Need to purchase a 1-seat license, paid by invoice

Support Billing and Subscriptions
1

I am a developer for a small state government agency, and we urgently need to purchase a 1-user license for Docker Desktop (Windows). We cannot pay for subscriptions by credit card, and it appears Docker requires a 25-seat minimum for payments by invoice. I’m really hoping Sales can make an exception, because that’s our only option.

Unfortunately no one from Sales will respond to my emails or requests on their web contact form though. It seems like Docker does not care about smaller customers, it’s very disappointing. I’m really hoping someone from Docker is willing to help me.

2

I wouldn’t say they don’t care, but they indeed need to prioritize. What email did you send your message to? If they don’t have a plan with a paying method you could use, you really need them to offer you another way, but how much time Docker will have implement it, I can’t tell.

You could try reporting this on Github in the Hub Feedback repository

It could still take time, but if you really don’t have time to wait, you can use alternatives instead if Docker Desktop. Obviously as a Docker user I prefer Docker, bu there is also Podman Desktop and Rancher Desktop. PodmanDesktop runs podman, not Docker, but Rancher Desktop can run Docker. Or you can install Docker CE in a Liux VM on Windows. But if you really need the features that Docker Desktop provide and want to use Docker, not Podman, these alternatives will not help. If you just need to work with Docker containers and can learn the Docker commands and use compose, you can sue Docker CE for free and until the image pull limit is enough, you don’t need to pay for Docker Hub either. At least until your license issue can be solved.

3

Thanks so much for the reply. I emailed sales@docker.com, and also billing@docker.com. We are trying to deploy vendor software on-prem, which uses Docker for deployment. Unfortunately government entities cannot use Docker Desktop without a paid license, even for 1 user. A Linux server would not fit well in our Windows architecture, but I may try to convince my supervisor again, because I’m running out of options unless Docker will sell us a license.

4

Those email addresses seems right. I recommended the second a couple of times.

There is always a Linux server where there are Linux containers, but Docker Desktop solves it for you. Rancher Desktop does the same, but that is mainly for Kubernetes, you could just choose Docker as a container runtime for Kubernetes so you could use Docker too. You won’t have Docker Desktop extensions, but you can still try if it helps at least temporarily.

I also used Docker CE in a custom WSL2 distribution. It is a feature of Windows, so that could be an option too, but then yoou would probably need to change the default networks of Docker, because otherwise WSL2 can get a new subnet after reboot which collides with the Docker networks. If you choose to use the WSL2 distro solution, we can discuss it in a new topic, if you want. Or you can try to find existing discussions about it

5

You need Docker just as deployment tool or will it be used to run the software in production?

Please note that Docker Desktop is a developer tool. I would not rely on it to run production software for government.