Does Dotvault stop working after twelve months?

No. This is the single most common misreading of the pricing, and it is worth answering plainly: the app never stops working, and your licence key never expires.

Every tier includes twelve months of updates. When that window closes, the copy you have carries on doing everything it did the day before. What stops is new releases — Dotvault stops offering you versions published after your window ended. There is no lock, no read-only mode, no countdown, and no nagging.

Renewing is optional and extends the date rather than replacing anything. You do not paste in a new key; the date behind the key you already have moves forward. If you renew early, the new twelve months stack onto whatever you had left rather than restarting from the day you paid.

It is a fair question whether that is a subscription with extra steps. The difference that matters to me is what happens when you stop paying: with a subscription you lose the software, and here you keep it.