Miscellaneous

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Top 10 Software License Tracking Tools

Ritish Reddy

23rd January, 2023

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Software apps are used in almost every department of organizations for purposes such as communication, collaboration, and accounting. Organizations spend a significant amount of their budget on softwares so that employees can do their work efficiently and effectively. 

To get the best out of software and understand whether they are serving its purpose or not, it’s important to keep track of different software licenses.  

Every organization uses several softwares for different purposes such as accounting, payroll management, etc. Large organizations use over 100 software applications, and it costs a good amount of money.

To ensure that the softwares are used properly, and there are no wastage or duplicate licenses. It is imperative to keep track of different software licenses. Proper license management helps in keeping track of different software licenses and provides insight into license usage.

Software license tracking tool helps organizations proactively identify available, deployed and unused, or underused software licenses. Further, it ensures that deployed licenses are aligned with the compliance requirements and helps in keeping audits ready.

Organizations can also automate the discovery of the licenses, onboarding, and offboarding with the help of software license tracking tools.

There are many software license tracking tools available; in this post, we are going to discuss ten tools that you can use in your organization for managing software licenses.

Top Software License Tracking Tools

1. Zluri

Zluri (That's us! 🙂) is primarily a SaaS management platform that helps users to discover, optimize and secure SaaS applications. It also helps in streamlining how IT services are delivered in an organization based on people, processes, budget, and outcomes. 

It enables businesses to explore and manage third-party SaaS applications as well as their security and compliance from a command center. It gives IT teams greater control over their tech stack. 

 Zluri helps you to automate time-consuming and repetitive IT tasks such as employee onboarding and offboarding, making it quicker and safer. 

Benefits

• Discovering your organization's SaaS subscriptions: Zluri has the largest app library with over 225,000+ applications. Zluri discovery engine uses five methods to discover all your apps with near 100% accuracy.

• Renewal Monitoring: With Zluri, you don't need to worry about surprise renewals. Zluri alerts about your upcoming renewals, giving you enough time to decide whether or not you need the app. You can decide that through the SaaS usage insights from Zluri.

• Applications Cost Optimization: Zluri helps you standardize your applications and eliminate budget wastage. Zluri traces your SaaS ecosystem and monitors, measures, and helps you take control of your SaaS spend. It also helps you find hidden apps.

• Smooth Vendor Management: Zluri has an automated vendor management system with all the features needed to manage your SaaS stack. It maintains a SaaS system of record by integrating with your core business system, after which it prepares to maintain your vendor life cycle with your predefined workflows. 

Features

• Discovering your organization's subscriptions

• Category and function of each application

• Find unused and underused apps

• Removing duplicate apps with overlapping functions

• Automating contract renewals

• Automating employee onboarding and onboarding

• Remove unsecured apps

• Offers custom integrations with 36 hours of TAT

• Direct integrations with 800+ popular apps for feature level usage insights

• Good choice if you are paying in multiple currencies

2. SolarWinds

SolarWinds Service Desk helps organizations to collect and analyze different software licenses. It automates software license tracking and reduces errors due to manual inputs. With this software, an organization can easily find out if there are any missing licenses or additional licenses required for specific purposes. SolarWinds license tracking software also helps to build custom contracts and approval processes, create a record of vendors and manage the renewals of the licenses. It provides alerts for all software licenses renewals.

Features

• It helps to manage all software licenses contracts

• Keeps track of software licenses

• Provides alert for software license renewal

Pros 

• Quick to implement and easy to use due to its intuitive interface

• Helps to identify compliance issues

• Provides built-in reports as well as gives the option to create custom reports as per requirements

Cons

• Limited customization

• Creating custom reports can be challenging

• Poor support

Customer Rating

• G2- 4.4/5 

• Capterra- 4.6/5 

3. Freshservice

Freshservice offers an integrated software asset management solution that helps IT teams keep track of the software licenses across the organization. With the help of this software, an organization can keep track of software licenses inventory to understand the current status of stock. It has inbuilt workflows, which reduce manual tasks by automating repetitive tasks. Further, organizations can maintain records of software licenses and contracts with it. 

Features

• Automate software license contract and renewal management 

• Helps to manage software licenses from procurement to retirement in a unified solution

• A one-stop solution to track purchases, manage vendors and streamline fulfillment requests

Pros 

• Easy to set up and an affordable solution for license management

• Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use

• Flexible and highly customizable

• A large number of third-party integrations

Cons

• The customizations slow down the speed

• Very few inbuilt workflows

Customer Rating

• G2- 4.6/5

• Capterra- 4.5/5 

4. Manageengine AssetExplorer

ManageEngine AssetExplorer helps organizations to keep track of their software licenses from the planning phase to the disposal phase. It centrally manages all software licenses contracts and ensures that licenses are compliant with regulatory standards. ManageEngine AssetExplorer helps to identify the areas to reduce spending, enforce policies and eliminate redundancies. Further, it is easy to install and simple to use.

