Your Software Deserves a Licensing System You Can Trust
Shipping a closed-source application is only step one — monetizing it is the hard part:
- A customer buys a license code — how do you validate it?
- You sell annual subscriptions — how do you enforce expiry?
- License codes get shared, brute-forced, farmed — how do you stop that?
- Licensing SaaS platforms charge thousands per year and hold your customer data?
License Server is a multi-app license code system built to solve exactly these problems: it deploys to your own Cloudflare account, runs at zero cost, keeps every byte of data in your hands, and is purpose-built for desktop software sales.
It Runs Real Products Today
This is not a demo project. It currently powers license validation and activation for multiple commercial applications developed by the author (a suite of live-streaming automation tools), handling real customer traffic every day — proven in production over the long term.
Core Capabilities
One System, Every App
Manage licenses for all your applications in one place, with per-app isolation. Better yet, issue cross-app license codes natively — “buy A, get B free”, bundle deals and package pricing are built right in.
Two Licensing Models, Covering Every Sales Pattern
- Count-based: 1/5/10/50/100 uses or a custom count — ideal for pay-per-use tools; no device binding, expires automatically when the count runs out
- Time-based: custom duration or lifetime, one machine per code, auto-expiry — ideal for annual subscriptions
Both models coexist in the same system. Sell however you want.
Flexible Adjustments: A Lifesaver for Customer Support
A customer says “I bought a 30-day plan and want to upgrade to lifetime” or “I bought 10 uses — could you gift me one more”? Adjust it right in the admin panel — add or reduce uses, extend or shorten durations — any issued license is editable, no voided orders, no re-issues. In real support scenarios this detail is priceless.
In-App Announcements: Reach Users Without a Release
Push announcements per app; clients fetch them automatically. Emergency maintenance, version updates, promotions — visible the next time users launch your software, no update check required.
Security Built Into the System Layer
- Response signing: every response carries an HMAC-SHA256 signature the client verifies — packet tampering and forged “activated” responses simply stop working
- Three-tier rate limiting: per-IP, per-code and per-activation-endpoint limits automatically block brute-force guessing and mass activation abuse
- Device binding: time-based licenses are one-machine-per-code, with unbind/reset support
Optimized for China Network Conditions
Purpose-tuned for mainland China: CORS preflight caching, optimized-IP acceleration and client-side multi-endpoint failover push validation latency down to 50-80ms. If one domain gets polluted, the client fails over automatically — paying users never get hurt by network issues.
Cost Comparison: Zero Cost Isn’t a Slogan
| Licensing SaaS | Self-hosted Server | License Server | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Thousands per year | Server + ops, burning money monthly | $0 (Cloudflare free tier) |
| Requests | Capped by plan | Unlimited | 100k/day — plenty for validation |
| Data ownership | Vendor’s | Yours | Yours |
| DB / ops | Managed | You maintain it | Fully managed (D1) |
For most indie developers, a lifetime of license validation won’t even dent the free quota. From day one, the cost of your licensing infrastructure is zero.
Who Is It For
- Indie developers selling Windows desktop tools via license codes
- Small teams that need pay-per-use or subscription billing
- Anyone who won’t hand license data to a third-party SaaS — and doesn’t want to run a server either
No ops experience required: everything is managed infrastructure, and after the initial setup it practically maintains itself.
Dead Simple to Deploy
The system runs on Cloudflare’s global edge network — no servers to buy, no databases to configure, no certificates to manage. After the one-time setup, the only thing left to do is generate license codes in the admin panel and sell.
The admin panel covers software management, announcements, and the full license lifecycle — generate, query, adjust, revoke — all in one place.
If you have similar self-hosting needs, feel free to reach out.
