Gestionnaire de licences EPLAN

What is EPLAN License Manager? #

EPLAN License Manager (ELM) is the server software EPLAN uses to hand out shared licenses for its engineering tools. EPLAN, founded in 1984 and part of the Friedhelm Loh Group, makes software for electrical, automation and mechatronic engineering. Its products include EPLAN Electric P8 electrical design software.

In EPLAN’s words, ELM is “a component of the licensing software that is used to distribute a Concurrent License.” In practice, you install ELM on a server and activate your purchased licenses there. Each EPLAN workstation then gets its license from that server.

The workstation side is the EPLAN License Client. It installs with the EPLAN software and connects each computer to ELM. You activate a license on ELM with an Entitlement ID, the code EPLAN issues when you buy.

ELM comes in two editions. The standard edition handles bundling, borrowing and access across Windows domains. From version 2025 it also adds rights management and failover. ELM Professional adds the event log and usage reports, and the event log is where usage history lives. Check which edition you run.

Before you install:

• One server runs one ELM, and EPLAN recommends a dedicated server.
• For failover, a Primary License Manager serves licenses. A Standby License Manager takes over on its own if the Primary fails.
• ELM 2026 needs at most three TCP ports: 9363 for clients, 9364 for failover and 9365 for reporting (Professional only). Version 2025 and earlier used DCOM, a Windows communication method, through port 135 plus a dynamic port.
• EPLAN’s licensing supports the last five EPLAN versions. Version 2026 reaches back to 2022.
• Get the EPLAN License Manager download from EPLAN’s software downloads page. The License Monitor installs from the License Tools folder of the unzipped download.

Which license types does EPLAN License Manager support? #

EPLAN licensing has two license types, and ELM serves only one of them.

Single License #

Activating a Single License ties it to one computer. Without a dongle, it runs on that machine only. With a dongle, you can activate the same Entitlement ID on up to three computers, as long as the dongle is plugged in. Single Licenses don’t touch ELM.

Concurrent License #

This is EPLAN’s network license, and it’s the reason ELM exists. Workstations draw their licenses from a central pool on the server instead of holding one each. A pool can hold the base system, extension modules, Elements and add-ons.

ELM gives administrators four controls over that pool:

• Bundles group systems and extensions into named sets you can copy, edit, import and export.
• Borrowing lets an engineer take a license off the network for a set period: online, offline by email, or automatically. When the period ends, the license goes back to the server.
• Rights management limits license packages to named users or computers.
• Cross-domain access lets one administrator run licenses across Windows domain boundaries, which helps large companies run licensing centrally.

If your license was bound to a dongle, you still need that dongle. EPLAN can switch it to dongle-free operation on request.

Which EPLAN products use EPLAN License Manager? #

ELM is EPLAN’s own license server. We found no third-party software vendor that licenses its applications through it. Within EPLAN’s portfolio, support differs by product. EPLAN’s 2026 performance descriptions list it this way:

Two 2026 portfolio changes affect what you’ll see on the server. EPLAN Fluid is no longer a separate product, and EPLAN may supply an Electric P8 license in its place. EPLAN also licenses cloud apps such as eStock, eManage and eBuild together with the desktop product as one “product seat.” You can’t split that seat across users.

How Open iT supports your work with EPLAN #

Open iT is an engineering and technical software asset management company, and QKS Group named it a Leader in its SPARK Matrix™ for Software Asset Management Tools (Q3 2025). Its LicenseAnalyzer™ product supports 100 license managers. It reads usage data from the license servers you already run and turns it into reports for SAM, IT and procurement teams.

The EPLAN License Monitor shows which licenses are in use and which users and computers hold them. History lives in the ELM event log, which keeps the last 30 days unless you change it. Thirty days won’t show you last quarter’s peak.

Open iT closes that gap with a small agent, the Open iT Core Client, installed on the ELM server. Every hour it asks ELM for its usage history and sends it to the Open iT Core Server. Once the history sits on the Core Server, it no longer depends on ELM’s 30-day setting. LicenseAnalyzer then reports on:

• licenses in use over time, per EPLAN product and bundle
• use by individual user, user group, computer and computer group
• denied requests, when an engineer couldn’t get a license because all were in use

At setup, you can also pull in a past date range from ELM. Your first report doesn’t have to start from zero.

That gives you two numbers you already own, side by side: the seats you bought and the most seats in use at the same time. Whatever your EPLAN license cost per seat, a seat nobody used last quarter still shows up on the renewal quote unless someone cuts it. Denials show the other side: engineers waiting for a seat you may need to add.

Foire aux questions #

How many EPLAN seats did you use at peak? #

Book a demo and bring that question. We’ll show you how LicenseAnalyzer reports peak use, use per engineer and denied requests from EPLAN License Manager data.

See your EPLAN license data in Open iT →