Building blocks
Monetizing your software is mostly about assembling a few pieces in the right order. You describe what you sell, price it, package it, grant it to a customer, let them activate it, and meter what they use. Each step builds on the one before.
The pieces
Section titled “The pieces”| Building block | What it is |
|---|---|
| Products & versions | The thing you license — identified by a code and a version. |
| Features & the feature catalog | The capabilities a product offers, defined once and reused. |
| Plans & plan sets | Tiered packages that set values and limits for a product’s features. |
| Bundles | A named offering — a template, a plan set and feature choices, packaged. |
| Entitlements & templates | The grant: what a customer may use, and how. |
| Metering, quotas & credits | How consumption is counted, capped and priced. |
| Activation & sessions | Turning an entitlement into a running license on a device. |
One rule that explains a lot
Section titled “One rule that explains a lot”When a customer is granted an entitlement, its features are snapshotted — copied from the product as it is at that moment — and activating a license snapshots again into the session. So a license stays locked to what the product looked like when it was granted and activated; later edits don’t silently change it. See entitlements for why.