How to do "1 year subscription" [closed]

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I'm looking to sell my program I've been working on via year long subscriptions. How do you suggest I do this? Obviously checking DateTime.Now won't work since a user could change his computer time. I thought about having an encrypted number in my program files that counts down from 360 to 0, but if a user simply re-pasted their program files every so often, the timer would never run down.

What do you guys think I should do? I have access to a website and server, I just don't know much about web development besides basic HTML. Would having the program check with a web service to see if the key has expired be the best way? The only thing is that if a user didn't have internet, that would have problems.

Let me know what you guys think :D

Thanks

Answer 1

Every protection can be cracked some more easily that others. Coincidently, those that harder to crack are also most inconvenient for end users and sometimes too expensive. For example you can sell hardware dongle with your subscription.

What many companies settle for is providing a year of "free" updates. Your program evolves as you add new features but these are not available for those whose subscription time has ended. They will be able to use older versions eternally though.

Usually this is a good enough incentive to purchase. But have no doubt, if you program ever becomes even relatively widespread, it WILL BE cracked. That's the reality.