When you initially purchase additional seats, we prorate the amount due on signup based on the day of the month that you signup. So no, you don't pay for a whole month if you signup after the first.
Your monthly bill for additional seats will always be charged on the first of the month, for the month being billed.
For example, if you sign up in May for additional seats, your June bill will be automatically charged to your card on file on June 1st.
Currently we can only auto-debit Credit Cards for Seat Licenses. However if paying via a credit card is impossible or unfeasible, you can contact accounting and pre-pay for seat licenses via check and our system will bill your deposit on file. Please call (800) 608-MIVA and speak to billing if you need to do this.
No, (at this time) this will be it's own unique invoice and bill charged specifically for additional seats. We anticipate combining these systems in the future, but have no ETA on when that will happen.
You can manage your additional seats from your Domain Settings Tab. You can add new seats (even if you're not at your limit) and you can cancel seats.
No, all seats are licensed on a monthly basis, so there are no refunds for cancelling mid-month. However if you cancel mid-month, your license count will not actually decrease until the first of the following month.
Yes, this licensing requirement is not impacted by where you choose to host your store, nor which type of license you have (Retail or Hosted).
In all cases you pay Miva directly for any additional seat licenses. Third party hosts do not have the ability to purchase additional seats on your behalf.
A User is a unique user (login) ID to the backend administration of Miva Merchant. You can have an unlimited number of users, without incurring any additional fees.
A Seat is the number of simultaneous active sessions that Miva Merchant will allow you to utilize.
For example, you might have 1 User with the username: Paul and if Paul attempts to login from 2 different browsers simultaneously you'll need a second seat license to accomplish this.
However, you can also have a second user name: Ringo and as long as Paul and Ringo never log in at the exact same time, you will not need a second seat license.
That depends. You don't "have to" have a second seat license in order to run a product like StoneEdge or Synchro. However if you only have 1 seat license, then everyone will need to be logged out for those types of products to be able to login and do their job.
All "non-human" users are tracked as a Single Session, so even if you have Synchro, ShipWorks and a custom integration all logging in simultaneously, they'll only count as 1 active seat from a licensing perspective.