Before you purchase a license, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of the 30 day trial program. A trial license will be automatically downloaded and installed when the backup command is run for the first time.

After the trial period, one personal or commercial license must be purchased for each ESXi host. There is no limit on the number of virtual machines, or the number of CPU sockets, or the amount of RAM.

A personal license is meant for home and non-production use only. In addition, Vertical Backup running with a personal license can't back up disks larger than 200G bytes. The commercial license has no such limitations.

A license is required only if Vertical Backup is used to create backups. You can run commands such as init, list, restore, check, or prune, on any ESXi host without a valid license.


Personal License Commercial License
Limitation Can only be installed on home ESXi computers not related to for-profit activities Unlimited
Disk size Less than 200G Unlimited
Support Public forum Private issue trackers with email notifications
Cost per ESXi per year $20 $99
Buy Licenses

Purchasing FAQ


How does the license system work?

After you complete a purchase order, you will receive a number of License Activation Codes on the confirmation page (which are also emailed to your registered email address). You can then run the license activate command on each ESXi host and enter a license activation code when prompted. Vertical Backup will download the license from our license server and save it to the preference directory.


I'm upgrading an ESXi host to a new machine. How do I transfer the license?

Run the init command first on the new machine using the same host id. Then run the license activate command and enter the same license activation code. The license for the new machine will be downloaded and installed. You will not be able to run the backup command on the old machine afterwards.

You can also use a new host id on the new machine. You'll need to first log in to https://verticalbackup.com/customer and click the host id of the license and then enter the new host id in the dialog


Is it safe to use my credit card on this website?

This website simply passes your credit card information directly to our payment processor stripe. We do not save your credit card anywhere in our system.

In addition, the connections between your web browser and this website, between your web browser and our license server, between our license server and stripe, are all securely encrypted.


Can I pay with paypal?

The order page only accepts credit cards at this time. However, you can email us and we will send you a paypal invoice which you can pay with paypal.


Can I get a refund if I find out Vertical Backup does not meet our requirements?

Absolutely. Just email us any time and we will refund you an amount proportional to the unused license period. When you do so, please also let us know why you are not satisfied and what you do think we can do to make Vertical Backup better.

However, if you requested a non-refundable and non-transferable license (for ESXi hosts without internet connection), then we will not able to issue the refund.