How to understand how many people use my software

Question

We have a very small specialized user base. No community. My boss wants to know who uses it. And his approach is simply to make a hidden connection, perhaps the automatic update feature, enabled by default WITHOUT notification when there is no update ... I don’t really like this idea and try to come up with something else.

There is a registration, after which you can download a free trial version. No other restrictions, but a time limit.

Sold licenses can be used at various universities. Thus, registration and licensing themselves are not an indicator of use. Not to mention the fact that the developers do not have feedback on the licenses sold.

I would like to get some advice on how you, or, better, would actually approach such a problem.

Answer 1

“Just call home” to notify you that someone is using your software is probably not a good idea: users generally don't like this. And that might be bad for your company / software reputation.

The decision will have some good reason to “call home” ; -)

For example, what about some kind of automatic update-mecanism? What users can turn off, of course, if they want (therefore, not 100% more efficient); but most of them will not turn it off.
And it's a really good idea to make a request to your server :-)

Just do not send anything that could identify the user; some unique identifier key, perhaps (to distinguish between users), but cannot be used to identify the user?

I don’t like the software that I use says “hello, this guy is using me!” To people, but I really like the automatic update feature in Firefox, for example ... An event if it says that I am using the software ; -)

Answer 2

This is very subjective, and I highly recommend that you go and ask some of your real users how they feel about it, instead of a bunch of stubborn programmers (if your program is not aimed at programmers who often visit stackoverflow.com), if you clearly do this anonymous, easy and your users, like your program, they may be okay using data to build a better version. But there is no other way to find out, and then just ask them.

Hiding (to use the downloaded phrase) your actions within some unrelated preliminary text seem extremely insincere.

Answer 3

If you sell in any place where there can be a competent IT installation, for example, at a university, then I would not even think of a secret path that does not respond to them. If you do this, you come up with bad ads as soon as someone firewall sees unexpected connections

Answer 4

I run almost all of my programs with a shell script that sends me messages about who is using the program, which version they are running, and some other things. If nothing else, useful for bean counters who want to track software usage to see if it's worth keeping your work.

Answer 5

My software has a licensing scheme in which each installed copy generates a unique product identifier, and then I send the appropriate code to the client that unlocks the full program. Therefore, I know exactly how many (paid) clients I have.

This does not mean that people use hacked versions, but I would rather not know how many there are at all.

Since you can have multiple users under the same license, the only thing you can really do is add something to your software that sends a notification to your server every time the application starts. Obviously, this will not catch people who are not related to Intertubes, but cannot measure them at all (without naming them, as you already mentioned).

Answer 6

Well, I would certainly hope that you know who you sell your software to, if you hold licenses like this, and that you have their phone numbers. Call them, sit on the phone with them for a while, ask them what they changed, what they don't like, what bothers them.

It really will be an extra mile and most likely will impress those who use the software. When you call, be sure to tell them that you are not a third party accessing your company name, let them know that you are really working on the software that they use, and that you really want to know what they think and what their opinions have a certain impact on future versions and features.

You can also send a bulk email to do the same, but it's lazy, imo.

Automatic updates using statistics is a BIG idea.