Renew, Upgrade, or Downgrade a CSE License

Apply an activation key to an existing product, and how the resulting expiration date is calculated

  • Last validated: Oct 16, 2026
  • 12 minutes to read

Overview

Renewing an annual CSE license, adding users to it, and moving it to a different tier all follow the same three steps:

  1. Buy an activation key for the tier and user quantity you want.
  2. Apply the key to your existing CSE serial number in the product inventory.
  3. Choose Renew or Upgrade in the confirmation dialog, and confirm.

The resulting expiration date depends on the relative value of what you already hold and what you are applying. See How proration works.

No rebuild required. Renewing, upgrading, downgrading, and moving between tiers all swap the license in place on the existing product. Your CSE org and its existing configuration, such as users, devices, and policies, stay as they are. You do not need to create a new org or rebuild your configuration.

Monthly subscriptions work differently. These steps apply only to annual and term licenses. Those licenses are commitments: a service is held at a given tier for a defined period, and changing it requires a new activation key. A monthly subscription can have its tier and other attributes changed at any time, with no activation key and no proration. See Changing a monthly subscription.

Step 1. Buy an activation key for the tier and quantity you want

The key you buy determines the result, so buy it at the tier you want and for the user quantity you need. There are two ways to reach a new user count, and each corresponds to one of the options in Step 3:

  • Buy only the additional users, and choose Upgrade. The key’s users are added to your existing count.
  • Buy a key for the full count, and choose Renew. The license is renewed at the key’s user count.

For example, suppose you hold 10 users of SPA Advanced that expire in a year, and you need 13 users:

Key to buy Option to choose Result
3 users of SPA Advanced Upgrade 13 users. The 3 users are added to the existing 10.
13 users of SPA Advanced Renew 13 users. The license is renewed at the new count, and the expiration date moves out.

Upgrade suits adding users partway through a term. Renew suits renewing the entire license, at the same user count or a new one.

To change tier, buy the key at the tier you are moving to. For example, to move from SPA Basic to SPA Advanced, buy an SPA Advanced key.

For the ways to purchase a key, see CSE Licensing and Activation Keys.

Step 2. Apply the key to the existing CSE serial number

Apply the key to the CSE product you already have. The Renew and Upgrade options are presented only when the key is applied to the existing serial number, so do not register the key as a new product.

  1. If necessary, change scope to the tenant that holds the CSE product.
  2. Open the product inventory, and select the existing CSE serial number.
  3. Enter the key in the activation field at the top of the product page.

The field at the top determines from the key which service to activate, so it does not depend on selecting the right row. Alternatively, select Activate on a specific service row to apply the key to that service.

Step 3. Choose Renew or Upgrade, and confirm

After you enter the key, a confirmation dialog presents both options and states the resulting user count and expiration date for each. Nothing is applied until you confirm.

  • Renew renews the license at the key’s user count and extends the term. Ten users renewed with a 13-user key become 13 users. Five users with a year remaining, renewed with a five-user one-year key, remain five users, and the expiration date moves out by a year.
  • Upgrade adds the key’s users to the existing count. Ten users plus a three-user key become 13 users.

Whenever the user count or tier changes, the value remaining on the existing license is recalculated against the new count and tier. That recalculation is proration, and it is why the expiration date in the dialog can differ from a simple sum of the two terms.

How proration works

Proration converts the value you already hold into the equivalent amount of what you are moving to. It applies automatically whenever a key is applied, and it can move an expiration date either earlier or later.

Changing the user count

Consider five users with one year remaining, and a key for ten users for one year.

  • Choosing Upgrade to fifteen users, where both terms are a year, produces no change to the date.
  • Choosing Renew at ten users produces eighteen months. The ten-user key is worth one year at ten users. The five users with a year remaining are worth six months at ten users, because doubling the user count halves the duration that value covers. One year plus six months is eighteen months.

Changing the tier

Moving between Basic and Advanced is applied in place, like any other key, so there is nothing to rebuild. It does introduce a second factor in the expiration date. Advanced costs more per user for the same term than Basic, so a day of Basic does not convert into a full day of Advanced.

The consequences are:

  • Upgrading from Basic to Advanced pulls the expiration date in. The Basic value you hold buys less time at the higher Advanced rate, so the date moves earlier. Five users of Basic with a year remaining convert to appreciably less than a year of Advanced at the same user count.
  • Downgrading from Advanced to Basic pushes the expiration date out. The Advanced value you hold buys more time at the lower Basic rate, so the date moves later.

Note: The exact date is calculated from current pricing at the time the key is applied. The confirmation dialog always states the resulting expiration date before you commit, so use that figure rather than estimating.

Activating an additional service

Applying a key for a service the product does not yet hold activates that service rather than renewing or upgrading anything. The confirmation dialog shows the same information: the update type, the resulting user count, and the resulting expiration date.

This is the step required when a customer purchased both SPA and SIA but registered with only one key. See Activate Cloud Secure Edge in MySonicWall.

Removing a service

On a monthly subscription, a service can be set to expire on a chosen date, or removed by setting the security access option to None. On an annual license, the service runs to the end of its term.

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