What difference is there between running FileMaker Pro on a server station and running FileMaker Server on the server station. What are the benefits FMPro and FM Server?

Filemaker Pro is a client designed application with support for a limited number of peer-to-peer guests. It is limited to 10 unique IPs in any 12 hour period, additionally depending upon the number of database vs number of guests it may be able to support far less than this concurrently. Filemaker Pro is single threaded and crashes on guests or the host machine can really mess up your databases.

Filemaker Server is able to server up to 125 databases to up to 250 concurrent users. Crashes on a user machine will not hurt the databases. FMS is multi-threaded and generally optimized for the serving of DBs to multiple users. This is a client-server database system.

Thank you for this information. This is very helpful in determining how I'm going to use my program over the network.

Isn't the "10 unique IPs in any 12 hour period" limit for web users, while the "125 databases to up to 250 concurrent users" is a network thing?

I think FM Client's limitation for network users is something like 216 "databases served" such that every database opened on every users machine is 1. So if 10 users have 21 databases open, they're pretty close to that 216 limit (if that is in fact the limit).

Does anyone know for sure?

RE: Isn't the "10 unique IPs in any 12 hour period" limit for web users?

Yes it is. This is the limit of web browser sessions on FM Client. FM Unlimited hasn't got that limit.

See FM TechInfo for user/open db limits.