Homegrown Licensing: Reasons to Rethink
Introduction
Years ago, building your own licensing system looked like a good idea. After all, you’re a software company. Your development team stepped up and said, “we’ve got this.” It looked like a cost effective approach to create exactly what you needed.
But times have changed. A modern software licensing solution built on cloud technology opens up all sorts of doors to increase revenue, make life easier for your customers and reduce support calls.
A cloud architecture changes how licensing works, simplifying life for your team and customers.
Painful physical file delivery and installation goes away because information flows both ways between the cloud and the end customer device
Licensing Strategy and Implementation
When things change, the cloud maintains accuracy without manual intervention
It’s a completely different customer experience. Rights are up and running fast, even for trials not requiring a license.
Using the latest licensing technology, like Nalpeiron’s Zentitle, removes the limitations of older solutions and empowers your organization to say “yes.” You’ll be able to:
→Conclusion
Go Account Based— Have you admired the simple “login and use” experience provided by Adobe, Microsoft, Dropbox, Evernote, Google and iCloud? You can do it — SaaS, modern and pain free -with an Account Based Licensing model. It only requires an email address and password. For your customers, the need to remember a complicated license goes away. And that also means less calls for your support team. Use Consumption Licensing— It’s a popular request from today’s end users. Can we pay for what we use or set up pre-payment with usage limits? When you have the power to meet this customer need with full insight into usage, you create a valuable business advantage. Choose your model— To grow, you need flexibility. In fact, it’s an expectation from clients. Is your homegrown system holding you back? Zentitle supports 17 licensing models, including perpetual, subscription based, concurrent, floating feature, hardware, multi-platform and more. Learn more. Change the experience with the 10 second rule— Licensing of applications and devices should be drop-dead easy and the newest solutions help you build that experience. In fact, Zentitle is built around an important premise. If it takes an end customer more than 10 seconds to complete a software licensing task, it’s being done wrong. New architecture enables you to stop being a slave to how the system works and empowers you to put customers first. Use precious resources for bigger impact— In addition to opening up new opportunities for your company, a modern licensing solution helps you free up resources and move faster.
Where is your engineering time best spent?Will more flexible licensing get products to market faster? How much work is involved when environments change?How extensive is the support needed with integrating with back office systems, e-commerce, ERP and CRM?
Even if you’re nodding your head at all the points above, there may still be one lingering question on your mind. OMG — putting in a new licensing system would be incredibly complicated! The good news is it is easier than you think when you use Zentitle.
About the Author
Jon Gillespie-Brown is the Founder and CEO of Nalpeiron, a leader in cloud-based software licensing, entitlement management, software monetization, and analytics. With over 20 years of expertise, he works with enterprise B2B SaaS and IoT companies to optimize revenue models, accelerate go-to-market strategies, and scale with confidence. Jon is recognized as an authority in software licensing, software monetization, and software analytics, holds two issued U.S. patents, and is the author of five books. He also serves as a strategic guide to customers, helping them navigate and capitalize on the once-in-a-generation shift driven by AI, redefining how software is built, delivered, and monetized. For over 20 years, Jon has been a Professor at University of Colorado Boulder, a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, and an Entrepreneur in Residence at London Business School.
Nalpeiron: A Long-Term Partner for the AI Era
At Nalpeiron, we go beyond technology — we act as a strategic partner in licensing, monetization, and growth. For over twenty years, enterprise and IoT companies have trusted us to guide and evolve their business models.
As AI shifts software from seats to usage, outcomes, and agent-driven activity, legacy approaches fall short. Nalpeiron enables this transition through entitlements as the control plane — a centralized system of record across SaaS, on-prem, IoT, and offline environments.
From strategy to execution, we help companies adapt faster, launch new models, and stay in control — making Nalpeiron a partner for the AI-driven future of software monetization.
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