Licenz vs Build Your Own
Licensing looks simple until you build it. Here's what you're really signing up for.
The iceberg of "simple" licensing
What seems like a weekend project often becomes months of engineering
What you think you'll build
- - Generate license keys
- - Validate keys in your app
- - Store licenses in a database
- - Simple admin dashboard
Estimated time: 1-2 weeks
What you actually build
- - Cryptographic key signing (RSA? Ed25519?)
- - Offline validation without server calls
- - Clock tampering protection
- - Hardware fingerprinting across OSes
- - VM/container detection
- - Floating license server
- - License migration tools
- - Customer self-service portal
- - API for your payment provider
- - Webhook handling for subscriptions
- - Grace periods for expired licenses
- - Admin dashboard with analytics
Actual time: 3-6 months
The true cost of DIY licensing
| Cost Factor | Licenz | Build Your Own |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Development | ||
| Time to First License | 10 minutes | 3-6 months |
| Engineering Hours | 2-4 hours | 500-1000+ hours |
| Dev Cost (at $150/hr) | $300-600 | $75k-$150k |
| Ongoing Maintenance | ||
| Monthly Service Cost | $49-199/month | $0 (hosting costs) |
| Monthly Engineering Time | 0 hours | 4-20+ hours |
| Security Updates | Automatic | Your responsibility |
| Bug Fixes | Our team | Your team |
| Features You'll Need Later | ||
| Offline Validation | +40 hours to add | |
| Hardware Binding | +60 hours to add | |
| Floating Licenses | +80 hours to add | |
| Air-Gap Support | +100 hours to add | |
Total DIY cost over 3 years: $100k-$300k+
vs Licenz: $1,800-$7,200
The problems you don't know you have
Here's what bites most teams 6 months into their DIY licensing project
Clock Tampering
Users set their system clock back to extend trials. Your simple date check is easily bypassed. Real solutions require secure time sources and monotonic clocks.
VM Cloning
Users clone VMs with valid licenses. Your hardware ID stays the same. Now one license becomes infinite. Proper fingerprinting is surprisingly hard.
Offline Sync
Enterprise customer wants to revoke a license, but the machine is offline. How do you handle this? Grace periods? Cached revocations? It gets complex fast.
Cryptographic Pitfalls
You use RSA but pick weak key sizes. Or implement HMAC wrong. Or embed private keys in your binary. Security auditors will find these immediately.
License Migration
Customer gets a new computer. Old license is bound to old hardware. Now you need a migration flow, reset limits, and support processes.
Subscription Sync
Stripe says the subscription renewed. Your licensing system says it expired. Now customers are locked out. Webhook handling is tricky at scale.
What you get with Licenz
Years of licensing expertise, ready to use today
Battle-Tested Security
Ed25519 signatures, secure hardware fingerprinting, time-tampering protection built by security engineers.
True Offline Support
Cryptographically signed licenses that work forever without server calls. Perfect for air-gapped environments.
2MB Rust Binary
Open source client library. Memory-safe, no dependencies, works on any platform without installation headaches.
Floating Licenses
Concurrent seat management out of the box. No need to build complex lease management yourself.
REST API + Webhooks
Full API for automation, webhooks for payment integration, SDKs for popular languages.
Dedicated Support
Real humans who understand licensing. No generic support tickets. We help you ship.
"We spent 4 months building our own licensing system. Then an enterprise customer asked for floating licenses and offline support. We scrapped everything and switched to Licenz. Should have done it from day one."
Focus on your product, not licensing
Ship in 10 minutes instead of 6 months.