Yeah, that second idea would work. Youd also need to disallow deactivations for product keys.
Disallow new activationsSolved
btsI plan to use TurboActivate for a DLL i.e., my customers are software vendors and my DLL is activated on computers of *their* end-users:
Me (DLL) -> MyCustomer1 (SoftwareVendor) -> EndUsersMe (DLL) -> MyCustomer2 (SoftwareVendor) -> EndUsers...Me (DLL) -> MyCustomerN (SoftwareVendor) -> EndUsers
I do not have a relationship with the end users and providing a separate key to each of them is not practical. So I'm thinking about a licensing model like this:
1 Each direct customer (software vendor) gets 1 key. 2 He pays an annual fee. When the fee for the current year has been paid the key allows activations.3 When he stops paying the annual fee then new activations are blocked but the DLL continues to run on known machines that have activated before.
Question: When my direct customer (software vendor) stops to pay I need a way to deactivate new activations. But I can't simply disable the key because previous activations must continue to work.
I thought of adding a custom license field, Checkbox "AllowNewActivations" (true/false). * But can custom license fields be retrieved before the software is activated? * And how could I find out if the current machine is already known (activated before) to distinguish re-activations from new activations?
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Well, right now I had another idea: I could create one key per software vendor that allows unlimited (or at least a huge number of) activations. Then, when a software vendor cancels his contract, I would edit his key and set the number of allowed activations to the number of current activations. Would that work?
btsFine. But I have recognized another problem: This licensing model does not limit the number of possible activations per key and thus I would need to allow a high (pseudo-infinite) number of activations per key. I have read somewhere in the FAQ that allowed activations are counted for the plan, not the real activations. When this is still true then I would immediately need the max plan. Except when there is a way to increment the number of allowed activations somehow automatically.
Correct, covered here: https://wyday.com/limelm/help/activations/#faq
The solution is to charge your customers a certain amount for a block of activations. If they need a large amount, then charge them enough so you make a profit.