I see some services out there offer customers more than one solution which is great. The tricky part is the way these solutions are monetized. You can benefit from such multi-solution approaches until a time when you want to move to another service. At that point, trouble is on the horizon and the only way to stay clear from it is to be careful about bonus solutions in the first place. 

Bonus Solutions

When you need a basic service for your business, you should be free to choose another, anytime you feel the need to. That’s important for anyone. But what if you use a service that offers many solutions and yet payment plans are all based on one solution? In other words, all the other solutions are bonuses.

Bonuses are always attractive and we’re always happy to see them. But the truth is that a bonus is a bonus. It isn’t the center of your relationship with the service itself.

License Manager

License managers are a crucial part of the software business. They’re fundamentally connected to the monetization stage of sales. When you sell software, you get the money via a payment processor. Next, you deposit a license to your customer. This way, your happy customer uses your software and you get paid. But what if your payment processor is also serving as a license manager? 

Main Solution and Bonus Solutions

Let’s think about it. There is a service offering you two different solutions. Payment processor and license manager. Your payment plan simply requires commission from your sales and gives you both payment processor and license manager solutions in return. In fact, since you’re only giving commission for your sales, you’re paying only for the payment processor solution here. Thus, you’re faced with the above scenario: you have the main solution -the payment processor- and a bonus -the license manager- under one payment plan.

Can I Use Only the License Manager?

The question is what if you want to change your payment processor? What if you find better rates and features elsewhere? What if this new payment processor is better for your business? Will you also need to change your license manager? Will you need to find another license manager? Will you move all your licenses to a new license manager?  If that’s the case and you have to change both services, this could be a nightmare for you. Because license managers are a basic need for software business just like payment processors. 

Conclusion

If the bonus solution is not a basic element for your business, enjoy it! However, if your business requires a fundamental solution, don’t use a bonus solution for it. It’s always good to be able to take care of your future needs and to change any service easily when the need arises.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

Photo by Ozan Safak on Unsplash