How to use NetLicensing with subscription management services
Question
I’m using PayPal Subscriptions to sell my product. How NetLicensing can improve my current license acquisition flow?
Answer
PayPal Subscriptions, as well as other Subscription Management Services (Paddle, Billwerk, Chargebee, Authorize.Net, 2checkout, Recurly, …) and eCommerce platforms (WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopify, …) are great tools to sell your digital products and services. These services offer a perfect customer eCommerce experience and cover standard shopping processes:
- shopping cart
- checkout
- payment methods
- billing & invoicing
- recurring payments
So, you can easily set up your products and sell them online.
Extended licensing flow with NetLicensing
The license enforcement, however, and instant verification of customers’ entitlements usually needs to be implemented on your side. This is especially true for more complex scenarios than simple recurring subscriptions, e.g.:
- customer acquired two “1-month” subscription licenses
- the trial period needs to be extended for your “best” leads or prospects
- additionally to the service subscription, a vendor using metered models, such as Floating, Pay-per-Use
- service usage quota or additional up-sell features need to be assigned to the customer
- … and the list of the different licensing strategies can go on
All these above concerns can be perfectly covered using NetLicensing services in addition to the standard license acquisition and renewal flow.
Digital fulfilment
In most of the eCommerce systems, a “digital fulfilment” step can be configured using custom webhook/IPN endpoint. NetLicensing can be hocked at that step and will be instantly notified on all or selected events in the eCommerce platforms.
Available events and their names differ from one system to another, however, notable events and corresponding NetLicensing action summarized below:
| Webhook event | NetLicensing action |
|---|---|
| Customer created | Create a new customer |
| Subscription created | Create and assign a license to the customer |
| Subscription renewed | Create and assign an additional license to the customer |
| Subscription cancelled | Deactivate customer’s license |
| Subscription updated | Update customer’s license |
| Invoice Overdue | Deactivate customer’s license |
Digital fulfilment process
Billing and subscription platforms are connected to NetLicensing through their webhooks and the NetLicensing REST API. See Integrations for the full overview, or Billing and Commerce Platforms for step-by-step guides per platform.
For FastSpring, start with the webhook guide.
Contribution
If your platform is not listed in Integrations, contact us or create licenses from your back end with the REST API.