API Transaction Policy and Examples

In addition to license activation and deactivation, there are many other ways for your software to communicate with SOLO Server Automation, which can help you better maintain control of your licensed software and even integrate with other systems. These calls/requests to our license server are called API Transactions and we charge per transaction.

What is an API Transaction?

All licensing client function calls or web service calls to SOLO Server Automation are considered API Transactions. The exception is activations, which are billed separately at a different per activation rate.

Examples of billable API Transactions include:

Validating or Refreshing a license with SOLO Server
Cloud-Controlled Network Floating Licensing calls (Open Session, Poll Session)
SOLO Server web services (not related to license activation)
Checking for an update of your software

All requests made to our servers to process license activation, license deactivation, and license transfer are NOT billable as API Transactions, as these are the core services covered by the activation fee.

Examples of non-billable API Transactions include:

Deactivating a license
Rejected activation attempts
Cloud-Controlled Network Floating Licensing (Close Session)

Note that product activations of Test Licenses are not charged an activation fee but would be counted as a billable API transaction.

What is the cost of API Transactions?

When using our hosted SOLO Server service, a set number of API Transactions are included each month. With our standard plans, this ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 per month. If you are on a legacy plan, we will include a number of API Transactions per month based on your plan.

The included amount of API Transactions is enough for most standard use cases, so you shouldn't expect to have any overages. If you do have overages, the rate is $1 per 1000 API Transactions.

In some cases, such as when using our Cloud-Controlled Network Floating Licensing, you may need a high volume of API Transactions, so you can purchase these as add-ons to your monthly SoftwareKey plan. The add-on purchases are:

Tier 1: +$50/month for +100,000 API Transactions/month
Tier 2: +$100/month for +500,000 API Transactions/month
Tier 3: +$200/month for +2,000,000 API Transactions/month

These monthly API Transactions are added onto your included monthly API Transactions (such as 100,000 for the Business Plan). If you need more than 2 million/month, multiple Tier 3 purchases can be made. Any overages are still $1 per 1000 API Transactions.

How do I estimate how many API Transactions I will need?

You have control over the function calls your software is using, and therefore have control over the number of API Transactions that will be processed by SOLO Server.

For example, many function calls are configured to recur periodically, so you can adjust the frequency of these calls:

For increased security and control, you can configure your software to periodically validate with SOLO Server. If you configure your software to validate with SOLO Server every 7 days, and you have 1000 licenses/activation in use, that would be about 4000 API Transaction per month.
Similarly, if you configured your software to check for an update with SOLO Server every 30 days, that would be about 1000 API Transactions for those same 1000 licenses.

Cloud-Controlled Network Floating Licensing estimate

For Cloud-Controlled Network Floating Licensing, an API Transaction occurs each time a user opens a new session or polls their current session. You have control over the polling frequency, and if you have a large user base and short frequency, this can result in many API calls to our server.

For example, if you issue a 100 user license with a polling frequency of 30 minutes, the estimated maximum API Transaction usage (assuming 8 hours of usage per workday by all users) would be:

100 users * 8 hours using software * 2 pollings/hour * 21 days = 33,600 API Transactions per month

You can calculate your own estimate by substituting in the total number of users that will have a floating license, their estimated average usage time per day, your configured polling frequency, and the total number of usage days per month (the average number of workdays is 20.8).

What will my total monthly fees be?

The following is an example of an account on our Team Plan, which costs $99/month and includes:

75 Activations per month ($1.50 per additional activation)
30,000 API Transactions per month ($1 per additional 1000 API Transactions)

In a month, If there are 80 activations processed and 10 deactivations, that would result in 80 total activations. This would be 5 activations over the included 75:

5 * $1.50 = $7.50 in activation overage fees

In that same month, using the values from the above API Transactions examples, 4000 + 1000 + 33,600 = 38,600 Total API Transactions. This would be 8,600 API Transactions over the included 30,000:

8,600 / 1000 = $9 in API Transactions overage fees (the final $1 is charged for 1000 or less API Transactions)

The total bill for that month's usage would be $99 + $7.50 + $9 = $115.50

Each calendar month the usage resets, and the activation and API Transaction count starts at zero.

If you are having significant overage fees, it is to your advantage to upgrade to a plan that includes more Activations and API Transactions compared to paying the overage rates.

How many API Transactions am I currently using?

If you already have a SOLO Server account, go to the menu Reports and choose the Monthly Statement and Account Usage report.

You can view the HTML summary of your usage, including the total number of API Transactions processed through your SOLO Server account. Here is an example of the HTML summary:

While the report allows you to display the counts for the date range you selected, accurate reporting for all SOLO Server API endpoints starts in January 2019.

Summary

The SoftwareKey System provides many licensing services through calls/requests to SOLO Server Automation, and we use a simple usage-based pricing model to charge for these API Transactions.