Blog on Software Licensing, Commercialization, and Revenue Optimization

Today’s blog will feature how you implement subscription licenses. The use cases you can have for subscription licenses will be covered, and how you integrate your payment provider such as Stripe.

The most common way to implement subscription licenses is the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. That is where you restrict access to the product when a license expires. You can also allow customers to use the product without a valid license, but they are not allowed newer upgrades. You can also tie the subscription to a support agreement so that only people with a valid license get access to support.

All of these methods will be covered today. For the full documentation page on this topic, click here.

We have made the following video tutorial for this topic:

The SaaS Model

The most common use case is where a customer has to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee to use the product. If they do not pay, their access to the product will be restricted. They would then have to extend the license to continue to use the product. This method is oftentimes seen today with the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model.

In Cryptolens, you can implement this using our pre-made “Expires” field. We already have a blog post covering how to set up time-limited licenses that you can find here.

In short, you have to click on “Edit Feature Names” on the product page and click the checkbox “Treat all licenses as time-limited”. Now, Cryptolens knows that you want to use the SaaS Subscription Model.

When creating a license in Cryptolens, you can specify for how long the license should be valid. If you want to extend the expiry date, simply click on a particular license and you can either choose a date in the calendar or choose to extend the license for X amount of days. You can also automate this by integrating with your payment provider. We cover that topic at the end of this blog.

An important last step to remember is to make sure Cryptolens blocks all expired licenses. You can find that tutorial here, but that should only be done for this method of implementing subscriptions.

Restrict Access to Updates and Support

Some software developers want to continue to allow customers to use the software after the expiry date has been reached. However, without a valid license, a customer cannot get access to updates. This would still incentivize the customer to keep extending their license.

Let’s take an example of how this could work in practice. Let’s say that a customer buys your software at the launch of version 1.0. Their license expires right as you release a minor update, version 1.1. The customer can get access to that minor update and continue to use the product even though their license has expired. However, when you release a major update to version 2.0, the customer is not able to access that version without a valid license.

You implement this version of subscriptions by using data objects. In Cryptolens, you would create a new data object and use it as metadata. Create a new data object and call it, for example, “major_version”. Give the IntValue field the value 1 if you want your version to be 1.0. Click on Create. Now, you have a way to track major releases of your application.

If you want to keep allowing customers with expired licenses to use the product, another way to incentivize them to renew the license is to limit the support given to customers without a valid license. This essentially means that they subscribe to a support agreement rather than to the product itself.

For more information on how to implement this model, please check the full documentation page. For this method, you should not tell Cryptolens to block expired licenses automatically, since you want people to keep using their version of the application.

Implementation with Payment Providers

You can manually extend the expiry date in the Crypolens dashboard, but it might be beneficial for you to automate the process so that the expiry date of a client is automatically extended after a successful payment has been made.

In the Cryptolens API, there is a method called the ExtendLicense method. When a successful payment has been made by a client, use that method when calling our API to automatically extend their license. This method works no matter if you are using Stripe, PayPal, other providers, or even an internal payment system.

For more information, please read this page in our documentation. There, we also have API methods to automatically create a new license key, add features, block the license, and more.

You now know how to implement subscription licenses in Cryptolens!

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When you have a lot of licenses in the Cryptolens platform, it can be useful to search for specific properties such as blocked/active, the created-on date, and so on. In this blog, we feature some of the queries you can run to effectively filter search results in Cryptolens.

This blog is based on the following two help pages relating to sorting and ordering. For a video guide, please watch the following YouTube video.

Searching licenses using Linq Queries

One of the most basic ways of searching for licenses is to simply paste the license key into the search field.

You can also search for all licenses with a specific property. For example, you can find every license key that has Feature 1 set as true by pasting the following text into the search field.

f1=True

You can use the same logic to search license keys based on other features. Below, you will find the query for finding blocked licenses.

Block=True

If you instead want to find all licenses with the period set to 30, you can do so by pasting the following query into the search field.

