6 Best Software License Management Tools In 2023

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Are you struggling to keep track of your software licenses and ensure they’re used correctly?

Don’t sweat it!

Read this post to discover the best software license management tools leading the way for better SaaS license management, efficient operations, and more security.

Software license management tools are essential for businesses to maintain control over their software licensing. These six best-in-class tools provide license tracking, automatic audits, and analytical reporting.

With these innovative solutions, you can stay ahead of the curve and optimize the value of your software assets.

What is software license management?

Software License Management (SLM) is the process of purchasing, tracking, managing, and optimizing software licenses of various applications used in an organization.

A Software license management system, part of software asset management, includes monitoring, documenting, and managing software license usage inside an organization.

SaaS license management tools allow businesses to keep correct license inventories, track license use, and create licensing compliance reports. They offer insights into software licensing entitlements, usage trends, and renewal dates.

Organizations can increase license consumption, optimize spend, and make educated decisions regarding software purchases and renewals by utilizing software license management tools.

Top 6 SaaS license management tools

1. CloudEagle

CloudEagle is a robust SaaS management software with license management and cost-optimization features. Businesses can successfully manage software licenses using CloudEagle's application discovery capabilities.

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It can integrate with your internal systems and provide a birdseye view of all the applications used within your organization. Additionally, the direct integrations enable CloudEagle to retrieve all the necessary contract and license details of the application and organize them in one centralized location.

With CloudEagle, you’ll be able to:

• See how many licenses have been purchased for a specific application.
• Check the usage insights of each license.
• Identify the user provisioned to the particular license.
• Harness unused licenses and reallocate them to users in need.
• Right-size licenses through vendor negotiations.

Features

Application Visibility: CloudEagle provides extensive insight into your SaaS app stack and licensing, making handling licenses and provision users more straightforward.

Remediant had trouble managing its SaaS stack manually. They chose CloudEagle for its effective app tracking, spend monitoring, and license management features. This made it easier for Remediant to simplify operations, automate app tracking, and optimize spending and licenses.

Read the detailed success story here.

License reallocation: You can find unused licenses, harness them, and use workflows to reallocate them to the right users automatically.

Renewal Tracking: CloudEagle offers renewal tracking technology, which ensures timely renewal notifications and lowers the risk of increasing spending. Renewal procedures may be tailored, and license consumption can be tracked for renegotiation.

Falkonry encountered challenges with unnecessary costs and app disruptions from missed contract deadlines. They implemented CloudEagle for automated renewals, moving away from spreadsheets as their applications expanded.

CloudEagle's reminders enabled timely renewals, enhancing cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency.

Read the detailed success story here.

Assisted Buying: CloudEagle's assisted buyers will negotiate on your behalf regarding your unused licenses and help right-size them to increase cost savings.

SaaS Spend Optimization: It identifies duplicate and redundant applications, and you can analyze app usage to eliminate unwanted apps.

Procurement workflows: Streamline your SaaS buying process using workflows. Users can use Slack to raise purchase requests, and automation will ensure that all stakeholders are involved and the request is closed quickly.

Contract management: Centralize all your contracts and other sensitive documents in one place for easy retrieval and safekeeping.

User provisioning: Automatically suggest the right apps to users based on their roles and departments and deprovision them in a click when they quit.

If you are searching for an all-in-one license management tool, you can choose CloudEagle without any doubt. Listen to what Iffi Wallah, Co-Founder and CEO of Edge, shares about his experience with the tool.

He shares that as a rapidly growing company using numerous SaaS apps, they struggled with tracking spending, managing licenses, and negotiating with vendors. CloudEagle helped them gain detailed insights, optimize costs, and improve collaboration through Slack.

Know the full story here.

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Pricing

The starter plan is priced at $2000 per month. Pricing changes based on the spend.

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2. Reprise license manager

Reprise License Manager, created by Reprise Software, provides a full set of capabilities required of an enterprise-class licensing manager while also providing simplicity of administration for onsite and cloud-based systems.

Many software publishers trust RLM and end-user enterprises as dependable solution for managing software licenses. It helps IT organizations to get new clients while increasing income from existing ones.

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Features

• Simple API: RLM's straightforward API easily handles complicated licensing models, giving flexibility and simplicity of integration.
• Diagnostics: The program has diagnostic features that enable insight into licensed clients and licensing servers for effective monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Flexible Deployment: RLM enables both on-premise and cloud deployment options, allowing a wide range of infrastructure requirements.
• Multi-Platform Support: RLM offers multi-platform support, assuring compatibility with various operating systems.
• Vast Feature Set with Competitive Pricing: RLM offers a diversified set of features at affordable prices, delivering value for money while satisfying various company demands.

Reprise Software provides a timely and competent support team to assist clients with any concerns or difficulties.

3. Zylo

Zylo's powerful licensing management solution is intended to assist enterprises in optimizing their SaaS licenses and driving cost savings. With its sophisticated features and user-friendly interface, Zylo helps businesses make educated decisions about their software licenses and achieve optimal usage.

