Selling licensed software

  • Hello,


    I'm looking at purchasing the VieCode Shop software as a solution for selling licensed software. I have a base product which has several addons that can be purchased to customize the product. Besides the Customer Portal addon for the Shop, are there any other recommended pieces? I will be the only one selling any products (though I may open up an addon store where users can upload their own plugins at a later time).


    Secondly, how is licensing handled? On the surface level, from the screenshots, it appears that the customer is just providing data about their installation. Does this just mark that the user is capable of downloading the purchased software or is the software licensing more advanced than that? Does the Shop software provide an API so that I may connect an external product activation server>


    Lastly, could you provide a bit more information on the WCF / WSC package server addon? The software I am writing is stand-alone software written in ASP.NET, which means I could point it to any source for checking for updates. I was planning on using an in-house BitBucket server (or something similar) with GIT control built into the software (do a check to see if the installed software is up-to-date with the master), but if this package server gives me any added functionality, I would be very interested in looking into it as a possibility.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I'm looking at purchasing the VieCode Shop software as a solution for selling licensed software. I have a base product which has several addons that can be purchased to customize the product. Besides the Customer Portal addon for the Shop, are there any other recommended pieces? I will be the only one selling any products (though I may open up an addon store where users can upload their own plugins at a later time).

    That depends on your needs, but the core module + customer panel ("Kundenbereich") is the minimal required option for selling software downloads. Nevertheless you can also buy any addon later if you are missing some important feature. You may need also other payment types like paypal or stripe.

    Secondly, how is licensing handled? On the surface level, from the screenshots, it appears that the customer is just providing data about their installation. Does this just mark that the user is capable of downloading the purchased software or is the software licensing more advanced than that? Does the Shop software provide an API so that I may connect an external product activation server>

    No, there is no advanced option. You can add serial numbers for each product (or let the shop generate some). There is no API to check the serial number, but that is easy to implement, since all the serial numbers are stored in the database.

    Lastly, could you provide a bit more information on the WCF / WSC package server addon? The software I am writing is stand-alone software written in ASP.NET, which means I could point it to any source for checking for updates. I was planning on using an in-house BitBucket server with GIT control built into the software (do a check to see if the installed software is up-to-date with the master), but if this package server gives me any added functionality, I would be very interested in looking into it as a possibility.

    Unfortunately the package server addon is only for WoltLab addons, e.g. we distribute our products with that extension. You cannot use it for other systems or languages.

  • That depends on your needs, but the core module + customer panel ("Kundenbereich") is the minimal required option for selling software downloads. Nevertheless you can also buy any addon later if you are missing some important feature. You may need also other payment types like paypal or stripe.


    Thanks for your help. I'll start with the Kundenbereich package and go from there. To make sure I understand the serial numbers piece though, is the serial number assigned to the product itself or the instance of the product? In other words, what will I be looking for in the database to know that X user has purchased Y product?


    Also, for generated serial numbers, are these GUIDs/UUIDs or are they just 0-based identifiers?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Yes, one serial belongs to one license. You can identify one license / user with the serial number. The serial numbers are basically generated by a random generator in the format XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, but you can upload your own serial numbers too.