Unique, hassle free software licensing - pay if you can

When we decided to implement this unique licensing model last year we were worried that we were giving the store away – after all we had spent tremendous amount of time and energy developing those tools and now we were considering giving them away!

Almost every software company out there gives away some version of their software but usually the give away version is either a watered down version with severely limited functionality or a version loaded with annoying messages trying to get the user to pay for the full version.

Our approach however was fundamentally different. First, we “discovered” that not everyone gains the same amount of benefit from our software – while for some it pays off with a single use for some others it may take multiple times to get a return. Second, while for some a couple of hundred dollars for a useful piece of software is nothing, for some others it is indeed a big deal and it so happens that, most likely, the ones who would really think twice before spending any money on software are the ones who whose benefit would be relatively smaller. So, we decided that anyone, individual or company, for whom a couple of hundred dollars are indeed a big deal should not have to pay at all – only if and when they would reach a certain threshold then they would have to pay.

The challenge then became how to determine who should and should not pay for our software. Well, while that may not generally be a trivial task in our case it wasn’t very hard since our products are tightly related to SQL Server and we know that:

1. if you are using the free SQL Server Express then there is a high likelihood that you have not yet made it in the big league and you are counting every penny;
2. if the databases you work with, regardless of what edition of SQL Server you may be using, have a small number of objects in them (tables, views, stored procedures etc) then not only is that generally an indication of a small business but the benefit you gain from utilizing our tools is directly correlated with the size and complexity of the databases you work with.

So then the model became clear and here is what we did and continue to do:

1. everyone downloads a fully functional version of our software from our website – no hassle, no registration, no reminders, no limitations.
2. after 2 weeks have passed the software checks the edition of the SQL Server and if it is SQL Server Express then it simply continues to work without hassling the user in any way shape of form; If it finds that you are trying to compare and synchronize a database that is on another edition of SQL Server then it performs another simple check – it looks at the number of objects you have on the database and if those are below a certain limits then again it does not bother the user at all - in fact the user does not notice anything the product simply continues to work.
3. Only if the 2 weeks have passed AND it is a SQL Server edition other than SQL Server Express AND the number of objects in the database exceeds certain limits THEN we kindly remind the user that this edition of our software does not support comparing those databases. At this point we have established two things – first that in this user’s case our software will pay off for itself right away (in fact it has likely paid off already during the first two weeks) and second that this user can certainly afford it:)

So how has this model worked for us? We can only say that we are very glad we did it this way – the “A friend told me” is the second most frequent answer (google being first) to our “Where did you learn about us” question – now that is telling!

A few words about the tools discussed above: xSQL Object allows programmers and database administrators that work with SQL Server to compare the structures (schemas) of two databases, see where the differences are, generate the change script that synchronizes the structures and execute the script. It supports SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2000 and will soon support SQL Server 2008. All objects are supported – tables, views, stored procedures, user defined functions, users, permissions, roles, assemblies, service brokers, synonyms, assemblies etc. xSQL Data Compare provides for comparing and synchronizing the data in two SQL Server databases.