Anyone who writes software has likely been through this: the software is finished, you send a package to a customer, and within days a “cracked version download” appears in some group chat. You add a registration code, write a trial countdown, hide some data in the registry — none of it stands up to a single cracking tutorial someone finds online. Having no protection is charity; adding friction risks scaring customers away. Want free users to watch ads for some revenue? Then you have to deal with choosing an ad SDK and integrating it.
AegisPack is built for exactly this chain of headaches. It packages your EXE, DLL, OCX, or audio/video files into a licensed product that can support trials and ads, then generates a dedicated keygen for your product. Charging for licenses, converting trials to paid, monetizing free versions with ads — all the common software monetization paths handled by one toolset.
Download: https://www.dd-cat.cn/download
There are three tools in total, though you'll mostly touch two of them: the packer handles packaging and generating certificates and keygens; the keygen — one per product — issues licenses. When packaging video content, the player automatically serves as the finished shell. Fully Chinese interface, just drag files into the window, no server required, works online or offline.
Selling Software by the License: Customer Sends a Code, You Send Back a File
Xiao Li wrote a bidding-document tool and wanted to sell it for 199 yuan per copy. He used to be afraid to post a download link. Now his approach is this: the software is packaged as a full version, but customers can't open it at first — the interface says it's unlicensed, shows a machine code below, with one-click copy. After the customer pays via WeChat, they send the machine code over. Xiao Li clicks “Issue” in the keygen, drags the generated license file back into WeChat, the customer places it in the software directory, and it auto-activates within seconds — no restart needed.
There are several ways to sell licenses: by days, by fixed expiration date, or with usage limits added on top, such as 20 total uses. Xiao Li now sells a fixed license for 199 yuan and a one-year subscription for 69 yuan — just a matter of clicking different options in the same keygen.
Two details later proved important. First, the machine code is different every time it's displayed. It's fine for the customer to send it to you for licensing, but no one else can use that string to trace the machine. Second, when a customer changes computers, they don't need to return the old file — just report a new machine code and re-issue. Renewals work the same way; it's a one-minute job.
Try Before You Pay: Let Free Users Earn for You First
Xiao Zhou makes a video download tool with plenty of free users. He never felt comfortable putting up a hard paywall, so he tried the trial-plus-ads approach: the packaged software opens and works right away, with no pop-up blocking the way, but a small ad window sits in the bottom-right corner of the screen, rotating image and video ads he configured in the backend. When a user clicks, their browser opens his promotion page directly.
Ad creatives are managed in the backend — changing images or links doesn't require redistributing the software, and new ones can be pushed anytime. The trial conditions he typically sets are 30 days plus 100 uses. After that, the software automatically switches to a purchase prompt — same machine code, same input flow, connecting directly to the per-license sales path described earlier.
His biggest fear was someone deleting the directory and reinstalling to freeload another round. AegisPack has protection against this: trial records are stored in multiple places on the system, and if a server is configured, it keeps an account there too. Even if the local records are completely wiped, it still recognizes the machine. Rolling back the system clock doesn't help either.
This approach also suits cold-starting a new product: let people use it free first, let ads cover part of the revenue, and convert them to paid once they're hooked.
Selling Courses: Deliver a Player, Not a Video File
Teacher Wang sells paid courses. Once an mp4 is sent out, it's no longer his — second-hand marketplaces resell it cheaper than he does. So he switched to using AegisPack to package videos into a standalone player program before delivery: students get an EXE, double-click to watch, with fullscreen, playback speed, seek, and volume controls, but the video file never touches the disk from start to finish. There's no way to copy or forward it.
The selling strategy is tiered. The first lesson is free to preview, packaged as a trial version, with the corner ad window conveniently promoting his other courses — two birds with one stone. Later lessons require the full version; only with a valid license can they play. Later, when he started corporate training, he added a playback password on top: licenses go to the whole class, the password changes each term, and the two gates each guard their own thing.
There's a detail he made a point of sharing on social media: a student whose license expired was in the middle of a video. The player didn't crash — it paused and popped up an activation window, and after payment, playback resumed exactly where it left off. Videos can also be bound to a machine; copying them to another computer won't work.
Wedding photographers, corporate trainers, and sellers of paid audio all follow the same playbook.
Selling Components: DLLs Can Be Licensed Per Customer Too
A small team makes industrial control configuration components. Their product is a DLL, sold to software vendors building host computer (SCADA) applications. They used to rely on contract terms alone. Now the DLL goes through AegisPack before delivery: the customer's program calls it exactly as before, the interface unchanged, but without a license file, the DLL won't load at all — not a single function is accessible. The “per machine per year” clause in the contract finally has technical backing.
OCX controls work the same way: without a license, they can't be loaded or registered.
After the Sale: Renewals, Machine Transfers, and License Revocation
Renewals and machine transfers were covered above, so I won't repeat them. Only after real use did I find two more things indispensable. One is activation binding: the license binds to whichever machine it's first activated on. If a second computer tries to activate with the same license, it's immediately exposed — the one-code-multiple-machines loophole is closed. The other is remote deactivation: a customer refunded but refused to uninstall? Issue a deactivation from the server, and the program exits the next time it runs on their machine.
One more point worth calling out separately: these online features all run quietly in the background. A customer's machine being completely offline doesn't affect normal use. If you serve customers in intranet or air-gapped environments, there's nothing to worry about.
Old Computers, 32-bit, and Other Things You Might Worry About
Factory floors, government intranets, industrial host machines — 32-bit systems are still everywhere. AegisPack treats 32-bit and 64-bit support equally, and video packaging is no exception. The finished product depends on no third-party runtime libraries, no components that “only install on new systems,” so old machines keep running. On the same computer, 32-bit and 64-bit programs are recognized as the same machine; one license works for both.
As for how strong the protection really is, I won't go into the principles — just the conclusion: it has been tested head-to-head against real debuggers, injection tools, and memory-dump tools. If a single byte of the program is modified, it refuses to run. The packaged software keeps its original icon; customers can't tell it's been processed.
Getting Started
Open the packer, generate a product certificate, click to generate a dedicated keygen, then drag your software into the window and choose a mode to package — three steps. After that, issuing each license is just a few clicks. For batch processing, command-line parameters are available, though most people won't need them.
The installer is on the download page: https://www.dd-cat.cn/download
Pre-Sale Notes
A few honest words up front. AegisPack is only for protecting software and content you own the copyright to. Windows kernel drivers are not supported. Video protection prevents people from getting the original file, but it can't prevent screen recording — if you sell courses, be sure to add watermarks. Before commercial release, run a full test with your actual software.
Conclusion
Selling software has always been two things: the product has to be good, and the product can't be taken for free. I can't help with the first. For the second — from the lock to the cash register to the ad slot — AegisPack sets it all up in one go.