Risks with a “Do It Yourself” Approach to Software Licensing

SoftwareKey works with a wide range of businesses, budgets, licensing requirements, and staff skill levels.  Frequently, we find that customers underestimate the level of detail involved in successfully launching and maintaining a licensed application throughout its lifetime.

Consider What You Don't Know

When it comes to software licensing, as with so many things in this world, often you don’t know what you don’t know.

The correct implementation of licensing is essential to the smooth operation of your software product.    By opting for the most professional and secure implementation and design, you can be confident that your investment will lead to profits.

Do It Yourself Approach Works Well With Simple Licensing

Most customers who have simple licensing requirements, or those who have senior-level staff with licensing experience, can implement the SoftwareKey System inside of their software using our Do It Yourself approach.   And you can always contact us if you get stuck: we’re happy to answer simple questions under our Standard Support plan.

Consider These Risks with Do It Yourself Approach

BUT, remember that there can definitely be risks if you choose the Do It Yourself approach, especially if your staff is new to software licensing technology:

  • Trying to bring together multiple different licensing models in the same application can create inter-dependencies that are easy to miss or not realize until it is too late.  What may seem simple can become complex very quickly.
  • Responses to questions posted to our Standard Support staff will come from one of the many skilled people on our team. However, on this level you do not benefit from a central project manager who understands your licensing goals in detail. And unfortunately, answering questions in piecemeal bites without understanding your overall goals is possibly going to result in extra time being spent by all parties involved.
  • You don't want to be surprised if a flaw in your implementation is discovered after the software is released.  Patching security or implementation flaws on released software can sometimes involve significant time and money, and may even generate customer dissatisfaction.
  • Finally, even during normal operations, licensing flaws can sometimes open up exploitable holes that could allow customers or hackers to steal your software more easily.
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Peter Mason Scientific Programmer, CSIRO Mineral Resources

A Powerful and Flexible Solution with Very Good Customer Service

We use Protection PLUS 5 Native along with Instant SOLO server. It's a powerful, flexible solution that gives us a lot of choice in how we would like our licenses to work, and it extends easily to a complete e-commerce solution. It's a good solution with very good customer service.

I have contacted SoftwareKey support on a broad range of issues from licensing ideas to technical Protection PLUS 5 programming problems. They always respond rapidly and knowledgeably. I have never had a box-ticking or tunnel-vision experience with them. There's a clear impression of involvement and commitment.

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Dustin Armstrong VP Operations, Tenacity, Inc.

It's Nice to See Sales Come in at 3am

SoftwareKey is a one stop shop for software protection. Tenacity has been using their solutions since we opened in 2004, and I would not consider going anywhere else. I love the SoftwareKey built-in shopping cart and tools they provide to protect our software from theft. It is nice to see sales come in at 3am.

The support that these guys offer is top notch. Dealing with the lowest technician all the way to the company owner has always been a pleasure.

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Bernice Kelly Owner, School by Design

Expert, Timely Support Even with 13H Time Difference

The most impressive feature of SoftwareKey is the quality and expertise of its support. As an Australian business, email was the common interaction. All questions were answered in a timely, respectful, expert and comprehensible manner whether simple or complex. As educators, these were qualities we most notice and most value.

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Matthew Friedman National Instruments

Big Value that delivers!

We spent a lot of time integrating the SoftwareKey platform with our platform, that was a really big value add that delivers productivity and value to our development community by having tight integration with our tools. Being able to work together [with SoftwareKey] like that enabled us to bring this additional value that would not have been possible otherwise.

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Brooks Wait Owner & Certified LabVIEW Architect, Brooks Consulting LLC

Invaluable Customer Support!

I wrote a custom software dialog that gives our user the ability to evaluate our software or activate it, which is an advanced application that requires API calls and custom modifications to the license to activate both licenses. The SoftwareKey API has lots of options, so I worked with Tanner to activate their software and another licensed feature needed for our custom software licensing use case. Tanner's knowledge and support was invaluable throughout the process. I don't believe I would have been able to accomplish this task in an efficient manner without him.

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Ian Batey CEO, IDMB Advisory LTD

Best IT Support by a Country Mile

Every time I raise a ticket with SoftwareKey, it gets dealt with promptly and with insight. Your team should be congratulated on such a consistently good performance. TRUST me, I deal with a number of IT support sites and yours is the best by a country mile.

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John Huhn CEO NewStream Solutions

World Class Customer Support and Proven Operational Excellence

SoftwareKey has world-class customer support and proven operational excellence. They work hard to ensure complete satisfaction with every order. What convinced us was the complete array of features of SOLO Server along with their tremendous customer support that is essential to maintaining your business.

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Graeme Cox Engineering Director, DAVCO Farming

They Put in Overtime to Help Us with a Critical Issue

SoftwareKey has been an important part of our business in terms of securing our intellectual property with their software protection and allowing us to implement a pay as you use business model which is a first in our industry. Their support is always responsive and when we recently had a critical issue that was preventing the release of our latest version of software, they worked over many hours to track down the problems and solve it. This was a great relief and allowed us to ship our product and keep the sales coming in.

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Jerry Kramskoy CEO/CTO MusicIncite Ltd

Support is Excellent - They Genuinely Want to Help

Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend The SoftwareKey System, especially as the cost is very reasonable. From an integration viewpoint, this was straight-forward, starting from the supplied SDK, and modifying to suit. There is a lot of flexibility in the system, meaning we can consider feature-unlocking based on license type sold, while shipping one executable. That's a big win. Support is excellent ... these guys understand what support really is. They genuinely want to help.

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Michael Gencarelli Co-Founder / nGeneYes, Inc.

The SoftwareKey System is the complete package!

I wanted to make sure that everything was set up right, and that required more than your standard support. I was willing to pay for additional help, so I signed up for the Jump Start program.

Team SoftwareKey worked with me to get it scheduled, because my schedule has been so tight. And they were thorough. They went through all the settings and checked under the hood for me, making sure we had everything set up right.

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