There are two types of functions in SoundWorks - free and paid. Former reside on free tools, usually executed on your computer, while latter consume third party API. Usually each call is not expensive, and may take as much as 0.0001 EUR (in other words, 10 000 such operations would cost you a whole Euro), but due to high volume they have to be accounted for.

Commercial features of SoundWorks are paid from your SoundWorks Balance. This is a pre-paid balance which is the central "piggy-bank" for all services consumed anywhere in the app.

Access Code

SoundWorks uses special "access codes" in order to perform paid operations. You don't need to have it, you can skip it during the first run of SoundWorks, but then you will be limited to free operations, until you enter your access code.
Getting access code is free by itself, but it only becomes useful once you top it up. "Top-Up" is the process of adding funds to your balance.
There is also such thing as "user code" - it's the same thing, but it's used to generate new access codes linked to your user account (see below).

Sharing your budget

Taking into consideration the micro price of each transaction, having multiple separate accounts seems like an overkill. Therefore it is possible to generate additional access codes to share your budget, and set limits for each of them.
Let's imagine, that you have 100 users in your company, who may benefit from using SoundWorks. You have one user account, so one budget, and, let's say, a 100 EUR on it. Instead of creating a 100 accounts and putting 1 EUR into each of them, you would create a 100 access codes, and set a usage limit. This way, you can easily control the balance company-wide.
You can create and manage your access codes right from SoundWorks.

Usage limits

Each access code you generate, may have it's limit in terms of balance, number of requests and expiration date. Usage limits don't take into consideration the actual balance of your account - you may have a balance of 100 and at the same time have 100 access codes with 5 EUR limit on each. This would mean that any 20 users could deplete their codes and your balance, leaving other 80 users with nothing, but at least you could do that. Such limitation is highly useful in business environment, when you want to ensure that people can do their job without restricting others. Narrating a long PowerPoint presentation may cost around 10 cents, so giving each user allowance of 1 EUR per month would feel adequate. However, the balance limit is not "per month", but rather until you reset it.

Resetting limits

You can reset the limits of your access codes to their initial values by pressing one button in Access Codes management screen in SoundWorks. You can also change limits for particular keys or at whole, as well as delete keys.

What happens, when code is depleted?

When particular access code limit is reached, user can't submit request for paid operation anymore. He gets notification, that his code's cap is depleted. If the problem is not in the cap, but in user account - user will be notified about that as well. Hence you'll see if you need to amend the particular access code, or top-up your balance.

Types of Licenses

There are few ways you can enjoy SoundWorks, and they are split by what we call "license types". Note, that it only affects the way you are using paid features, as an application itself is free.

Normal License

Normal license, is when you have your own account. It's not restricted, so you can use all premium features, you can create access codes for your friends, colleagues and family, and enjoy SoundWorks at it's full. That's the base normal license.

Some things to keep in mind:

• You are free to share your access code, but you are fully responsible for financial part of this arrangement. You can even re-sell your access codes.
• You never see the content of request done by access code. E.g. when your users convert text to speech, you don't see the text. The reason is - we don't keep it after request has been processed. So it's a matter of trust to how your users are consuming the service.

Free

In our case, "free" means that someone else is paying for you. This model of use is based on donation. As soon as someone donates to the project (there is a button for this in SoundWorks), it goes to the balance of free accounts. Free accounts can not use premium features, because premium means significantly more expensive stuff, and we would like to allow people to do more for free. Also, their tasks have lower priority, so that they couldn't interfere with the ones of paid customers. In reality, though, you wouldn't notice the difference, because there is more than enough capacity.
In order to get a free key - choose "Free" after installation of SoundWorks.

Limitations of Free version:

• Only one key per person. Violating this rule may result in denial of service.
• No premium features. Note, that "premium" is always about the price, though it also usually comes with extra quality.
• No guarantee that there will be enough budget for paid features, it's fluctuating.

Beta

A mix of both is the Beta version. This version of app is a full featured, but is partially subsidized. In other words - it's cheaper, but there is a reason for it. A few, actually:

• This version contains features not yet released in full stable version. Should be interesting, but may also contain errors.
• As soon as there is an update, it's forced. Normal version doesn't even check for updates automatically, you are doing it manually.
• All paid operations come at small discount.

Beta version is downloaded separately, as it's a different binary file, so it's not a matter of entering different code. This may change in time.

Professional

There is a special "Professional" license, which is tuned for large scale or intensive use of the service. It comes with Beta discount, higher priority for requests, ability to tune neural networks for your input and almost unlimited management of access keys. Such license is granted by special request.