JurajHello,quick question on basic licensing functionality. Say we provide our software users with a 30 day free trial. They can download our software and install it and there are no restrictions on how many times they can download it, as they only need a username/email to do it which they can create many if they would like to. We send them a license key which has only one activation slot (restricted to one machine). Let's say 30 day passes and they come up with a new username/email and present themselves as new customers. Uninstall/reinstall my software from scratch and request a new product key which we will send them. Is this product key going to work for them? Thus allowing them to indefinitely trial the software? One more important note: in our software we allow users to 'Deactivate' license so that they can move it from computer to computer if needed. It seems to us they could 'Deactivate' first (before end of trial period), uninstall our software, reinstall it and run it with the new product key. Please advise. Thank you.
JurajOne additional note regarding initial post: if allowing the user to 'Deactivate' license is what allows repeated trials, we would remove that option from our software. We are not sure how all this is implemented on your side but clearly it's important to understand it to some extent.
Let's say 30 day passes and they come up with a new username/email and present themselves as new customers. Uninstall/reinstall my software from scratch and request a new product key which we will send them. Is this product key going to work for them?
Yes. The best way -- currently -- to prevent this is to take note of the IP address and to ban "free" emails from being used (gmail, yahoo, etc.).
Within the year we're making verified trials much easier for you and your customers -- allowing you to limit trials to 1 per PC without requiring product keys or filtering on your side.
One additional note regarding initial post: if allowing the user to 'Deactivate' license is what allows repeated trials, we would remove that option from our software
No, that's not what allows it.
JurajWyatt wrote:> Within the year we're making verified trials much easier for you and your customers> -- allowing you to limit trials to 1 per PC without requiring product keys or filtering> on your side.
What do you mean exactly by that statement, that during the course of this year you are going to make it happen? Do you have a timeline in mind?
Let's say I would want to implement it myself. Would this be a possible solution:
When my software gets first installed on client's computer, it will create a unique machine fingerprint and send it to me in an email. Then each time the same client (their computer) requests a new ("trial") product key, I will simply give it to them. When they activate the product key, my software will send me an email with the unique machine fingerprint. If that fingerprint instance happens to be in my 'database' of trialfingerprints already used in the past, I will simply deactivate/disable the product key.
What do you mean exactly by that statement, that during the course of this year you are going to make it happen?
Yes.
Do you have a timeline in mind?
We're in the planning stages (designing it so that it's fast & scalable).
When my software gets first installed on client's computer, it will create a unique machine fingerprint and send it to me in an email. Then each time the same client (their computer) requests a new ("trial") product key, I will simply give it to them. When they activate the product key, my software will send me an email with the unique machine fingerprint. If that fingerprint instance happens to be in my 'database' of trialfingerprints already used in the past, I will simply deactivate/disable the product key.
Well, building a good fingerprinting algorithm is very hard (low false-positives and low false-negatives). I wouldn't recommend it. Frankly just block existing customers from requesting multiple trial keys by using the IP address. Then when we release our improved "verified trials" functionality just switch to that.
