Find the best License Management Software

Whether you run a startup or a rapidly growing small business, you must have purchased software tools to get help with daily business operations. However, managing licenses for all these tools can be a complex process. Also, manually checking compliance with vendor agreements can be exhausting for your IT team.

In such situations, you can use license management software to track your license inventory, record application usage, and ensure compliance with end-user agreements. A license management tool also assists with software audits and license activation or deactivation.

This guide provides all the information you need to choose the right license management software for your business.

Here’s what we'll cover:

• What is license management software?

• Common features of license management software

• Benefits of license management software

• How much does license management software cost?

• Key considerations when purchasing license management software

What is license management software?

License management software is a type of asset management software that helps businesses document and manage software licenses to ensure compliance with software usage terms and conditions. It registers the various software applications used by your business and manages the license inventory by tracking the usage and license validity of products in your software stack.

License management solutions offer complete visibility into company-wide software usage. They automatically track license expiration and renewal dates to help your business ensure license compliance and avoid penalties. They can be purchased as stand-alone tools or as part of software asset management (SAM) suites.

Common features of license management software

• Compliance management: Tracks and manages nonadherence to usage terms and policies in a software product.

• Automated discovery: Automatically identifies and registers the different types of software applications used across departments, and tracks their usage and license models.

• License tracking and license inventory: Maintains a centralized license dashboard and inventory with complete information on the number of active and unused licenses, software license agreement terms, expiry and renewal dates, and license versions.

• License entitlement management: Manages the rights to use licensed software across departments. Helps assign, revoke, and reallocate license entitlements based on the needs of various users or teams.

• Alerts/notifications: Sends alerts and in-app notifications related to license renewal, expiration, and app upgrades within the system.

Benefits of license management software

• Automates software asset management: With license management software, your IT team will no longer have to manually track license deployments and usage. The software automatically tracks these metrics and maintains a centralized license inventory.

• Standardizes the software subscription process: License management software helps your business standardize the software subscription process by automating the tracking, monitoring, and enforcement of software licenses. It also helps manage software updates and upgrades and lets you revoke or reassign licenses as needed. This allows you to effectively manage software subscriptions and ensure compliance with license agreements.

• Reduces overall software subscription cost: A license manager allows you to identify underutilized or unused software licenses and reduce your subscription to them, thereby helping save costs. The tool also tracks software usage to help you decide which license model offers a better return on investment (ROI).

• Prevents noncompliance issues: The end-user license agreement (EULA) you sign with a software vendor defines how you can use a software application and its license model, your liabilities, and the data security policies you must follow. License manager tools conduct software audits to track if your organization is adhering to the terms stated in the EULA and helps avoid noncompliance penalties.

How much does license management software cost?

Most license management software products are priced on a “per month” basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $24 - 39

• $40 - $130

• $131+

The above list includes pricing for the base plans of most software license management tools. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features such as spend management, license audits, and discreet license recovery.

Key considerations when purchasing license management software

• Compare stand-alone software versus software suites. You can buy either a stand-alone software license management tool or a SAM suite with license management functionality. Getting a software suite will be costlier, but it’ll provide additional capabilities such as depreciation management, software auditing, and lifecycle management.

• Assess on-premise versus cloud solutions. Cloud-based software license management solutions are easy to set up, have low operating costs, and offer high scalability, but your data is stored in third-party servers. On-premise solutions, on the other hand, offer better security as data is stored in your proprietary servers. These solutions are also more customizable than cloud-based tools, but they have higher upfront and operating costs. Make the right choice based on your budget and deployment preferences.

• Check for software license tracking limitations. Some software license management solutions have a limit on the number of licenses you can track and offer additional tracking only at an additional cost. Determine the number of software licenses your business manages, and buy a subscription accordingly.

Sources

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s license management software directory, sorted by the number of reviews. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in Software Advice’s directory that offer them.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on Jan. 7, 2023. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.