Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Shop System for Software Licensing

[MrEliasen]

Hi Everyone.

I have been googling for some time, but I didn't really seem to find any systems I thought would be of any good (or they where too expensive).

I am looking for a shopping cart system, like WHMCS for web hosting, which can be or is mainly used for selling software licenses.

I am developing website software (in php etc), and I would like to have a system where I can keep track of all licenses, and where customers can purchase licenses etc.

I prefer Free and Open Source (I guess we all do), however I do not mind commercial systems either.
Any system is appreciated, as long as I can handle software licensing etc.

Cheers!

Ps. I am already the owner of IonCube Pro, in case it changes anything.

[JamesOakley]

I suppose it depends on how you will generate the keys, and what you will do to validate them. Do they need only to be valid keys (by some algorithm, where you have the private half), or do they also need to match up to a specific IP / server path or some such. It also depends on whether license keys need to have expiry, with a call-home feature to check it's still current. Clearly, the more complex your requirements the more tricky the implementation.

If it doesn't matter which license key is issued for any particular customer, and if each license is for life (so it just runs an algorithm to check the license is a valid license), then http://drupal.org/project/uc_product_keys might help you.

[ThatScriptGuy]

WHMCS has a licensing addon available for it that works quite well. You might want to check it out.

[JamesOakley]

Originally Posted by ThatScriptGuy

WHMCS has a licensing addon available for it that works quite well. You might want to check it out.

That looks like a good bet: http://www.whmcs.com/licensingaddon.php. It's $99.95 as a one-time fee, but you'd then need the $15.95 monthly fee for the WHMCS license. It depends on your budget. (Do you have one?)

The Ubercart module I referred to above would allow you to upload valid license keys, and they would be issued to clients as they purchased a license. That's all open-source, but with that comes the support of an enthusiastic community as opposed to paid staff who are obliged to help.

If you wanted to do some other operations with those keys, like restrict them to one IP address, or check periodically that they are still valid, that wouldn't be too hard to do with a simple php page to call GET / POST with, and one database table to drive it. You could then revoke a key if they cancel, or if you suspect a key has become public.

You'd have to code that yourself, or get someone to do it for you. The "call home" check involved in that step would be secure because you have your ioncube for that.

Harder to do would be recurring payments if the license needs a monthly or annual subscription to keep it current.

[MrEliasen]

Thank you very much for the replies .

Looking at the WHMCS system, I think I might be able to code something similar.. I hope.. heh.

The licenses are lifetime, so it should be (like you pointed out) easier to do than recurring subscriptions.

Thanks again!

[dgoodale]

Mr Eliasen,

I am curious to know why you are looking for a cart at all.

If you are licensing software, and you have the ability to generate license keys, it means that you are likely to have all the technical skills needed to build your own integration into a payment gateway.

Remember that the job of the cart is to keep track of what the user wants to buy, calculate tax, shipping, etc. All this is pretty straight forward stuff, especially when you only have one product (perhaps with different options, such as different versions of the software).

Taking a step outside the technical conversation, realize that conversions have to come into play when picking your shopping cart, or point of integration into your payment processor.

If you happen to be lucky enough to have a product that is somewhat simple (one product, not too many variations), and technically proficient enough to build a custom integration, then I would strongly encourage you to explore that option.

This has nothing to do with cost (which in your case might just be your own time), and everything to do with conversions.

With that all said, I don't know your software, how many people you have administrating, etc. I just wanted to point out doing your own integration because I didn't even see it mentioned, and in many cases it's passed off, when it's actually quite easy to do. A PHP script and a HTML form could be everything you need to do a very tight integration. Some food for thought!

[MrEliasen]

Originally Posted by dgoodale

Mr Eliasen,

I am curious to know why you are looking for a cart at all.

If you are licensing software, and you have the ability to generate license keys, it means that you are likely to have all the technical skills needed to build your own integration into a payment gateway.

Remember that the job of the cart is to keep track of what the user wants to buy, calculate tax, shipping, etc. All this is pretty straight forward stuff, especially when you only have one product (perhaps with different options, such as different versions of the software).

Taking a step outside the technical conversation, realize that conversions have to come into play when picking your shopping cart, or point of integration into your payment processor.

If you happen to be lucky enough to have a product that is somewhat simple (one product, not too many variations), and technically proficient enough to build a custom integration, then I would strongly encourage you to explore that option.

This has nothing to do with cost (which in your case might just be your own time), and everything to do with conversions.

With that all said, I don't know your software, how many people you have administrating, etc. I just wanted to point out doing your own integration because I didn't even see it mentioned, and in many cases it's passed off, when it's actually quite easy to do. A PHP script and a HTML form could be everything you need to do a very tight integration. Some food for thought!

Thanks a lot for your reply!

I agree, since I will most likely only be having 1 version and maybe 2-3 different products in the end.
I have already started sketching the licensing/integration system that I would like to build for this purpose .

Thanks again!