Umbraco comes in 2 different versions. An open source version which is completely free and a commercial version which has a license fee, but what is the difference and what are you allowed to do with each version?
The Open source version
The free open source version is the complete product, no limitations on functionality or use. That means you are free to use umbraco for your clients, your blog, your moms website and pretty any other commercial or non-commercial project you could think of.
At the same time, you are free to download the source code , tweak it, see what makes the cogs turn, or whatever geeky activity you could think, ofcourse we would appreciate if you send in bugfixes, come to one of our courses or just help out in the forum – but that is completely up to you.
So if the open source version is so great, why would I need the commercial version?
The commercial version covers 2 areas the free version doesn’t.
Re-distribution with 3rd party applications and rebranding of the user interface.
So if you want to use Umbraco as the foundation of a web-application you wish to sell under a different name, brand or as part of larger application. Then you would the commercial version. So if you plan on removing the umbraco logos, or want to resell it as part of larger application, then you would need the commercial version
So “commercial” doesn’t mean that you can’t develop commercial websites on the free version (a lot of really big companies run their highly commercial websites on umbraco) in fact we would love if you did, infact we offer professional support packages to those who like open-source, but at the same time appreciate the traditional commercial offerings