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Features

The following are the main features of Zylo License Management:

• License Reclamation: Zylo's patent-pending software finds, reassigns, or cancels unneeded licenses across the company, saving money.
• Actionable Insights: Zylo offers extensive optimization options, allowing organizations to right-size, reassign, or downsize licenses for maximum effect and cost savings.
• Workflow Automation: Utilize Zylo's step-by-step workflows for collaborating with users at scale. Easily streamline license management operations and automate tasks.
• Discovery Engine: Monitor SaaS application licensing, feature use, and service consumption with Zylo's AI-powered search and classification. Identify underused licenses to allocate resources more efficiently.
• Usage Insights: Zylo's tailored and prioritized views provide clear visibility into licensing data. Learn more about license utilization levels while making data-driven decisions.

4. AssetSonar

AssetSonar offers extensive software license management tools that assure license compliance, streamline software spending, and prepare enterprises for audits.

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AssetSonar helps firms to manage compliance, minimize penalties, and decrease software spending by centralizing all licensing data on a single platform. Through thorough reports, it identifies licensing framework deficiencies, allowing enterprises to fix them proactively.

AssetSonar also aids with audit risk mitigation by giving up-to-date licensing information, allowing businesses to be prepared for audits and reduce negative implications.

Features

• Recognize Gaps: The ability to evaluate and recognize gaps in the licensing structure by means of detailed reports.
• Identify Unlicensed Software: Recognize instances of unlicensed software on networks to prevent penalties and true-up costs.
• Alerts and Notifications: Get automated alerts for expiries, renewals, and transactions, and reconcile licenses with real-time data updates every 24 hours.
• Optimization Of Spending: Additionally, it aids in the optimization of software spending by recognizing and correcting unused or overutilized licenses, assuring optimal resource allocation.

5. Apptio

Apptio provides a complete SaaS software license management solution that enables enterprises to manage software licenses and optimize their SaaS applications successfully.

Apptio's robust capabilities help organizations decrease expenses and maximize the value of their SaaS portfolio by simplifying the difficulties of SaaS licensing management.

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Features

The following are the main features of Apptio's SaaS License Management:

• SaaS Application Discovery: Gain consolidated insight into the enterprise's resource utilization of SaaS apps. Identify and eliminate duplicate applications.
• Shadow IT management: Bring unlicensed SaaS apps under centralized administration to limit proliferation and reduce waste.
• License Optimization: Identify underused licenses and take action to de-provision or reallocate them, guaranteeing resource efficiency and lowering program expenses.
• Contract Renewal Management: Handle SaaS contract renewals proactively to minimize budget overspend and unproductive SaaS application usage. Consolidate redundant contracts to improve control of costs.
• FinOps Alignment: Integrate SaaS portfolio management with Financial Operations (FinOps) concepts to efficiently monitor consumption and avoid unexpected escalated costs.

6. ControlHippo

ControlHippo's SaaS license management tool is intended to make managing software licenses easier. ControlHippo allows you to simply discover and reclaim unwanted or underutilized licenses to ensure your software expenditure is optimized.

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Features

ControlHippo may assist with SaaS licensing management in the following ways:

• Reclaim unwanted Licenses: ControlHippo's technology detects unwanted or underutilized software licenses, allowing you to decrease SaaS expenditure and remove wasteful costs.
• Complete License Tracking: Control and monitor your software licenses and their utilization to ensure no licenses get wasted, unused, or underutilized.
• Workflow Automation: ControlHippo enables user cooperation based on license consumption and automates workflows, easing the licensing management procedure.
• Zero Waste Approach: You can monitor your SaaS app user licenses and use them using SaaS License Management, reducing waste and increasing the worth of your licenses.
• Quick Optimization: Track and reclaim unused licenses in minutes to streamline your SaaS expenditures and maximize your app spending.
• Improved Cloud Customer Experience: Use ControlHippo to strengthen software asset management while saving money and streamlining licenses to improve the entire cloud client experience.

Listen to Sophie Wang, Head of Finance at Wefunder, as she shares key advice for new procurement managers. She highlights the importance of understanding metrics, mastering Excel, and building strong relationships with account managers and vendors for cost optimization.

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Conclusion

There you go, the best software license management tools on the market to help organizations manage and optimize their SaaS licenses to increase ROI.

Among the software license management tools mentioned above, CloudEagle stands out as the best software license management tool due to its comprehensive SaaS management and cost optimization capabilities.

Businesses can successfully manage their SaaS licenses, optimize spend, and automate procurement and renewal processes using CloudEagle.

Zylo and Apptio are also great solutions for managing your software licenses. So, we’re leaving it up to you to make the right decision, but remember, the best practice is to choose a platform that serves all your needs under one roof.

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Frequently asked questions

1. What are the best practices of Software SaaS License Management?

Here are some of the best practices of SaaS License Management;

• Conduct often software audits to find cost-cutting possibilities and verify license regulations are followed.
• To successfully manage apps and track licensing consumption, centralize visibility of SaaS licenses.
• Track license utilization to minimize overpaying and make educated decisions about licensing reductions or reallocations.
• Use SaaS licensing management software for effective license tracking, renewals, and cost optimization.
• Maintain excellent connections with software providers to negotiate better deals and optimize the ROI on SaaS products.

2. What are the risks of poor SaaS license management?

34% of a company’s IT budget is software, and 50% of it is wasted.

Poor SaaS License Management presents risks such as non-compliance, higher expenses, and operational inefficiency. Organizations that do not have effective management may incur fines for licensing breaches. Unused licenses or unlawful use might result in costly waste.

Inefficient resource allocation can occur when there is a lack of visibility and tracking.

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