Modern software licensing and analytics vs dongles and legacy technology.
Zentitle2 was built from the ground up to be a modern, flexible, scalable and API driven platform for software licensing and analytics.
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Nalpeiron
Small Competitors
Low risk
Stable, pioneer of cloud licensing, since 2005
High risk, a few guys in India or Canada. Short track record.
Easy onboarding
Software + full-service support + training
Software only. No real support or training capability.
Global support - fast - in 3 time zones
US / CET / UK offering priority support
Self service support, in one country, no response time
Highly scalable, secure and battle-tested
$1Bn+ of customer revenues protected and enabled
Small company focus, missing key enterprise capabilities
Focused, specialist
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Hobby, not their main business, often a side hussle!
Constant innovation, with real IP
Two issued US patents
Follower, no IP, copied Nalpeiron years later
Choosing the right software licensing platform is a critical decision that impacts not just your product security, but also your operational agility, customer satisfaction, and long-term growth. While Wibu’s CodeMeter platform has built a reputation for robust copy protection through hardware dongles, many modern software companies have moved to support a wider range of platforms, transitioning away from dongle-based licensing to embrace cloud-first, flexible solutions like Zentitle2.
Here’s why.
Wibu CodeMeter is fundamentally a hardware dongle security business, built around technology that dates back to the 1980s. CodeMeter dongles (CmDongles) offer strong physical security, but this approach comes with significant operational drawbacks. Additionally, dongles lack the resilience needed to protect against evolving cyber threats and software piracy:
“Customers have switched to us to save $100,000s in license, service and support costs. The CodeMeter platform and dongles are based on an older technology stack that requires many manual processes, and is less agile and automated than Zentitle2. Customers complain of slow response times, older technology (dongles), and a costly support burden.”
Dongles are simply out of step with the needs of today's software businesses:
Zentitle2 was designed from the ground up as a cloud-based licensing and monetization platform. It eliminates the need for physical dongles, offering:
Discover more about Zentitle2's software protection solutions and how our technology safeguards your applications.
“For any large software company that prizes the value of what they are making, Nalpeiron is the best way of ensuring the security of their software – and for a large company, that’s really important. We’ve come a long way from our dongle days. With Nalpeiron, we can finally stop stressing over licensing issues and focus on what we do best: building great software.”
David O’Neal, Product Line Director at New River Kinematics
Dongles may have once been the gold standard for software protection, but they are increasingly a barrier to growth, flexibility, and customer satisfaction. Zentitle2 offers a modern, cloud-first approach that empowers both software companies and their customers-eliminating the hassles, risks, and costs of hardware-based licensing.
For businesses focused on innovation and operational excellence, the future is clear: it's time to leave dongles behind.
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Adaptable and powerful. 1000s of top software companies rely on Nalpeiron to deliver a solution that meets all their requirements.
License Models
Price and package using any licensing model, including subscriptions and usage based. No ongoing engineering required.
Multi-Platform
SaaS, Windows, Mac and Linux, ARM, Android and Embedded Linux. Ship to multiple platforms faster and with less engineering effort.
Online & Offline
End-users can activate online or offline. Nalpeiron Growth Platform is a powerful hosted platform with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Dark Sites & VMs
License software in dark sites and offline customer environments, and prevent license abuse from duplicated Virtual Machines (VMs).
Sales Teams
Sales teams are armed with customer usage knowledge, signposting them to who to speak to and when in order to win deals.
Customer Success
Customer Success teams get simple super-early churn-risk warnings needed to guarantee better renewal rates, with no learning curve.
Revenue Opportunities
New revenue opportunities are uncovered automatically, all customer accounts are auto-scanned to reveal new pre-qualified expansion deals.
Insights & Alerts
Actionable insights and alerts enable revenue-facing teams to win more new business. Keep and expand customer accounts.
Trial Conversions
Convert more trials. Sales Teams know exactly when/why/who to contact to to close business. An unfair advantage for B2B SaaS sales.
Usage Analytics
Prospect and customer usage analytics are no longer a black box. Sales and CS have the full picture to engage with customers and get results.
Best Experience
End-users get a smooth, fast and hassle free experience. Support tickets lowered by up to 60%. Drive up customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Optimized for SaaS
Deliver more revenue across the whole product lifecycle. Remove engineering dependencies. Gain, retain, & grow your SaaS customers.
"I have used Nalpeiron for about 10 years and it is definitely the best licensing I have worked with in my support career.
I have worked with around 10 different licensing platforms and used many others with the products I purchased.
None have been as reliable, easy to use and implement for support and customers alike."
Kelly Bishop
Technical Support
"Fantastic flexibility is key in how we license our software and features in order to provide a smooth experience for our end users.
Nalpeiron delivered on this and more. Enough tools to provide us with what we need to integrate with our existing business systems.
EUP is easy to set up giving our users more control over managing and distributing our licenses."
Mark Senior
Sales Director
"Nalpeiron overall does a great job in getting a license solution to customers. The tool has plenty of features to match business requirements.
Maintaining an in-house solution would be expensive and time consuming.
Nalpeiron provides a service where you do not need to worry about this and focus on your business."
