ImageGear .NET v24.13 - Updated
Metered Licensing
User Guide > Licensing and Distributing > Runtime Licensing > Metered Licensing

Metered Licensing is a new runtime licensing option for ImageGear .NET (starting with ImageGear .NET v24.13). Instead of purchasing a traditional runtime license for a single machine, you can purchase a number of transactions that represent a fixed number of actions (API calls to metered features).

When you purchase metered licensing, you will receive a license key string that you will need to embed in your application. This license key will be validated via the internet automatically when your application is initialized.

This licensing model allows you to scale your application distribution and only pay for what you’re actually using. When using a metered license, multiple separate machines can use the same license key, and they will all share a common pool of available transactions.

For uninterrupted service, you must ensure that your account balance retains enough transactions at all times.

This topic provides the following information:

Requirements

Using a metered license requires the following on the target system:

Overview

When you purchase a metered license, your Accusoft customer account will have an associated number of transactions available. This transaction balance is reduced automatically when your application successfully calls certain ImageGear APIs. See Metered Features.

When using a metered license, your application must maintain an always-on internet connection. This connection is required any time your application makes metered ImageGear API calls.

License initialization and ImageGear .NET metered features will fail if communication with the cloud service cannot be established or maintained.
Likewise, ImageGear .NET metered features will fail if there are no available transactions remaining.

Acquiring a Metered License

Contact sales to purchase a metered license. Once the purchase is complete, you’ll be able to sign into the Accusoft Customer Portal to access your Solution Name, Solution Key, and License Key. Also contact sales to purchase additional transactions for your application, when required.

Licensing API

Using a metered license with your application works just like using an OEM runtime license.

Use the information available in your Accusoft Customer Portal to provide values for the ImGearLicense.SetSolutionName, ImGearLicense.SetSolutionKey, and ImGearLicense.SetLicenseKey method calls, then recompile your application.

Solution Name

The solution name is assigned by Accusoft to your company or organization when you purchase the license. Set it with the ImGearLicense.SetSolutionName method.

Solution Key

The solution key is a set of four numbers assigned by Accusoft when you purchase the license. Set it with the ImGearLicense.SetSolutionKey method.

License Key

The license key is a unique identifier of the customer, product, version, edition, and platforms enabled. Set it with the ImGearLicense.SetLicenseKey method.

Example

To license the product for distribution, you must call the above methods using the license information that was provided with your purchase. These calls can execute at any time prior to invoking ImageGear .NET features, but ideally they should execute during initialization.

C#
Copy Code
ImGearLicense.SetSolutionName("YourSolutionName");
ImGearLicense.SetSolutionKey(12345, 12345, 12345, 12345);
ImGearLicense.SetLicenseKey("2.0.ALicenseKeyStringContactAccusoftSalesForMoreInformation...");

Metered Features

When using a metered license, certain features are metered, i.e., using those features will consume transactions. These metered features are detailed below:

Load Operations

When loading an ImGearPage or ImGearDocument, a transaction will be consumed for each page loaded. This occurs any time the following methods are called:

Save Operations

When saving or exporting an ImGearPage or ImGearDocument, a transaction will be consumed for each page saved. This occurs any time the following methods are called:

OCR Operations

When performing optical character recognition on an ImGearRecPage, one transaction will be consumed. This occurs any time the following method is called:

ImageGear .NET web service features, such as ImageGearService.svc and HTML5Viewer cannot be used with a metered license key. However, these features can still be used during evaluation.