SharePoint 2013 Licensing

Like windows, SharePoint requires CAL(Client access license) for each user or device accessing SharePoint. SharePoint foundation is free as long as you have windows CAL and not exposing SharePoint sites on internet. According to your requirement you should either buy a standard or enterprise CAL where the rates varies between them.

Situation where you might be having part of users in your organization to use standard features and rest to use enterprise features. Prior to SharePoint 2013, you either need to buy a standard or enterprise CAL for your farm. But with SharePoint 2013 provides you with an ability to mix the standard and enterprise CAL within the same farm. By default SharePoint 2013 has single license type enabled. But you can change it and target it to set of audience in your organization to use specific CAL(Standard or Enterprise). You can do this with the below powershell commands,

1. Type Get-SPUserLicensing in SharePoint management shell, command returns false when per user licensing is disabled.
   
   
2. Command To enable per user licensing Enable-SPUserLicensing.
   
   
3. Now you can map different license types to users or groups with below commands,
   

   $NewMap = New-SPUserLicenseMapping -SecurityGroup "AD group" -License “Type”
   Add-SPUserLicenseMapping -Mapping $NewMap

“Type” can be one of the following,

• Unlicensed
• Standard
• Enterprise
• Project
• WACEdit