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.NET Licensing - who are all the players?

For the piece of software I'm about to build, I need a way of implementing licensing. I've read product information about XHEO's Licensing components, and they seem to fit my needs pretty well. I just thought I'd throw the question out there to others reading this post - do you know of other licensing products that work well with .NET software?

My requirements are:

  1. It needs to provide a "licensing server" that can dynamically generate license keys for users that purchase the software from our website.
  2. The licensing server also has to be able to validate a license key over the internet (TCP/IP or HTTP) from any machine with internet access.
  3. It needs to be able to allow the software to run for a specified period of time as an evaluation period.

I also found Desaware's Licenseing System but, it's a little on the expensive side if you ask me. Any other suggestions?

14 Comments

  • Jason,



    We researched this a while back, and ultimately decided that Xheo was the best choice.



    Xheo has done everything that we needed and would easily fit all of your requirements...



    Feel free to drop me an emaill at matt.berther at gmail dot com if you want to discuss feature sets...

  • Xheo and Desaware are the only ones that "seem" to exist - They both suck at customer service and dont even publish a phone number. Some developers doing this part time I guess. If you want to rely on these for your entire business, go figure

  • I am also looking for a .NET license manager. I downloaded the XHEO trial, but I really had to fight with it to get anything to work. I agree with Sean C that there support is a bit half-hearted.

    I would really like to not buy XHEO if I could.

  • Infralution has a simple, secure and affordable .NET licensing solution which has been on the market since 2004. Most importantly we have open support forums - so you can check out our level of support and see what issues other users may be having before you decide to purchase.

    You can get more information at:

    www.infralution.com/licensing.html

    Grant

  • I've used XHEO for a while now, and to be honest I'm not really satisfied with it. It increased the size of my component library by triple, it's got a lot of bells and whistles in the library itself that I don't feel I really need. The customer service leaves a bit to be desired, but I know it's just one or two guys working part time from home, and I can tolerate that because I'm doing the samething.

    Anyhow, you're best off developing your own Licensing system if you have the ability. It's worth the trouble if you really want to protect your software.

  • I was looking at XHEO, but I was put off by a clause in their EULA that basically said that I would have to defend XHEO against any IP claim regarding their component at my own expense.

    I ended up looking at a number of other products out there. Programming in .net, I have found that there are few managed options out there. As such I have found myself looked at unmanaged components. Most of these come in the form of licensing systems that use shell protection systems.

    Obviously shell protection systems are not the most secure method against hackers, as if they crack the shell they have fall access to your entire project.

    Two systems of note are the QLM (Quick License Manager, www.interactive-studios.net) developed by Interactive Studios and also License Protector developed by Mirage (www.mirage-systems.de). Both of these products are dll based COM components that can be called at any time from within your code. Both companies also provide license hosting servers services or components to setup your own server when your ready...plus much more.

    Of coarse I could spend months implementing a licensing system, but it makes better sense to spend my time working on more profitable parts of my business.

    I hope this is helpful to someone.

  • CryptoLicensing ( http://www.ssware.com/cryptolicensing/cryptolicensing_net.htm ) is a good, affordable and easy-to-use cryptographic licensing system which can be used to add licensing, copy-protection and activation capabilities to your software.

  • There's another .Net framework for licensing called InstallKey. ( www.lomacons.com ) Looks to be a lot less complex than desaware or xheo. And the source code is included.

  • This is really the most comprehensive list of licensing players in the market !!

    Thx for this page ...

  • I have found the Desaware Licensing System very useful! We have been using it for all our products for a couple of years now and have had no problems. Their tech support is always available via email and has always been very responsive.

  • My favorite by far is Quick License Manager (www.soraco.co). I checked out the others and they don't even come close. Their support was also very responsive.

  • I have been using Quick License Manager for over a year now. No issues to report so far. Quick License Manager lacks the ability to wrap an executable which other products provide. If you are willing to modify your application to implement licensing, then I would recommend it. I have a couple applications that I currently use QLM to protect; one in .NET and the other an unmanaged C++ application. For the unmanaged C++, I had to use a COM interface to integrate with QLM. For .NET, it was much simpler since they provide .NET Controls which do most of the work. The online activation works quite well and is easy to implement. All in all, it's a pretty good product.

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