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Upgrades vs updates explained
Updated 5 September 2026 · ~6 min read
How LMS White Version Upgrades and Corrective Fixes differ from chargeable Maintenance Updates driven by OS, App Store and vendor changes.
What this means for you
Upgrades (included): major LMS White product Version Upgrades for your licensed plan (for example v3 → v4), plus Corrective Fixes for bugs and security issues in supported versions — no separate LMS White “upgrade fee” for those.
Updates / maintenance (chargeable): work to keep your deployment working when Android, iOS, App Store rules, SDKs, certificates, APIs or vendors change. That work is scoped per customer and billed by depth — not a free lifetime promise of every future store or OS change.
Custom features: institution-specific functionality is quoted in a Statement of Work (SOW).
Why maintenance is not the same as a product upgrade
A Version Upgrade is LMS White shipping a new product generation to licensed customers. A Maintenance Update is often forced by third parties: Apple ships a new iOS, Google changes Play policy, a payment SDK deprecates an API, a push certificate expires, or store review rules change. Those calendars are not controlled by LMS White.
Promising “free unlimited updates forever for every OS and store change” would mean unlimited unpaid engineering for every customer, forever — which is why maintenance is scoped and charged fairly by effort.
Examples
- Upgrade (included): LMS White releases a major plan version with new core modules; eligible customers receive the product upgrade path without a separate LMS White upgrade fee.
- Maintenance (scoped): Apple requires a newer Xcode/SDK; your iOS build must be rebuilt, re-tested and resubmitted.
- Custom (SOW): you want a unique attendance workflow that no other institution has — that is feature development, not an “update”.
What LMS White controls: product roadmap Version Upgrades and Corrective Fixes for supported versions.
What LMS White does not control: Apple, Google, payment gateways, OS vendors, and certificate authorities changing requirements. Maintenance exists because those vendors change — not because we withhold free work.