What happens when a Meraki licence expires?

Does Meraki stop working when the licence expires?

Not immediately, but it can. Every licensing model gives you a 30-day grace period; what happens at the end of it depends on the Meraki licensing model your organisation uses.

In short: under co-term and per-device licensing, yes, Meraki devices stop passing traffic once the grace period ends. Under subscription licensing they keep running on their last configuration, but you lose the ability to change, monitor or update them.

How to check your Meraki licence expiry date

Where to look depends on the model. In the Meraki dashboard:

• Co-term: go to Organization > Configure > License info. The status line shows OK, Warning (nearing the co-term date) or License Required (expired or over the limit), and the License expiration line shows the co-term date and the days remaining. The table below it compares the licence limit with the current device count for each device type.
• Subscription: go to Organization > Subscriptions & license info. The Subscriptions tab lists each subscription with its end date; open one to see its details and the networks bound to it. The Networks tab shows each network's subscription and tiers.
• Per-device: the inventory page lists each device's expiry date, and the date also appears on each device's details page.

You need organisation-level access to see licensing. If nobody in your team can reach these pages, our Meraki dashboard login guide covers admin access.

What warnings Meraki sends before expiry

Meraki's reminders differ by model, and one of them is easy to miss:

• Co-term: administrators receive email alerts 90, 30, 2 and 1 days before the co-term date while the organisation is in compliance. If the organisation has more devices than licences, alerts go out 30, 21, 14, 7 and 1 days before shutdown. During the grace period, weekly reminders are sent.
• Per-device: warning emails list every device due to expire within the next 60 days, plus any expired devices still in a network.
• Subscription: Meraki states that subscription customers do not receive email reminders; instead, notifications appear in the dashboard up to 120 days before the subscription expires.

Make sure licence notification emails go to a mailbox someone reads, set under the organisation settings, and that more than one person knows the dates. On subscription, someone needs to look at the dashboard.

Co-term: the grace period and organisation shutdown

A co-term organisation falls out of compliance when the co-term date passes or when any device type exceeds its licence limit. Meraki's documentation then describes:

• 30-day grace period: the organisation continues to operate normally. The days remaining are not shown to administrators, so do not rely on counting them in the dashboard.
• One-time reset: if you need more time to finalise licensing, the License info page offers a one-time Request grace period reset after the licence has expired. It is a single courtesy, not a rolling extension.
• Shutdown: if compliance is not restored, the organisation is shut down. Devices stop passing client traffic but keep their management connection so they can come back once licensed. Users may see a page saying the network is misconfigured, and the dashboard shows that the organisation has been disabled. Administrators can only reach the License info and device status pages.

You can reactivate the organisation at any point by adding valid licences. If the cause was expiry, Meraki is clear that the only way back is new licensing for all active devices; if it was over the limit, you can also remove devices from networks. See Meraki co-term licensing for how the date is worked out.

Subscription: Amber Mode and disabled management

Under Meraki subscription licensing, compliance is enforced per network and per device rather than across the organisation. Networks enter a 30-day grace period if their subscription expires or is cancelled, if they are not bound to an active subscription, or if they have more devices than licences.

After the grace period, affected devices move to disabled management, which Meraki calls Amber Mode:

• devices keep their last licence-compliant configuration and continue to forward traffic
• administrators cannot configure the devices or see their configuration and monitoring data in the dashboard or API
• customer-initiated firmware updates are unavailable, and support is not provided for those devices

If the issue is too many devices, only the extra devices are affected, starting with the most recently added. Other product classes and other subscriptions keep working normally. Once the subscription is renewed or extended, management returns.

Per-device: one device at a time

Under per-device licensing, each device has its own date. When one expires it gets 30 days' grace and then stops working, while the rest of the organisation carries on. Any grace days you use are taken off the next licence you apply to that device, so leaving a renewal late costs licence time as well as risk.

How to avoid a Meraki licence lapse

1. Find your dates now: the co-term date, each subscription end date, or your per-device expiry list.
2. Check who receives licence emails and make sure it is a monitored mailbox, not one person.
3. Put the dates in more than one calendar, with reminders well ahead of the 120-day point.
4. Check your device counts against your licence limit or subscription so you are not out of compliance before the date.
5. Decide whether you will renew on the same model or move to subscription, as moving takes planning.
6. Order in good time. Co-term licences start using time from the date the order is processed, and Meraki applies any remaining time on top of a renewal term, so there is nothing to gain from leaving it late.
7. Check end-of-sale families, such as MT sensors and Systems Manager, before ordering. See Meraki end of life.

For the renewal itself, see Meraki licence renewal.

How Forever Systems helps

Forever Systems is a Cisco Partner. We can review your licence position, explain what your dates and device counts mean, and quote the renewal or the move to subscription in good time. If you are already in a grace period, tell us when you get in touch so we can take it into account.

Contact us to review your licence position, or ask us for a quote.