http://www.mancosoftware.com/licensing/index.htm
Just wondering what your thoughts are on it, if it's relatively good for the 80$ charge. We realize stuff will still get cracked, but prevention from the masses is also good to consider.
Any input is appreciated.
Is the choice between some kind of enforcement and no enforcement, or are you looking for experience with that particular product?
Though I've never used Manco in particular, I've used other licensing options, and my only suggestion would be that if you decide to add licensing at all, you stick to the bare minimum - in this case, just key unlocking, or their basic package. When you start to add an activation web service, and then you don't let customers move their software from one PC to another, you start to inconvenience regular users who've already paid for your software, and that's never a good thing.
You're right that it will always be cracked anyway, and in the end, you have to do a cost benefit analysis to determine if adding licensing is really worthwhile. The formula looks like this:
If (Purchases from people who wouldn't have paid for the software if you didn't have licensing) - (Lost sales from people who are scared off or have problems and demand a refund because of your licensing) - $80 > 0
then add licensing. If it's not (i.e. sales/customers lost > additional purchases), then release it without enforcement, since you're better off that way (you can still release both a time-limited demo, as well as a special purchase-only download on your website)
It looks like they offer a 15-day trial for this product - if it works, it's worth the $80 to you as a developer, but only if it doesn't inconvenience your users at all. If you run into any problems during your trial, you can be sure they'll run into problems too, and it's not worth it.
PS: Eric Sink talks about this in his book.
We are using version 3.3 of this .net licensing product during half of year. I'm not sure how good is the low-price edition ($80). It seems that some features are disabled in it. We are using "Standard Edtion" and "Activation Web Service". This pair work good for us. It's quite stable and guys provide pretty good support. Manco Software announced new version some time ago. We are testing new features currently having in mind to upgrade.