Period=30

Advanced searching

A more advanced way of searching for licenses is to find licenses that have been issued after a particular date. To do so, please see the following query example.

created > DateTime(2024,05,01)

The same logic can be applied with the parameter “expires”.

Furthermore, you can search for all license keys that have been activated on a device. For this example, let’s find all license keys that have at least 2 activated devices.

ActivatedMachines.Count() >= 2

Let us now assume that you just received an email from a customer saying that they have lost their license key, but they provided their machine code.

You can then search for licenses that have been activated by a particular machine ID using the following query:

ActivatedMachines.Count(it.Mid="machine code") > 0

You would simply replace “machine code” with the machine ID of your customer.

There is a similar way to search for license keys if you are using the API. The method is called GetKeys, and the same queries can be used if you prefer to use the API.

There are many more properties you can use to filter search results in Cryptolens, and we have them all listed here.

Customizing the order of license keys

As you can see in the Cryptolens dashboard, there are different preset ways of ordering license keys. For example, you can order by feature and creation date.

For more advanced customization of the ordering, please visit this help page.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]. Thank you so much for reading!

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Users expect some software products to run in offline settings. Then, the software needs offline license verifications to confirm the customer’s license key. In this blog, we will cover how to set up offline verification in theory and in practice, regarding two major use cases:

1. When a customer is allowed to temporarily be offline (for example, use the license while they are in airplane mode).

2. When a customer is allowed to permanently be offline (for example, behind a corporate firewall).

This blog is based on the following page in our documentation.

Here is a YouTube video covering the same topic:

Background

Let us refresh our memory of the standard license key verification code. For the remainder of this blog, we will cover example codes in Python, but the process is similar in other languages.

Below you can find the basic key verification code in Python.

result = Key.activate(token=auth,\
  rsa_pub_key=RSAPubKey,\
  product_id=3349, \
  key="ICVLD-VVSZR-ZTICT-YKGXL",\
  machine_code=Helpers.GetMachineCode(v=2))

if result[0] == None or not Helpers.IsOnRightMachine(result[0], v=2):
  # an error occurred or the key is invalid or it cannot be activated
  # (eg. the limit of activated devices was achieved)
  print("The license does not work: {0}".format(result[1]))
else:
  # everything went fine if we are here!
  print("The license is valid!")

When Key.Activate is called, it calls Cryptolens API, which in turn returns a signed JSON object placed in the result variable. This allows you to proceed as normal and check features, expiry dates, and other parameters. In the code above, we are checking if the license is activated on the correct machine.

Using the following code in Python, we can save the JSON object to disk, allowing us to read it again when the customer lacks internet access.

# res is obtained from the code above
if result[0] != None:
  # saving license file to disk
  with open('licensefile.skm', 'w') as f:
    f.write(result[0].save_as_string())

Case 1 – Temporarily offline

If customers are expected to be offline once in a while, it is considered good practice to always attempt to make the key.activate call, and only load the saved license file from disk if the customer is offline and key.activate fails.

The following Python code example shows you how to load the saved license file from disk:

# read license file from file
with open('licensefile.skm', 'r') as f:
  license_key = LicenseKey.load_from_string(pubKey, f.read(), 30)

if license_key == None or not Helpers.IsOnRightMachine(license_key, v=2):
  print("NOTE: This license file does not belong to this machine.")
else:
  print("Feature 1: " + str(license_key.f1))
  print("License expires: " + str(license_key.expires))

Notice that the parameter load_from_string has “30” set as a parameter. This means that the customer is only allowed to use the software offline for 30 days. You can customize this value so it suits your use case. For example, you may want to change it to 7, if you only want to allow a customer to be offline for a week.

When the date has been reached, the customer will need a new license file (which may be obtained by successfully calling key.activate), which can be done with the LoadFromFile method.

You could also remove the “30” parameter if you do not want to set a limit at all.

If you want to see more code examples in Python, please visit our GitHub page.

