Knowledge base

Plans, seats
& devices

Licensing without the fine-print anxiety: what you're buying, who can use it, and what happens if payment lapses.

The 7-day free trial

Every new account starts with a 7-day free trial — the full product, not a demo. Measure real plans, price real assemblies, export real estimates. No feature gates. When the trial ends, your account drops to read-only (explained below) until a seat is assigned, so nothing you built during the trial is ever lost.

The Groundwork Takeoff sign-in screen

Two ways to buy

  • Subscription — $59/month, or $590/year (two months free on annual). Always current, cancel anytime.
  • Perpetual license — $2,500 one-time. Buy it once, own it. For teams that budget software as a capital purchase rather than a monthly line item.

Both are full licenses of the same product — the difference is purely how you pay. Current pricing always lives on the pricing page.

Seats and who assigns them

Licenses are purchased by your company and assigned as seats by your company admin. A seat belongs to one user; when an estimator leaves, the admin reassigns their seat to the new hire — no repurchase. If you sign in and find yourself in read-only mode, the first question to ask is whether a seat is assigned to your account.

The two-device limit

A seat covers two active devices — typically your office workstation and a laptop for the jobsite. Signing in on a third device would exceed the limit, but you won't get stuck: devices that haven't been used in a while are automatically reclaimed, so a dead laptop or a machine IT re-imaged quietly frees its slot. In practice you only notice the limit if you're actively working on three machines at once.

Read-only mode: your work is never hostage

Whenever a license isn't active — trial expired, seat unassigned, subscription lapsed past its grace period — the app enters read-only mode rather than locking you out:

  • Every project, measurement, markup, and estimate stays visible. You can open, review, and navigate everything.
  • Editing tools are disabled — you can't create or change work until a license is active again.

The moment a seat is assigned or payment resumes, editing switches back on. Nothing is deleted, ever.

Grace periods

  • 3-day payment grace. If a subscription payment fails, you keep full editing for 3 days — enough time to fix a card without a bid-week fire drill.
  • 14-day offline grace. A signed-in device keeps its license working without any internet connection for up to 14 days before it must reconnect to reconfirm the seat. Normal jobsite dead zones never come close to touching it.

Licensing question?

A human answers support tickets — usually the same day.