At its core, Software Licensing is the agreement binding your customer to your company. It entitles your customers to use the product that they’ve bought from you.

The license agreement usually states some of the following points:

• Where and How can your customers use your software.
• If your customers are authorised to modify, copy, or redistribute your software.
• If your customers are allowed to look at the source code of your application.

As a software vendor, you need to address these points clearly, in your End User License Agreement (or “EULA”).

How does it work?

Basically, software licensing management is what allows you to manage which users can have access to your software. You can even go deeper and offer different features, depending on whether your user is using a trial version, a full unlocked version, or if they need to upgrade to a new version. Licensing plays an important part over the entire lifecycle of your product.

Why does it matter?

Managing your licenses efficiently with your customers leads to understanding your customers better and increasing your revenue as a software developer. It also protects your product against losses occurred from piracy. There are, however, different types of licenses available and that’s where it can get more complicated. Using a dedicated Software Licensing service will allow you to focus on building great products, manage the type of license you want to offer, and protect your intellectual property.

Licensing is a very important part of software development. In the next post, we’ll take a look at the different types of licenses available.