Features

• Helps to manage PO and license contracts

• Manages complete software licenses throughout their lifecycle

• It discovers all software assets of the organization

• Provides information about licenses uses metrics

Pros 

• Support is very responsive

• Easy to install and intuitive user interface

Cons

• Not suitable for small businesses as it is costly

Customer Rating

• G2- 4/5

• Capterra- 5/5

5. Matrix42

Matrix42 is an enterprise-grade software license tracking tool that empowers organizations to completely manage their software licenses lifecycle to reduce costs and risks. It reduces audit risks and efforts by automatically managing software licenses to ensure compliance. It provides a detailed report which helps organizations identify all software licenses as well as missing and unused licenses.

Features

• Automatically manage software licenses to ensure compliance and reduce audit risks and efforts.

• Optimize license costs by providing information about unused licenses

• Renewal and contract management

Pros 

• Matrix42 provides excellent support and helps to resolve issues faster

• Discovers all software licenses of the organization automatically

• Provides real-time insights about software licenses

Cons

• It has a clumsy user interface

• Due to its overwhelming features, it has a steep learning curve. And requires time to get a good hold on it.

Customer Rating

• G2- 4/5

• Capterra- No ratings available

6. ServiceNow

ServiceNow software license management helps to track and organize the number of licenses available in the organization. It helps to reclaim unused software licenses, procure new and manage software allocations across the organization. ServiceNow enables organizations to automate license allocation during the onboarding of new employees. It keeps the audit-ready by ensuring that licenses are compliant with various regulatory requirements.

Features

• Automate onboarding

• Keeps track of all software licenses 

• Helps in optimizing the software license expenses by regularly providing insights about different license uses.

Pros 

• It is highly customizable and integrates with a large number of third-party applications.

• It provides excellent support and helps to sort queries faster

Cons

• Third-party integration slows down the speed

• Clumsy user interface

• Initial setup is time-consuming and complex

Customer Rating

• G2- 4/5

• Capterra- 4.5/5

7. Ivanti License Optimizer

Ivanti License Optimizer is a software license tracking and management tool that helps to reclaim unused licenses, optimize IT spend, and keep licenses compliant. It discovers all software licenses, tracks usage of licenses, and identifies areas where cost can be optimized. Ivanti License Optimizer converts complex license data into an accurate effective-license position.

Features

• Monitor software usage and license compliance with asset management

• Provides accurate data about license usage that gives an advantage while negotiating with software vendors

• Automatically track inventory of all software licenses

Pros 

• Provides excellent support

• It becomes easy to use after getting hands-on experience 

Cons

• Its overwhelming features make it hard to use initially

• It has a clumsy user interface

Customer Rating

• G2- 4.4/5

• Capterra- No ratings available

8. Snow License Manager

Snow License Manager enables organizations to gain an accurate view of software usage and entitlements. It also helps to manage contracts of all software licenses centrally. Snow License Manager reduces the risks and efforts associated with IT audits by ensuring that all software licenses are compliant. Further, it helps in managing renewals of the licenses and optimizing the cost by providing insights about license usage to make data-driven decisions.

Features

• Gives complete visibility of all software licenses

• It acts as a single source of truth for information related to software licenses 

• Renewal and contract management

• Helps to stay compliant with licensing rules

Pros 

• Fast to deploy 

• Excellent customer service

Cons

• It sometimes crashes while extracting large data in reporting

• Its clumsy interface makes it a bit hard to use

• It has a steep learning curve

Customer Rating

• G2-  4/5

• Capterra- 4.3/5

9. Flexera FlexNet Manager

FlexNet Manager by Flexera is a software license tool that helps organizations to keep track of their software licenses. Its reporting and analytics enable organizations to make informed decisions to minimize compliance risks associated with software licenses. It also helps in managing software licenses contracts and acts as a single source of information related to licenses.

Features

• Provides data about license cost optimization opportunities

• Helps to understand different license utilization

• Keeps your audit-ready by ensuring that licenses are compliant with different regulatory requirements

Pros 

• Reduces audit risk 

• It is highly customizable, and Flexera offers various other solutions which can be easily integrated with it.

• Discovers all software licenses

Cons

• Initial setup is time taking 

• It has a steep learning curve due to its overwhelming features

• Support takes a long time to respond to and resolve issues

Customer Rating

• G2- 4/5

• Capterra- 4.4/5

10. Alloy Software

Alloy Software enables organizations to optimize software license costs, ensure license compliance and keep track of all software licenses. It helps to control, manage and optimize the full lifecycle of software licenses. Alloy Software automatically discovers all the software licenses of the organization and provides information about licenses usage. It detects unapproved software licenses and reduces the shadow IT risks.

Features

• Automatically collect information about software licenses inventory of the organization.

• Optimizes software licenses and keeps it compliance and audit-ready

• Manages renewal and subscription of the software licenses

Pros 

• It is highly customizable and flexible to integrate with other tools

• Its intuitive user interface makes it easy to use

• Support is very responsive

Cons

• Initial setup is complex and time-consuming

• Customization takes time

• Very limited in-built features

Customer Rating

• G2- 4.5/5

• Capterra- 4.5/5

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About the author

Ritish Reddy

Ritish is one of the co-founders of Zluri, the SaaS management tool for IT teams. He leads the Marketing and Partnerships as part of his role. Before Zluri, he was part of the founding team at KNOLSKAPE and Co-Founder at Cranium media. Ritish is an MBA graduate and is passionate about building, and scaling businesses ground up. He is an avid reader and loves exploring book stores and libraries in different parts of the world. He loves painting with his 4-year-old daughter.