Features

One-line pitch

Licentra lets software vendors sell, license and meter their apps — directly or through resellers — without building a licensing system of their own.

Who it is for

Audience	What they get
Software vendors (App Owners)	Publish products and plans, issue and control licenses, see who uses what
Resellers and partners	Sell the vendor's apps to their own clients, with their own terms
Customer organizations	Self-serve trials and licenses, assign seats to their own people
Developers	A simple API and a ready-made Go client to check licenses from any app

What you get today

1. Flexible licensing models

• Self-hosted licensing: seats plus per-installation activation, with a signed license that keeps working offline.
• SaaS licensing: seats plus an API-call quota per billing period, checked online.
• Plans and features: build as many plans as you like, switch features on or off per plan, and attach numeric limits (for example "50 GB storage") that your app reads straight from the license.
• Per-license overrides: adjust features and limits for one customer without changing the plan.

2. Full license lifecycle

• Issue, renew, extend, upgrade, suspend, resume, revoke, each with a complete audit trail.
• Automatic status handling: licenses move from active to grace to expired on their own, and renewals pick up where they left off.
• Instant effect: every change re-signs the license, so apps never guess its state.

3. Free trials that convert

• Self-serve trials that start in one click, or approval-based trials you control.
• Abuse protection: one trial per customer, enforced by company domain and installation fingerprint.
• One-step conversion to a paid license. Seats and activations carry over untouched.
• Automatic reminders: trial started, ending soon, expired.

4. Grace periods that protect your customers (and your revenue)

• Expiry grace window: give customers a set number of days after expiry to renew.
• Choose the behavior: keep everything working with a renewal banner, drop to read-only, or define your own reduced mode.
• Reminders when grace starts, when it is about to end, and when the license finally expires.

5. Seat management with overflow

• Assign and release seats per user, by role, or by group.
• Overflow seats: when every seat is taken, a new user can keep working for a set time while the customer buys more. No hard stop at the busiest moment.
• Automatic promotion: the oldest overflow user moves to a regular seat as soon as one frees up or capacity grows.
• Role-based seat pools: for example 2 admins, 20 users, and unlimited free viewers.
• Alerts to the customer admin and the seller when seats run out.

6. Usage metering and quotas (SaaS)

• Per-license API quotas with monthly periods.
• Live quota headers on every response: limit, used, remaining and status.
• Warning at 80%, clear refusal at the limit with a retry time, and no double-counting of repeated requests.
• Fail-open design: if metering ever has a problem, your customers are not locked out.

7. Reseller and channel sales

• Invite resellers by link, authorize them per product, and set their discount.
• Ceilings you control: cap the trial length, trial seats, grace days and overflow they may offer.
• Reseller policies: each reseller can set terms for their own channel within your ceilings.
• Reseller plans: a reseller can publish its own plans next to yours, visible only to that reseller and you.
• Client license links: send one link; the customer signs in, accepts, and is registered, licensed and made admin in a single step. The app finds the new license by itself.
• Clear ownership: resellers manage only their own clients. You always see every license of your products.

8. Self-serve for customers

• Request a license from inside the app, and approve it in one click.
• Customers register themselves the first time they use your app.
• Work or personal accounts: customers sign in with a Microsoft work account or a personal account (Google or email).
• App Store listing: your app appears in the suite App Store with a "Start trial" button.

9. Built for developers

• Signed licenses (ES256) that apps verify offline using the product's public key.
• Simple REST API for activate, check-in, seats, usage and trials.
• Machine identities: API keys scoped per organization, and key rotation for the product signing key.
• Per-user validation: ask "may this person use the app right now?" and get seat type, role and overflow expiry back.

10. A portal for every role

One admin portal that adapts to who is signed in:

• Platform owner: all apps, all customers, platform health.
• Vendor: products, plans, policies, licenses, resellers, trials, usage.
• Reseller: their authorized apps and their own clients.
• Customer admin: their own licenses, seats and usage, either in the portal or inside the vendor's app.
• Searchable, sortable, filterable lists, CSV export, consistent status labels (Active, Trial, Grace, Overflow, Expired, Revoked), and typed confirmation before anything destructive.

11. Security and governance

• Role-based access with seven roles (platform owner, vendor admin/viewer, reseller admin/viewer, customer admin/viewer).
• Strict data separation: each party sees only its own slice. Resellers never see another reseller's clients.
• Full audit log of who did what and when, scoped by role.
• Keys kept in a managed vault, never in code or config files.
• Sign-in protection: rate limiting on every request and alerts on bursts of failed sign-ins.
• Compliance documentation pack: privacy policy, DPA template, DPIA, records of processing, incident response, access control, change management, risk register and more.
• Microsoft Entra sign-in with tenant-based identity.

How it differs

• Reseller channel built in: ceilings, invites, client links and reseller-owned plans.
• Overflow seats and grace modes: customers keep working while they renew or buy.
• Microsoft-native: tenant sign-in, group-based seats, vault-held keys.

Coming soon

• Payments and checkout: prices are display-only today; there is no billing or invoicing.
• Webhooks and payment/CRM integrations.
• Client SDKs for developers (none are offered publicly yet).
• Analytics dashboards with per-plan history, and cost projections with quota alerts.
• Floating (concurrent) licenses.
• End-user self-service portal and white-label hosted admin page.
• Softer quota overage (allow a margin or bill for it) instead of a hard block at 100%.
• Policy changes that update existing licenses automatically.
• Tamper-evident audit chain.

Short copy blocks

Headline: License, meter and sell your software, your way.

Sub-headline: Trials, seats, grace periods and resellers, handled. Ship your product, not a licensing system.

Three-bullet summary:

• Issue signed licenses for self-hosted and SaaS apps, online or offline.
• Turn trials into paying customers with grace periods and overflow seats that never stop work.
• Grow through resellers who onboard and license their own clients under your rules.