Software Licensing Models – Feature and Exclusive Software Licenses

Hello and welcome to this next article in our ongoing series on Software Licensing Types. If you are new to this series it would be worthwhile reading the previous articles which you can find on our blog. The first post has more detail about what it is that these articles are doing and you will also find our discussion in this article more useful if you have read those which come before it.

In this article we will look at two more software license types: Enable/Disable Product Features and Exclusive Licenses. As ever we will be looking at how these license types work in deployment, how they can be useful to your customers and what you need to know to help your customers make the right decision and finally we will be looking at some examples of use for these license types. All with the aim of leaving you better equipped to make the right decisions about which Software License is for which customer.

Enable/Disable Product Features

The enable/disable product feature license grants you, the vendor and the developer, greater control over the distribution of a certain software package. In essence, it enables you to sell different versions of the software package which most often increase in price with the more the user can access. In enables you to create any number of different versions of release for the software – with the developer’s consent – which means that you can reach a broader range of customers than if you only sold one version.

This software license type is very popular with some of the biggest software development companies such as Microsoft. When you purchase a new copy of Microsoft Windows you can choose from a range of options such as Basic, Home Premium or Professional all of which come at a price to suit different requirements and budgets.

If you are a vendor who sells primarily to businesses then it may be useful to consider whether you can adapt different pieces of the software which you distribute to suit different sizes of business and industries. It can also give you the potential to expand into the home-user market which can be very lucrative.

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Exclusive Licences

The use of exclusive licenses is very rare and it is unlikely that they will be a major part of your business. However, that does not mean that you should not be aware of them, as they can be very valuable to your business due to their nature. In essence, an exclusive license means that only one licensee is granted access to the software at any one time.

The exclusive license does not need to run indefinitely and it can be a lucrative source of income to create an exclusive license which requires a renewal after a given period of time (monthly, quarterly, and annually). This means that if you have specific pieces of software that has been developed for use by one of your customers you can continue to make a profit long after it was initially deployed and keep your customers loyal.

Although this may seem like the rarest of all software licenses, it can actually be one of the most beneficial to you.

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