LicenseKeeper 1.0: Capture and Organize software licenses

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

What They Say

LicenseKeeper is the first and only license manager to store both serial numbers and license files along with receipts, email and other related files. Auto-scanning of Email eliminates tedious and error-prone data entry.

Protect your investment; software is expensive. Don't store your software licenses with your spam. There is a better way. If LicenseKeeper saves you one lost serial number, it has paid for itself.

Keep track of all your purchased software and games

Store serial numbers, license files, and registration information. LicenseKeeper organizes all your information in a straightforward, easy-to-find manner.

Auto-Scan email for serial numbers

Eliminate tedious and error-prone typing by Auto scanning imported email for serial numbers. LicenseKeeper scans Emails for serial numbers and conveniently places them in your clipboard for pasting into your software's registration form. No more hunting for typos in long strings of random letters and numbers.

Fast Spotlight-like searching

Your registration information is available, searchable, and ready when you need it most.

Auto-fill user information

Through Mac OS X Address Book integration, LicenseKeeper auto-fills your registration information for you.

Auto-Save your data

Your data is safe. LicenseKeeper auto-saves your data even when you forget to.

LicenseKeeper is safe to try

Export your data to XML at any time -- even if you decide not to buy it.

Help and Documentation

Full Help and Documentation available locally. No need for an Internet connection.

What I Say

I don’t know about you, but I keep having to find and redo passwords for software and this becomes especially aggravating when I get to upgrade or replace my Operating System (my test and evaluation machine IS my production machine!).

Some of the companies are very good about having a place on their websites to reobtain the licenses once they are lost and others are what this application is necessary for, because they do not have that function available on their websites (hint, hint).

But this app goes beyond the Mac OS X Keychain function. It also captures in XML the original Emails (assuming you still have them) or other documentation regarding the software registrations. Not only that, but in some instances when the Email is added for an application LicenseKeeper may actually extract the registration information and add it in the Serial Number window automatically! Not all the time, but many times when I found Email artifacts, it really did extract the Serial Number for me so I did not have to enter it into the Serial Number field manually.

I prefer clean installs between operating system replacements. This app has been released just in time for Leopard. Now can I transfer all my paper-based stuff over and get it captured to disc.

The downside? It does not have a password protection for itself. For me, that is not a problem. For others, it could be. Here is a work-around – Turn on Security in Apple Preferences to encrypt everything or if you really need to or use the password lock on the external thumb drive you sent this app to.

The Help file is incredibly short, but this is so intuitive, you hardly need it. I found I was dragging and dropping and attaching emails like crazy as I discovered how easy this was to do. And I have a little more piece of mind now.

Follow-up: I never new I had so many apps on my machine before! And I discovered some that we had promised to review, but did not, so this app has been a real blessing to me, because now I can really find stuff that was “hiding” from me. Thanks, Jon Trainer, for making this app public.

Gee, I almost feel organized!