1. Can I use this typeface on my website?

In most cases*, yes you can, with the purchase of a web license. We will deliver the fonts in .woff and .woff2 formats, covering all common browsers and some legacy browsers as well. We will also deliver instructions for setting the files up on your server and sample CSS showing our recommended method for implementing the fonts using the @font-face CSS feature. All of our web licenses are perpetual, meaning you pay once and can use the font for as long as you like without ever having to renew. The license price is based on the number of unique visitors expected each month. The license can be upgraded to accommodate a higher number of visitors at any time, and if the site sees a sudden spike in visitors, you will not have to upgrade the license if the increase turns out to be temporary, based on an average of 4 months’ worth of unique visitors. Please note that use of .otf files with @font-face and the use of any online webfont conversion tools are strictly prohibited by our EULA.

*Please note that some families in our library are still being prepared for use on the web. Please contact us at info[at]commercialtype.com if the family you are interested is not available.

2. After I pay for my initial webfont license, will I have to pay again in the future?

No, our webfont licenses are all perpetual, with a one-time fee for use within the bounds of the license. You are purchasing a license, not a subscription. You will only need to purchase an upgrade for your license if you want to use the fonts on more domains than you have licensed them for, or if your number of unique visitors per month is consistently higher than you are licensed for, you will need to upgrade your license to cover your expanded needs.

3. How do you define unique monthly visitors?

A unique monthly visitor is someone who has visited your site in the last month. Each visitor is counted only once, regardless of the number of visits they have made or the number of pages they have viewed. If you have licensed fonts for use on more than one domain, the number of unique monthly visitors you need to be licensed for is the aggregated total of all visitors to all domains. A visitor who viewed more than one of your domains will be counted only once.

4. How do you measure domains and unique monthly visitors?

With our desktop licensing, we trust our customers to tell us if they need to use the fonts on more workstations than they have licensed, and upgrade their license if they need to. We do the same with our webfonts: we trust our customers to upgrade their license if they have more domains or find that they have more unique viewers each month than their license covers. We do not embed code in the fonts to track pageviews, unique visitors, or any other information.

5. Why do you differentiate between different numbers of unique monthly visitors? You don’t count newspaper readers or how many people will see a poster when pricing desktop licenses.

The number of unique monthly visitors is our way to differentiate between large and small organizations and price our web licensing accordingly. With traditional print media, the size of the license was determined by the number of computers the organization needed to install the fonts on for production. Measuring by unique visitors per month seemed like the fairest solution for applying the same approach to web licensing, and in our experience with webfont licensing we have found unique visitors to be a less variable metric over time than pageviews.

6. Do the same family discounts apply with web licensing as with desktop licensing?

Yes, our discounts for complete families, complete collections, and matching roman/italic pairs in a single weight work the same way for all types of licenses. Additionally, we offer a discount on related fonts being licensed for multiple formats at the same time. Please note that this discount cannot be applied retroactively, and the licenses must be purchased simultaneously to receive the discount.

7. May I use the webfonts I have licensed on a staging server before my site is open to the public? Will I need to purchase a license for additional domains?

Yes, you may use the fonts on a temporary server for as long as you like, so long as it is not open to the general public. The licensed number of domains is for publicly-available web sites. You are free to use the fonts locally or on any number of private development and staging servers used in creating the website.

8. Are there any limits on a perpetual license?

So long as you do not exceed the permitted number of domains and total unique monthly visitors, you may use the fonts in perpetuity. The license will not need to be renewed at any time.

9. How do you define a domain?

A domain is the most basic portion of a website address. For example, commercialtype.com is a single domain. We allow unlimited subdomains within each domain, so alpha.commercialtype.comand beta.commercialtype.com would be covered under the license for commercialtype.com, but commercialtypewebfonts.com and commercialtype.co.uk would each be separate domains, because either the basic name or the top level domain category is different.

10. I have a site with a .com and a .co.uk address. Does that count as two domains?

Yes. The same address on a different top-level domain (i.e. .com, .org, .ca, .co.uk, etc.) counts as a separate domain for the purposes of our license.

11. Can I use your fonts on one of the hosted font services?

No. We have found that webfonts are delivered much faster and more reliably when they come directly from your site. We also believe that you should be in control of your website, including all of the assets. Self hosting is the most reliable way to ensure that the fonts load every time.

12. I think I bought the wrong fonts. Can I return them?

Webfonts are built to order, so all license sales are final.