Offline Licensing for Restricted & Air-Gapped Environments

Many enterprise, industrial, and professional software environments cannot allow direct internet access from production machines. Factory floors, secure workstations, plugins inside CAD tools, or fully air‑gapped devices are common examples.

Devolens supports two complementary offline models for software licensing:

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1. Offline licensing using signed license files (no additional infrastructure) – works on all pricing tiers
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2. Offline licensing via a dedicated Devolens License Server – designed for scale, floating licenses, and centralized control
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Most teams start with the first option and only move to a license server when their environment or operational needs demand it.

Offline Licensing Without a License Server

For many desktop applications, plugins, SDK-based products, and smaller enterprise deployments, offline licensing can be handled directly inside the application using signed license files (also called activation files or certificates).

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How it works

Although Devolens is a web-based service, it uses public‑key cryptography to sign each license response. That signed response can be treated as a license file:

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• Your application embeds your RSA public key
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• The license file is verified locally at runtime
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• No internet access is required once the file is present
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As long as the signature is valid and the file has not expired, the license is considered valid.

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Typical offline setups

This model works well for:

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• Desktop applications on isolated machines
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• CAD / DCC plugins installed on workstations
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• Secure enterprise environments with strict firewall rules
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• Fully air‑gapped devices where manual updates are acceptable
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Common patterns include:

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• One‑time or periodic verification: verify once (or every N days) and cache the signed license file locally
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• Fully air‑gapped usage: generate the license file on a connected machine and transfer it via USB or secure media
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You control expiration (for example, 30, 90, or 365 days), ensuring licenses must be refreshed periodically.

When Offline Gets Hard to Manage

Manual offline licensing gives you full control, but it can become operationally heavy as environments grow:

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• Export and distribute activation files per machine
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• Track who has which file, when it expires, and which version it belongs to
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• Repeat the process for renewals, suspensions, upgrades, and audits
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At small scale this works well. At larger scale, it becomes easy to get out of sync with your central licensing data.

Some teams try to solve this by building their own internal licensing proxy or DMZ service, but that quickly turns into maintaining a licensing product on the side.

That’s where a license server becomes useful.

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Devolens License Server (Recommended for Scale)

The Devolens license server is designed for environments that need centralized control and minimal manual handling:

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• Purpose‑built gateway for on‑prem, air‑gapped, and restricted networks
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• Centralized sync with Devolens while keeping client machines fully internal
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• Built‑in caching of license responses
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• Offline mode using pre‑loaded activation files
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• Support for floating and concurrent licensing, even when disconnected
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This lets you keep strict security standards while avoiding per‑machine license management.

You can read more about our license server here.

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Choosing the Right Offline Model

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• Few machines, simple workflows → signed offline license files
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• Large environments, floating licenses, audits → Devolens License Server
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Both approaches use the same cryptography, SDKs, and licensing platform. Many customers start without a license server and introduce one later as their deployment grows.

Offline licensing with Devolens scales with you—from a single air‑gapped workstation to enterprise‑wide, fully controlled environments.