CryptoLicensing for .NET Product Review

By Peter Bromberg

You could win a free license of CryptoLicensing for .Net! It is a 100% .Net solution to add licensing, copy-protection and activation capabilities to .Net, Windows Forms (WinForms) and WPF applications, components and controls.

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    • We tried CryptoLicensing and it does everything the vendor claims, plus more. This could be one of the most full-featured licensing components in the marketplace, and at $149 for the standard version, it could save you thousands of dollars in development costs, whether you need to create timed trial or evaluation licenses, feature-specific licenses, or any combination.

    CryptoLicensing offers a good balance of:

    • Military-strength security: Secure and unbreakable cryptographic licenses offer maximum protection to your software.
    • Ease of deployment: Fast, reliable, light-weight and simple API to integrate in your software.
    • Customer friendliness: Easy on your customers. Hassle-free activation and hardware locking scheme.
    • Functionality: Variety of licensing rules for the most common licensing scenarios.
      • Create cryptographic licenses for full versions of your software.
      • Create evaluation or trial versions.
      • Add online or manual activation and hardware locking.
      • On-demand licenses.
      • Subscription licenses.

    The product offers flexibility and is adaptable to suit your exact needs. It even creates a custom license service based on your inputs! All you do is deploy the service.

    Here are some screen shots of the UI:





    You can see that there are a number of features that allow you to create custom licensing schemes, deploy a licensing service, and more. The product offers the following functionality:

  • Latest cryptographic technologies used for license generation and validation which provides the highest security and copy-protection to your software.
  • Support for hardware-locked and activated licenses.
  • Support for floating licenses.
  • Every license code is guaranteed to be unique, even if you generate thousands of codes at a time.
  • Ready-to-use license server for
    • Activating licenses
    • Validating serials
    • Issuing on-demand licenses
    • Creating software subscriptions
    • Remote monitoring of software usage
    • Revoking licenses.
  • Support for evaluation licenses with various evaluation parameters such as
    • Absolute date/time after which the license expires.
    • Maximum usage days
    • Maximum unique usage days
    • Maximum executions
    • Maximum run-time
    • Maximum cumulative run-time
  • Support for up to 31 license features which allow enabling/disabling specific functionality in your software. A common use of this is to define 'editions' of your software such as a 'Standard', 'Professional' and 'Enterprise' edition.
  • Support for Winforms, WPF and Asp.Net control and component licensing with separate design-time and run-time licenses.
  • Support for embedding any amount of additional user-data in the license.
  • Supports licensing of .Net Compact Framework applications developed for Pocket PC 2003 and above, Windows Mobile, Windows CE and Smartphones.

    The Generator offers these features:

  • Simple and easy-to-use user interface.
  • Generate up to 30,000 licenses at a time.
  • Set up license settings profiles to quickly generate licenses for that settings profile.
  • Specify custom user-data via 'Data Fields' such as Name, Email, Company Name, etc.
  • Export license and serial codes to file.
  • Powerful post-generation processing support.
    1. Insert licenses in a specified template.
    2. Save generated licenses to a file in a specified format/template.
    3. Run external programs when a license is generated.
  • Plugin support allows you to perform your own processing or tasks whenever licenses are generated.
  • User data plugins allow you to enter your own user-data using your own UI or specify your own source for user-data.

    Finally, in the Enterprise version, you have a Generator API:

  • Generate license/serial codes via code.
  • Specify license features and capabilities via code and generate licenses/serials with those settings.
  • Simple and easy-to-use, yet powerful API.
  • Achieve any level of customization and integration in your license generation, sales/e-commerce and order-fulfillment process

    We like CryptoLicensing. Instead of spending thousands of dollars in development time, for a couple of hundred dollars you can have a full-featured, extensible license generator and service. LogicNP Software, the creator of the product, has a Fortune 500 clientele.

    You can find out more about CryptoLicensing here.

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    Biography - Peter Bromberg
    Peter Bromberg is a C# MVP, MCP, and .NET expert who has worked in banking, financial and telephony for over 20 years. Pete focuses exclusively on the .NET Platform, and currently develops SOA and other .NET applications for a Fortune 500 clientele. Peter enjoys producing digital photo collage with Maya,playing jazz flute, the beach, and fine wines. You can view Peter's UnBlog and IttyUrl sites. Follow Microsoft MVP
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    Article Discussion: PRODUCT REVIEW: Crypto Licensing for .NET
    Peter Bromberg posted at Saturday, June 06, 2009 11:19 AM
    Original Article