As others have said, you can do any updates up to the expiration date on your order (1 year). After that expiration date, you can remain on latest version available to you and it will continue to work.
BI has always said that but it wasn't until around May 2020 or so that they started to enforce it.
I wouldn't call it a subscription because you can choose to not pay the $30 and stay on the latest version available to
you (based on when your one year is up) or pay the $30 and get updates as they happen for the next year. Many people here are still running version 4 with no trouble and haven't paid in years other than the original purchase.
From the help file (page 216):
A license includes basic support and maintenance which means access to email software support and same-version updates for one year from first activation.
BTW most here do not run the latest version. Once we find a stable version, we stay on it until something is added in an update that makes it worth someone's time to upgrade.
I was on an older BI5 version until the substreams option was introduced - that was a game changer so I updated to that update. Then I sat on that update version until DeepStack came out.
You can find the latest update available to you by pulling up your BI status page and seeing what the date is and then pull the update up to that date from here:
(1) Blue Iris Updates (64 bit) - History | IP Cam Talk
