Dividing Users into Groups with Sublicenses

In large organizations with multiple Macs, there may be groups of Parallels Desktop users with very different needs in terms of capabilities and restrictions, from a software engineer who develops for multiple platforms and needs a dozen virtual machines to test every possible scenario to a back-office staff who would benefit the most from Single Application Mode.

The best way to maintain flexible arrangements is by dividing users into groups, each of which would require a sublicense. To create a sublicense, follow these steps:

Warning: If you plan on activating your end users' copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac with license keys on a per-device basis, we strongly recommend against sending out your primary license key to your end-users directly. We recommend employing the Invite Users function which generates unique keys for each invitation email, or creating and sharing additional sublicense keys.

1. Go to Parallels My Account and select Dashboard in the top-right corner;

2. In your Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition card, click on the Subscription Renewal line;

3. Scroll down to the License Keys card and click Create License Key in its top-right corner;

4. Click on the key name at the top and change it to reflect the name of the group;

5. Assign a maximum number of Parallels Desktop installations available with this license key, select the key type, and click Save. To learn more about the differences between Dynamic and Reserved keys, see this chapter in our Licensing Guide.

If you want your users to activate their copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac using license keys, you could send them invitations to activate, which will contain automatically generated individual activation keys. To do that, use the Invite Users button on the product card in Parallels My Account.

If you want to group Parallels Desktop for Mac installations, activating them with sublicense keys is not the only way. If your organization uses an identity provider (e.g., Microsoft Azure/Entra ID or Okta), you could benefit from creating user groups in your identity provider and mapping them to Parallels Desktop sublicense keys, benefitting from groups with custom policies and restrictions. Learn more here.

Note: Beginning in December 2024, you will be able to maintain a mix of per-device (sublicense key) and per-user (SSO) activations in the same Enterprise Edition setup.