Licensing and Subscription

Sometimes, in order to study the system better, you want to dive into the code as fast as possible. To make this easier, Aspose.Words provides different plans for purchase or offers a Free Trial and a 30-day Temporary License for evaluation.

Note that there are a number of general policies and practices that guide you on how to evaluate, properly license, and purchase our products. You can find them in the Purchase Policies and FAQ section.

Free Trial or Temporary License

Aspose.Words is incredible software that developers can try before purchasing.

Free Trial

The evaluation version is the same as the purchased one – the Trial version simply becomes licensed when you add a few lines of code to apply the license.

The Trial version of Aspose.Words without the specified license provides full product functionality, but inserts an evaluative watermark at the top of the document upon loading and saving and limits the maximum document size to a few hundred paragraphs.

Temporary License

If you wish to test Aspose.Words without the limitations of the Trial version, you can also request a 30-day Temporary License. For more details, see the Get a Temporary License page.

Purchased License

After purchase, you need to apply the license file or include the license file as an embedded resource. This section describes options of how this can be done, and also comments on some common questions.

You need to set the license:

• only once per application domain

• before using any other Aspose.Words classes

You can find pricing information on the Pricing Information page.

Protecting Your Purchased License

After purchasing a license, you need to carefully read the information on page Protecting Your Purchased License to protect your license file. Please note that this page is available for viewing only if you have a paid license.

License Applying Options

Licenses can be applied from various locations:

• Explicit path
• The folder containing the Aspose.Words.dll file
• The folder containing the assembly that called Aspose.Words.dll
• The folder containing the entry assembly (your .exe)
• An embedded resource in the assembly is called Aspose.Words.dll
• As a Metered License – a new licensing mechanism

When you reference Aspose.Words.dll in the application, the library is copied to your output directory (unless Copy Local in the properties for that entry is set to false). Often the easiest way to set a license is to place the license file in the same folder as Aspose.Words.dll and specify just the filename without the path.

Use the SetLicense method to license a component.

Calling SetLicense multiple times is not harmful, it just wastes processor time.

Calling SetMeteredKey multiple times is not harmful either, but just wastes processor time and can accumulate consumption improperly.

Apply License Using a File or Stream Object

When developing your application, call SetLicense in your startup code before using Aspose.Words classes.

Load a License from a File

Using the SetLicense method, you can try to find the license file in the embedded resources or assembly folders for further use.

The following code example shows how to initialize a license from a folder:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git.
License license = new License();

// This line attempts to set a license from several locations relative to the executable and Aspose.Words.dll.
// You can also use the additional overload to load a license from a stream, this is useful,
// for instance, when the license is stored as an embedded resource.
try
{
    license.SetLicense("Aspose.Words.lic");
    
    Console.WriteLine("License set successfully.");
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    // We do not ship any license with this example,
    // visit the Aspose site to obtain either a temporary or permanent license. 
    Console.WriteLine("\nThere was an error setting the license: " + e.Message);
}

Load a License from a Stream Object

The following code example shows how to initialize a license from a stream using another SetLicense method:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git.
License license = new License();

try
{
    license.SetLicense(new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes("Aspose.Words.lic")));
    
    Console.WriteLine("License set successfully.");
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    // We do not ship any license with this example,
    // visit the Aspose site to obtain either a temporary or permanent license. 
    Console.WriteLine("\nThere was an error setting the license: " + e.Message);
}

Include the License File as an Embedded Resource

A neat way to package a license with your application and make sure it will not be lost is to include it as an embedded resource into one of the assemblies that call Aspose.Words. To include a file as an embedded resource, follow these steps:

1. In Visual Studio, include the .lic file into the project using the “File | Add Existing Item…” menu.
2. Select the file in the Solution Explorer and set “Build Action to Embedded Resource” in the Properties window.
3. In your code, invoke SetLicense that passes only the short name of the resource file.

Apply Metered License

Aspose.Words allows developers to apply a metered key. This is a new licensing mechanism.

The new licensing mechanism will be used along with the existing licensing method. Those customers who want to be billed based on the use of API features can use the Metered Licensing.

After completing all the necessary steps to obtain this type of license, you will receive the keys, not the license file. This metered key can be applied using the Metered class specially introduced for this purpose.

Do not call the SetMeteredKey method frequently so that this licensing method properly accumulates consumption and reports it to us. Just instantiate the Aspose.Words library, call SetMeteredKey once, then leave the library instantiated and reuse it.

The following code example shows how to set limited public and private keys:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git.
try
{
    Metered metered = new Metered();
    metered.SetMeteredKey("*****", "*****");

    Document doc = new Document(MyDir + "Document.docx");

    Console.WriteLine(doc.PageCount);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("\nThere was an error setting the license: " + e.Message);
}

Normally it is enough to apply the metered license once on application start. However, if the metered licensing mechanism fails to communicate with the Aspose servers for 24 hours, Aspose.Words will exit licensed mode and switch to evaluation mode. To avoid such case, you can use the IsMeteredLicensed method to check the license status and reapply the metered license if necessary.

Please note that you must have a stable Internet connection for the correct use of the Metered license, since the Metered mechanism requires the constant interaction with our services for correct calculations. For more details, refer to the Metered Licensing FAQ section.

Changing the License File Name

The license filename does not have to be “Aspose.Words.LIC”. You can rename it to your liking and use that name when setting a license in your application.

“Cannot find license filename” Exception

When you purchase and download a license, the Aspose website names the license file “Aspose.Words.LIC”. You download the license file using your browser. In this case, some browsers recognize the license file as XML and append the .xml extension to it, so the full file name on your computer becomes “Aspose.Words.lic.XML”.

When Microsoft Windows is configured to hide extensions for known file types (unfortunately, this is the default in most Windows installations), the license file will appear as “Aspose.Words. LIC” in Windows Explorer. You will probably think that this is the real file name and call SetLicense passing it “Aspose.Words.LIC”, but there is no such file, hence the exception.

To solve the problem, rename the file to remove the invisible .xml extension. We also recommend you disable the “hide extensions” option in Microsoft Windows.

Using Multiple Aspose Products

If you use multiple Aspose products in your application, such as Aspose.Words and Aspose.Cells, here are a few useful tips:

• Set the License for each Aspose product separately. Even if you have a single license file for all components, for example, “Aspose.Total.lic”, you still need to call SetLicense separately for each Aspose product that you use in your application.
• Use the Fully Qualified License Class Name. Each Aspose product has a License class in its own namespace. For example, Aspose.Words has Aspose.Words.License and Aspose.Cells has Aspose.Cells.License class. Using the fully qualified class name allows you to avoid confusion as to which license applies to which product.