Chris Ang
CEO
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Scalability to match your growth
1000s of companies use Nalpeiron to maximize the revenues from their SaaS, software and hardware with many going from startup to IPO on our platform
20 Years+
Track Record
$1B+
Revenues Protected
300M+
Transactions / Month
99.9%+
Uptime SLA for 10 Years+
• Zentitle2 is built from the ground up as a cloud-native platform, leveraging high-availability docker-based architecture and Kubernetes for seamless scaling and robust performance. Its ‘TurboScaling’ feature automatically adjusts infrastructure to maintain service quality as your user base grows, making it ideal for SaaS, cloud, and enterprise deployments.
• CodeMeter, while offering some cloud options, is fundamentally rooted in hardware dongle technology and older, on-premise models. Its cloud features are limited and not core to its design, resulting in less agility and automation compared to Zentitle2
• Zentitle2 enables software vendors to easily adopt a wide range of licensing models-subscription, perpetual, usage-based, consumption-based, and more-allowing friction-free monetization and rapid adaptation to market needs.
• CodeMeter offers flexible license storage (dongle, file, cloud), but its primary strengths are in hardware-based protection and traditional license models, which may not align with the needs of modern SaaS or cloud-first businesses
• Zentitle2 provides robust, OpenAPI-based REST APIs for both licensing and management, supporting integration with CRM, ERP, e-commerce, and other business systems in a wide range of programming environments (C#, C++, Java, Python, Rust, Golang, etc.).
• CodeMeter also supports integration with backoffice systems and offers APIs, but its documentation and ease of integration are frequently cited as less comprehensive and more challenging, especially for modern cloud workflows
• Zentitle2 is praised for its user-friendly interface, reliability, and responsive, expert support team. It is designed to scale from startups to enterprises, with proven success supporting companies through rapid growth and IPOs.
• CodeMeter users often report challenges with technical documentation, manual processes, and slower support, particularly when dealing with dongle programming or complex deployments
• Zentitle2 eliminates the need for hardware dongles and manual license management, reducing operational complexity and support costs. Customers have reported saving significant amounts (sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars) after migrating from CodeMeter, due to Zentitle2’s automation, cloud-first approach, and lower support burden.
• CodeMeter’s reliance on hardware dongles and manual processes can increase costs and slow down deployment, especially for global or cloud-based software distribution.
Talk to a Licensing expert:
Book a quick 20-minute meeting to discuss your project, click here →
Book a Meeting
Increase your product revenues, sales and customer success performance.
CodeMeter is a comprehensive software protection and licensing solution developed by Wibu Systems, a leading provider of secure software licensing and protection technologies. The system is designed to protect software applications from unauthorized use, copying, or reverse engineering, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of protected software. With its flexible licensing models and seamless integration, CodeMeter provides a powerful solution for software developers and manufacturers to safeguard their revenue and data. Whether you’re looking to protect your software from piracy or ensure secure access to your applications, CodeMeter is the ideal choice.
CodeMeter is an all-in-one technology that combines software protection, licensing, and security in one comprehensive solution. It supports various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS, and provides a range of features such as license management, software activation, and secure software updates. With its ability to run on virtual machines and support for USB dongles, CodeMeter offers a flexible and secure way to protect your software and licenses. The system is widely used in industries such as engineering, aerospace, and industrial automation, where software security is critical.
When evaluating software licensing solutions, CodeMeter from Wibu-Systems often comes up as a "secure" dongle-based option. However, beneath the surface, CodeMeter's reliance on old dongle technology and its lack of real depth in modern software licensing create significant limitations for today's software vendors.
CodeMeter's core offering is the CmDongle-a physical device that stores software licenses on a smart card chip. While this approach has long been touted for its security, it's fundamentally rooted in legacy hardware thinking. Dongles require physical distribution, management, and replacement, introducing logistical headaches and slowing down customer onboarding and support.
Despite some updates, CodeMeter remains heavily focused on hardware-based licensing. The platform does allow for remote license updates, but the process is cumbersome: users must exchange context files with the vendor, who then generates a unique update file for that specific dongle. This manual, multi-step process is a far cry from the seamless, cloud-based automation available in modern licensing platforms.
Moreover, while CodeMeter touts encryption and secure storage, recent research has uncovered serious vulnerabilities in its implementation. Critical flaws in CodeMeter's encryption and communication protocols have exposed users to risks of license modification, injection of malicious code, and even remote code execution on operational technology (OT) networks (See source).
These issues highlight that, despite the hardware's reputation, the underlying technology stack lacks the depth and robustness needed for today's threat landscape.
User feedback consistently points to poor technical documentation and a steep learning curve for implementing CodeMeter's runtime and programming dongles. Many customers report spending excessive time deciphering how to use the system, often relying on unofficial support or engineer "cheat sheets" to get started. This lack of clarity and depth in documentation further limits CodeMeter's appeal for teams seeking rapid, reliable deployment.
While some users appreciate CodeMeter's flexibility in defining license models, many find the setup process complicated and the customer interface unintuitive. The reliance on physical dongles also means any lost or damaged device can disrupt business, and scaling up requires managing even more hardware.
Recent vulnerabilities have demonstrated that CodeMeter's security claims do not always translate to real-world safety. Six critical flaws were disclosed in 2023, including encryption weaknesses and the potential for attackers to modify licenses or execute code remotely. Although patches have been released, these incidents underscore the risks of depending on old technology stacks that struggle to keep pace with modern security demands.
Source: https://claroty.com/team82/research/wibu-codemeter-vulnerabilities