I've been looking for solutions that provide a couple of types of protection and dotfuscator has been what I've landed on each time I look. Specifically, I like:
Now, I know that there's lots of alternatives to the first, some of which are free, but are there alternatives to the others? It's not that I don't want to pay the cost of dotfuscator suite, but I want to be informed before I write the cheque.
Use 'Phoenix Protector' obfuscator found here on ntcore.com created by Daniel Pistelli. It does work reasonably well and its free...
As an alternative, you can try the CryptoLicensing + Crypto Obfuscator package which will get you all that you want:
Usage analytics - CryptoLicensing provides ability to notify the license service whenever the license is validated (typically app start-up). You can mine these notification entries to determine usage stats.
Tamper detection/notification - Both Crypto Obfuscator and CryptoLicensing has tamper detection features.
Shelf-life enforcement - I am assuming this means nothing more than time limited licenses? If so, CryptoLicensing allows this using various parameters - max usage days, max unique usage days, max executions, absolute date of expiration, max run-time, max cumulative run-time.
There's a very good alternative with bitHeltmet. It provides code obfuscation with very interesting features.