Trial versions of PixInsight are full-featured, fully functional, time-limited trial applications. In order to run one of these applications on your computer, you need:

• A valid PixInsight trial software license. Currently we offer a 45-day trial license at no cost. Our trial licenses allow you to try out full-featured versions of our software with free online updates and email support during the trial period.

• An active Internet connection each time you launch the core PixInsight application.

A trial license gives you the right to execute and use PixInsight during 45 days from the date of license approval. You can use a trial PixInsight license on any of the currently supported platforms: FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows (one machine per operating system). You are entitled to free email support and online updates during the trial period.

Feel free to contact us if you need additional trial licenses to run PixInsight on different computers and/or platforms. Similarly, if you need an extended trial period beyond 45 days, we'll be glad to hear you. Our licensing policy is flexible and we analyze different user requirements on a case-by-case basis.

After your trial period, you must purchase a commercial license to continue using PixInsight. Commercial licenses only require an active Internet connection to perform an initial software activation procedure. Once activated, a commercial license does not require an active Internet connection, and allows you to install and run PixInsight on all supported platforms, on any computer you own.

Each time you launch the trial PixInsight executable, it runs a special HTTP client routine that connects to our server to validate your license. If your system is protected by a firewall software, it might detect PixInsight's connection attempt as a potentially dangerous outbound connection. You must permit this connection to the Internet, or PixInsight won't run. You should be able to specify Internet access permissions through configuration settings in your firewall or anti-virus software.

You can rest assured that the PixInsight core application will never send any information or data from your computer over the Internet, other than the minimal data strictly necessary to validate your license on our server. This is the only action performed by the PixInsight core application through an Internet connection. During the entire license validation process, data are transmitted protected with an extremely strong encryption algorithm (AES-256), so that nobody listening the connection could be able to retrieve any information about you or your license.

The advantage of our trial licensing system is that you, developer and/or user, have the chance to work with a fully functional application that allows you to open, process and save images without limitations. You don't need to care about maximum file sizes or image dimensions, watermarks on saved images, or disabled features: what you try out is exactly the same product that you can purchase later.

Requesting a trial PixInsight license involves the following steps:

1. Submit the form below. Bear in mind the following:
   
   • To protect our system from continued abuse and hacking attempts, we manually verify all trial license requests.
   • Please don't send fake data or hidden IP addresses. You must enter your actual name, address and email address, and your IP must be traceable and identifiable. Reason: We grant you access to a full-featured, fully functional copy of the PixInsight platform during 45 days. As a PixInsight user, you are responsible for the use that you make of our software; please don't try to elude your responsibility.
   • We don't allow temporary or disposable email services such as "trashmail", "thisisnotmyrealemail", "emailias", "10minutemail" and the like. Requests using these email services will be ignored without further consideration. Reason: we don't generate spam, so please don't treat us as if we were spammers.
   • If you specify a URL where we can take a look at your work, or if you write a few lines to explain why and how you are interested in PixInsight, this will help us to approve your license more quickly.
2. Our system will send you a confirmation email. If you don't get a message from us within five minutes, be sure to check your spam/junk mail and add noreply_at_pixinsight_dot_com to your "safe senders list" if our message didn't make it to your inbox. Do not reply to our confirmation emails, as they are sent from an account that is never monitored.
3. We'll verify your request data manually. If you hide your IP address, or specify fake or false data, your request will be ignored. When we detect repeated abuse or hacking attempts, we reserve the right to send detailed abuse reports to the corresponding email providers and ISPs.
   
   Naturally we can make —and do make— mistakes. Please feel free to email us asking why we haven't approved your trial license request. As noted above, if you can provide a URL where we can see your work, or some comments on your interest in astrophotography and PixInsight, that will greatly help us to approve your license.
4. If your trial license is approved, our system will process it and you'll receive a new email message with detailed download and installation instructions, along with license activation codes.

For some reason that we cannot understand, Yahoo email seems to be blocking some messages sent from our corporate email server (@pixinsight.com). If you use a Yahoo email account for your trial license request, you perhaps won't receive our notification emails, including the email with license activation codes and download/installation instructions. This email is sent automatically by our licensing system when we approve a trial license.

Our email server provides a valid SPF record (Sender Policy Framework, see http://www.openspf.org/), which is an open standard for email authentication. There is not much more that we can do to demonstrate that our emails are legitimate. If you are a Yahoo email user, we recommend you use a different email provider for your trial license request. As an example, Gmail accounts are free and so far work without problems.