Monthly and Annual License Sales via Paypal

You can do this all with LimeLM. The best place to start is here: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/getting-started/

Prospective customer wants a free trial product. We would like to make them register and receive an activation key via email (so we have a chance of finding out who they are) for a time limited trial.

Ok, verified trials are what you're looking for: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/trials/#verified

When they decide to purchase we would like to offer them a choice of 'renting' our downloadable software by the month ($15) or by the year ($120). In either case the renewal and therefore the billing would be automatically handled by Paypal.

That's possible using custom license fields: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/license-features/

We would also like to be able to offer the opportunity to sign up for multiple monthly or annual licenses in one transaction to cater for more than one user.

That's also possible using custom license fields. You can set the fields to whatever you want (so, for isntance, you could set the expiration date a month from now, a year from now, etc.)

Does that make sense?

Thanks. That's good news. This sparks a few more related questions.

I can see from your examples how to sell a license key via Paypal. Pretty clear. I can see how to time limit a key. Also pretty clear. I'm still a little confused about the transition from trial to real paying customer and also the management of payments (after the initial purchase) and how that connects to your licensing system.

Trial KeysHow do we best/most easily to send a license key to a web site visitor? Can we present to them a form requiring name and email address only (for example), and using your APIs get your server to record this information and send them a key containing the custom field time limit? They would become a 'verified' trial at this point right?

Become a customer.Once they have a trial key and are ready to subscribe ($), do we send them to the standard web order page where they put in their credit card details, and then Paypal does their part, and your server sends them a new key? I'm pretty sure that's not right.

RenewalsI think I understand the technology on your side in terms of custom fields with date restrictions plus calling the server to check for extensions etc. Like you do, we just want to have the month by month billing happen automatically and the software only stops working when the customer decides that they no longer want to renew. Therefore I don't want to set a timer on the software but I do want it to call the server every few days to check if the user is still a paid subscriber. Is that the right way to go?

The 'product' we sell would be a Paypal 'subscription' - is that right? I assume your system doesn't play a part in tracking these monthly renewal and that there's a manual process for us to check who has cancelled (and then update your database) Is that right?

Many thanks

How do we best/most easily to send a license key to a web site visitor? Can we present to them a form requiring name and email address only (for example), and using your APIs get your server to record this information and send them a key containing the custom field time limit?

Yes.

They would become a 'verified' trial at this point right?

Yes. But the verified vs. unverified is really about the validation with the activation servers vs. completely client side trials.

Once they have a trial key and are ready to subscribe ($), do we send them to the standard web order page where they put in their credit card details, and then Paypal does their part, and your server sends them a new key? I'm pretty sure that's not right.

Yes,. you can do that.

I think I understand the technology on your side in terms of custom fields with date restrictions plus calling the server to check for extensions etc. Like you do, we just want to have the month by month billing happen automatically and the software only stops working when the customer decides that they no longer want to renew. Therefore I don't want to set a timer on the software but I do want it to call the server every few days to check if the user is still a paid subscriber. Is that the right way to go?

No, use custom license field and check the field using GetFeatureValue.

If the customer is past the expiration date, then check once with the servers, and beyond that don't check again, but instead show a prompt like "Buy now, recheck activation", where the user can manually do it.

Of course you should use IsGenuineEx() like our tutorials show.

The 'product' we sell would be a Paypal 'subscription' - is that right? I assume your system doesn't play a part in tracking these monthly renewal and that there's a manual process for us to check who has cancelled (and then update your database) Is that right?

Use PayPal IPN to handle purchases, upgrades, and cancellation. We have a pre-built example showing how to handle purchases. You can modify it to handle cancellations and upgrades. See: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/how-to-generate-product-keys-after-order/