Case 2 – Permanently offline

To support customers to be fully offline and still use your software for a long period of time, you would have to send the license file to your customers since they cannot call key.activate.

There are four methods you can use:

1. Calling key.activate on your end and sending the file to your customer. You can automate this method.
2. Using Activation forms hosted by Cryptolens for an easier solution.
3. Obtaining the file manually in the dashboard.
4. An On-premise License Server by Cryptolens for when you anticipate many end users or want to support floating licenses offline.

1:

The first method is where you call key.activate on your end and send the license file to your customer, for example, over an email. If you would like, you could set up an automized way where your customers can request to download their license file from your dashboard. This could, however, become somewhat complex.

2:

An easier way is to use activation forms by Cryptolens. When inside the Cryptolens dashboard, open the tab called “Forms”, and click on Activation Forms. This form performs a call to key.activate much like you would do on your own in the previous method, but we provide a simpler GUI for your and your customer’s convenience.

Using the form, customers can simply enter their license key and machine code, click on active, and they will obtain their license file that they can insert on their machines.

3:

You can also manually download the license file from the Cryptolens dashboard. Go to the desired product page, find the license key you want to download the license file of, and click on the yellow wrench icon to the right of the key. Click on “Download activation file” and send it in your desired way to your customer.

4:

All of the above-mentioned methods are useful when there are only a few employees on site who would use your software offline. But, if you anticipate that your customers will have many end users, or if you want to support floating licenses offline, you can use an on-premise license server that Cryptolens provides. Please read the documentation relating to the on-premise license server to learn more about this approach.

Thank you for reading this blog about setting up offline license verifications in Cryptolens, please feel free to ask questions to [email protected].

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Welcome! This blog is covering our feature called “Start countdown upon activation in Cryptolens”, also referred to as “Trial Activation”. We will first go through when this feature is useful in theory, we will then cover a basic setup, followed by a more advanced use case for when you allow multiple machines to use the same license. Please read our documentation page for more information.

Please watch the video below if you would rather take in this information as a video:

In theory

Let’s suppose that we have a time-limited license issued today that should be valid for 30 days. Normally, the countdown will begin as soon as the license is created. However, this can be problematic if you want to create a list of licenses before they reach your customers, and you are unsure when your customers will activate their licenses.

Ideally, you want the license to be valid for 30 days after the customer has activated the license, and not 30 days after you created the licenses. That is where the feature we will cover today comes in handy.

Basic setup

For the basic setup, we will cover an example where you want to create a time-limited license limited to one machine only, and you want the countdown to begin upon activation.

Sign in to Cryptolens and create a license key as you normally do by pressing the blue “Create a new key” button for your desired product.

In the red bottom right card, you will see a checkbox called “Start countdown upon activation”. Please click this checkbox and click on Create.

Make sure you always click that checkbox for all of the licenses you create where you want the countdown to begin only when the customer activates their license.

Advanced use case

What if we want to start the countdown of a license upon activation for a license that is limited to more than one machine?

With the basic setup, each new activation will reset the countdown. Let’s say that you have set up a license that is limited to 30 days. If your customer activates the license on one machine and activates the license on another machine 7 days later, the license will be valid for another 30 days. This means it will be valid for 37 days in total.

If you allow for more than two machines, this phenomenon can then naturally happen more than once. The license might then be valid for even longer.

Using data objects, you can make sure that only the first machine will activate the countdown, and that the other machines will not affect or reset the countdown.

Go to the product you want to implement this feature on. Click on “Data Objects”.

Copy the following code and paste it into the “Name” field:

cryptolens_trialactivation

Copy the following code and paste it into the “StringValue” field:

first_activation

For the chosen product, the countdown will now be activated the first time a customer activates the license on a machine, but new machines will not affect the behavior of the countdown at all.

Now you know how to start the countdown upon activation in Cryptolens. We are happy to answer any questions you might have! Send them either to our chat support or email the questions to [email protected].

Thank you for reading!

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