you for going over.
What we deliberately don't charge for.
- Extra production sites One deployment runs every plant you have. Site count is not a price axis.
- Test and training environments Up to two non-production environments, on the same licence.
- Disaster-recovery standby Included while it stays passive.
- Licence re-issue Free at every support tier when your infrastructure changes.
- Software updates Every release is included in support, along with renewal.
- Your data It never leaves your environment. The software runs on your servers.
Support commits to response, not uptime.
The software runs on your hardware. So we promise how fast a named engineer is on your problem, not the availability of equipment we don't operate.
| Essential | Business | Mission-Critical | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suits | A single site on one shift | Multi-shift, where a stopped line costs money the same day | Round the clock, regulated production, or many sites |
| Coverage (plant time) | Mon to Fri, 09:00 to 17:00 | Mon to Sat, 07:00 to 19:00 | 24x7x365 for critical incidents |
| Critical-incident response | 4 working hours | 2 hours | 1 hour, any hour |
Every tier includes all software updates and licence renewal. Thirty days of hypercare are included after go-live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are the prices?
In a written quote after the Workshop Assessment. It confirms your seats, capabilities and integration surface, and turns this model into a fixed number.
Can we buy the licence outright instead of renting?
Yes. A perpetual licence is paid once, with annual maintenance for support and new releases.
If we own it, why pay maintenance?
The software keeps running without it. Maintenance buys new releases, security fixes and support response, and it is included in year one.
What happens if we renew late?
On a subscription, the software stops at expiry, which is why renewal starts ninety days out. On a perpetual licence nothing stops. Only new releases wait for maintenance.
We have 100 machines and only a few people. What does that cost?
More than a few seats, because the machines are what you are buying. Seats measure people, and Process Orchestrator adds a price per connected machine. Size it on the machines you will actually connect in year one, not the whole asset register.
What if we need more data than we licensed?
New tags are refused with a clear reason once the pool is full, and production keeps running. Switch off unused signals or add tag packs. There is never an automatic overage.
We have 200 people. Is that 200 seats?
Almost certainly not. Seats count people using the system at the same moment, and shift patterns bring the number well down.
What happens when we open a second plant?
Nothing changes on the licence for the site itself. Sites are not a price axis.
Can we start with Standard and add scheduling later?
Yes, by upgrading to Enterprise at any time. Scheduling can't run on a Standard licence.
Does the AI change our production data?
No. It drafts a proposal, and a person confirms it. There is no path where it writes on its own.
Terms on this page(6)
- APIApplication Programming Interface
- The way one system calls another, such as SAP sending orders to VECHR MES.
- ERPEnterprise Resource Planning
- The company system for orders, stock, purchasing and finance, such as SAP.
- MESManufacturing Execution System
- The system that runs and records production on the floor: orders, materials, steps, quality and machines.
- MQTTMessage Queuing Telemetry Transport
- A lightweight publish/subscribe protocol for sending machine data.
- OEEOverall Equipment Effectiveness
- Availability × performance × quality: how much of the planned time turned into good product.
- OPC UAOPC Unified Architecture
- The open standard for reading data from PLCs and machines securely.
See VECHR MES on your own process.
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