Sell Software License Keys and Digital Products Online

Are you looking for ways to sell your software or digital products online? I’m sure you have come across several solutions and platforms, but there are problems with each platform, such as:

1. Limited to no control over payment processing
2. Limited customer insights, such as where the traffic came from etc.
3. High monthly fees
4. High transaction fees
5. Tax is added to products when it wouldn’t be needed if you sold it directly to your customer.

Why You Should Use Your Own System to Sell Software License Codes Online

When you use a platform like FastSpring to sell software to your customers world-wide, they offer an automated system that will dispense license code and email the customer the invoice and license code, along with a customizable email where you could add the download link, for example. However, the above issues may sooner or later become a problem for you.

A Horror Story to Remember

For example, after being very long with FastSpring, one day a very good reseller of ours contacted us, he’s no longer receiving the license codes after having placed multiple high-ticket purchases through FastSpring. We had absolutely no trace of their purchases in the FastSpring system. What’s much worse, FastSpring also couldn’t find the transactions.

After almost two weeks of back and forth with the FastSpring support, which by the way doesn’t answer phone calls, only email, we decided to tell the customer to dispute the charges with their bank. Imagine, a payment processing company that is in business for 15 years lost our customer’s money and was not able to refund it. Luckily they used a credit card because if the customer had used a debit card or bank account to purchase from FastSpring, they would have had a very hard time getting their money back. And FastSpring showed absolutely no interest in doing anything about it. We strongly suspected they were trying to cover up a major bug in their payment system and didn’t want to admit it. FastSpring: if you happen to read this, shame on you. This is the story could have been titled “how to lose a customer”.

Thus, after this bad experience and having worked in the payment processing industry ourselves some time back, we decided to design:

The Better Solution to Securely Sell Software Licenses Online

After this really bad experience with FastSpring, we decided to build our own system, and it’s now for sale:

1. No monthly fees
2. No additional transaction fees
3. Our solution is a one time purchase with open source code.
4. Sell Software License Keys and Digital Products Online
5. Sell your own software online, your own software license codes or digital products, using your own web server.
6. Your customer and you both receive an automatic email when the purchase is complete, or if it failed
7. The software uses tracking and extensive logging to prevent fraud and track the payment process correctly
8. If anything fails during a purchase, the logs on the server contain all the information you need. Plus you can log on to Stripe and see additional details there about each transaction.
9. The code handles multiple currencies, tax, and dispenses licenses. It emails an HTML based invoice with the license codes.
10. The system is open source, written in C# for .Net Core.
11. It runs on IIS but since it’s .NET Core it should work without it and on other platforms.
12. The payment processor used is Stripe.
    1. Stripe does not charge any monthly fees, only a very low transaction fee at around 2.9%, see Stripe for details.
    2. You will need to set up your own Stripe account and you will get paid directly by Stripe
13. Emails are sent via SMTP. You will need an email service that supports SMTP, or you could change the code to use a different email mechanism.
14. The code handles tiered pricing for multiple products in multiple currencies.
15. The code handles Partner ID codes, or coupon codes for automatic discounts.
16. Terms: You may change the source code as needed to suit your unique needs but you can’t resell or publicize the source code.

Summary

So to summarize, our solution is a once-off purchase, you get the source code and can modify it to suit your sale process. Our solution uses Stripe and you will need to set up your own Stripe account. See it in action: Check out the Buy page for DriveMaker Plus. (Note: PayPal integration as shown on that page is not included in the source code) The page allows you to change currency, quantity, and enter a partner code. It refreshes the price and forwards you to Stripe to complete the checkout. By using Stripe’s checkout system, you automatically maintain compliance with global regulations. Stripe Checkout is a very secure system and the component on your server receives and logs all payment-related notifications during the process.

Save Money and Stay in Full Control

The great benefits of our solution are:

1. Full control: Every step your customer makes in the payment process is logged and traced. If you ever need to trace a payment, you will find all the details you need.
2. Save a lot of money in the long-term: You no longer have to pay 6% or more for payment processing. Stripe only charges 2.9%
3. Sales tax: It’s up to you to determine when and how you need to add sales tax. Stripe has features to help you with the collection of sales tax. If you are a small company, it’s likely you don’t have to pay sales tax to other states or countries, as long as the annual sales total is below certain limits. For example, if you operate as a E.U. based company, you generally don’t have to collect U.S. state sales tax. Because the payment provider companies have very high sales volumes and also reside in multiple states and countries, they need to collect sales tax. Technically they sell to the customer, not you. However, smaller companies might not reach the threshold needed to pay tax in specific states or countries. Hence, you can offer your customers in certain areas a better deal because they won’t be charged sales tax.
4. Design Freedom: Dispense licenses as needed, design checkout pages invoices as you wish with your own code or use our template. Any complicated pricing scheme can be programmed as needed.
5. Get your money fast: Stripe pays you automatically the next day, not every two weeks or monthly as some other services.
6. Open Source: You may change the code as needed but are not authorized to resell it.
7. Insights: Since the store runs on your own server, the web traffic to the store may be analyzed for marketing purposes.

Pricing: USD $299.00, a one-time purchase

Feel free to contact me for more details at savas at fastneuron dot com.