In preparation for my new application FlexMerge which will go on sale soon (plug: at www.arrow-of-time.com !), I've been investigating Licensing/code protection issues.
This is a windows class library which needs to implement serial number and license based protection using an activation server.
I also wanted the ability to automatically send serials from my ASP .NET website immediately on successful checkout.
I scoured the internet, coming up with a whole bunch of likely candidates:
DeployLX (by Xheo) ($700 +)
CryptoLicensing Professional ($300)
Infralution Licensing System ($170 + $170 license tracker source code)
Eziriz Intellilock ($179)
LomaCons InstallKey ($86 source code edition)
LicenseSpot (subscription)
Soraco Quick License Manager ($400)
Manco .NET Licensing System ($200/$480)
To cut to the chase, I ended up buying CryptoLicensing, as it offered equivalent features to any of the other offerings, along with samples of the serial generator API and an activation server, at a very reasonable price.
I bought it bundled with CryptoObfuscator.
I haven't rolled it out yet: watch this space. But in testing it has performed flawlessly.
Immediately discarded was LicenseSpot, as it offers a hosted, monthly subscription based service which looks great for those looking for a simple, hosted solution, but I was pretty sure the integration with my site was going to be a problem. I'd really rather have everything stored in my own database rather than spread over the internet.
Soraco Quick License Manager was also discarded quickly as its feature set appeared to be smaller than most of the other standard offerings. It didn't appear at first sight to support serial numbers, and I didn't have the time or inclination to go looking further.
Eziriz was an early frontrunner, but then I did run across reports of bugs, particularly with obfuscation, and tardy tech support. That resulted in a knockout too.
Note that price is not much of an object for me - with my hourly rate, it was going to cost WAY more to integrate the software than to buy it.
LomaCons InstallKey looked good, and is so cheap that I bought it to look at the source code rather than stuff around with a demo version. However, there were several bugs in the project which cost me time, and it required IIS Express to work, which I didn't want to install on my Dev machine. In the end I couldn't get it to run, even WITH source.
It had a web based license manager with source code, but this was all written in old school ASP .NET WebForms style, which I have to say makes the gore rise in my throat. I wanted something I could tweak easily, and I would have ended up rebuilding that from scratch.
DeployLX makes a big effort to make their tools user friendly. But this comes with a price tag. This was easily the most expensive option. Since time is money, I was tempted to go with them for a bit, and benefit from a bit of hand holding, but it turned out that the features I wanted would invoke several more license charges over the base charge, and also that their serial generation API has certain license restrictions.
I think they would have worked, but I thought that he licensing restrictions were a bit onerous considering the other offers out here.
Infralution looks like a good solution. Also, pay a bit more for the source code. This one looked comparable to the Crypto product, but had a Winforms based license manager. Since I'll definitely be managing licenses online, this put me off a bit. All their ancillary tools dovetail into this license manager.
That said, they supply source, so rolling your own web based manager would have been doable and supported. I would have chosen these guys had Crypto not been around.
The Roundup
All in all, there were several good players, and a lot of choice. It happens that the CryptoLicensing package was well reviewed, had a complete feature set, and also pairs with CryptoObfuscator which also is a plus.
Where I read of problems with licensing tools in general, it was often during obfuscation that this occurred, so buying a matched license/obfuscation pair (Crypto or DeployLX) makes good sense.
I'd highlight that I think most of these packages perform well for what they do, but being a developer myself, I have fairly demanding requirements.
Also, if you are REALLY short of cash, there are some very cheap solutions out there which I think would perform quite satisfactorily if you were willing to put a bit more time into making them perform.
I think the LomaCons comment that sometimes 'less is more' hits the nail on the head. In the end, I wasn't interested in the fluff of the 'all in one' integrated solutions, I just wanted a good solid bare-metal framework I could use for my own purposes. This meant a good feature set and an easy to use API.
