When building your own system fits
Build when your rules are narrow, you need unusual control and your team can maintain the system for the life of the software. Assign an owner for signing keys, client upgrades, recovery and support. Include future operating work in the decision, even if the first activation endpoint looks simple.
When an existing licensing service fits
Consider a service when you need several SDK languages, device management, offline activation or floating seats. Verify the supported platforms, integration boundaries, data export and operating costs. A service still requires your application to protect each business operation and your team to own integration and customer support.
Responsibilities to budget for
Account for issuance, signature verification, device identity, offline expiry, key rotation, revocation, usage recovery and device transfers. Define what users see when a request fails. Keep management secrets on the server, and plan backups, monitoring and recovery rather than treating license validation as the whole system.
Estimate costs using your own assumptions
Choose one comparison period and one currency for both options. Convert work hours multiplied by your hourly cost into amounts for initial integration and ongoing maintenance; then enter infrastructure, service and support costs for the same period. The table adds your estimates locally. It is a planning tool, not a market price estimate.
| Cost item | Build | Use a service |
|---|---|---|
| Initial integration | ||
| Ongoing maintenance | ||
| Infrastructure | ||
| Service fees | ||
| Customer support | ||
| ∑ |
Validate the rules before committing
Test first activation, restart, offline expiry, a second device, device transfer and a denied feature. For floating seats, test a full pool and crash recovery; for usage limits, test retries without duplicate consumption. Record the expected and observed result of each check using the intended application and deployment environment.
Evaluate Licentivo against those requirements
Use the SDK guides to evaluate device binding, signed offline grants, floating leases and feature checks. Review pricing for workspace device and API quotas. For a branded store, evaluate Launch separately: its MIT license covers the store source, while licensing services and external payment services retain their own terms and costs.