I have a question for my fellow NinjaTrader vendors who use the NinjaTrader vendor licensing system in their indicators, strategies, and other add-ons who have started using the recently released email-based NinjaTrader vendor licensing system.
Do you like the new email-based NinjaTrader vendor licensing system better than the older NinjaTrader Machine ID-based vendor licensing system?
Is there anything you like less about the new email-based NinjaTrader vendor licensing system than the older NinjaTrader Machine ID-based vendor licensing system?
Did you encounter any problems when you started using it that I and other NinjaTrader vendors could benefit from knowing about?
Any other advice or thoughts on the new email-based NinjaTrader vendor licensing system, especially when compared to the older NinjaTrader Machine ID-based vendor licensing system?
Thank you very much in advance for any information you are willing to share. If you would rather share it privately you can private message me from this forum.
I donât think this is really widely advertised at this point. The reason for that is that there are probably still issues that are being worked out. I only found out about it because one of my customers brought it up because they are anxious to get away from machine ID based license management which is manual and tedious. So I looked into it for the customer. After following the provided instructions, the first attempt was a total failure. We reported it to Vendor Support and they acknowledged the issue and said theyâd get back with an update which hasnât happened as of yet. This was in July.
Here is my experience so far in case it helps you, especially if it helps you figure out what your issue in July may mean for you going forward:
On June 6 I received an email about joining the beta program for the new email-based vendor licensing system.
On July 22 I received another email about joining the beta program. For this reason, I believe that the issue you experienced occurred during the beta program. I bet that they fixed it at this point, becauseâŚ
I reached out to a highly trusted contact at NinjaTrader last night who said that the user-based licensing is out of beta. They also didnât mention any issues or add any caveats or modifiers on this statement, which to me, knowing who sent me the email, gives me confidence that they really do think that it is out of beta and ready for production use. Given that your issue occurred during the beta program, NinjaTrader acknowledged the issue, and now I hear from them that they are out of beta, I bet that they fixed the cause of the issue you experienced⌠just a guess though.
On the other hand, you make a good point that they havenât widely advertised it yet, and that they said theyâd get back to you with an update but didnât.
Thank you again for sharing your experience @fc77. By the way your indicators look pretty great.
@Quagensia thanks for the additional context. I wasnât personally involved in the beta phase for my own products, but my customer was and thatâs how I got pulled in. Good to know they have this all sorted out on their end. I suppose Iâll look into it again when my customer asks me to look into it when it becomes a priority again.
And thanks for looking at my tools and for the kind words. It is very much appreciated.
After the initial email about the new feature, which was in the new 8.1.5.0 version, I tried it but there was some kind of error occurring in the portal and it didnât work for me. After many back and forths with support they said it would be fixed in 8.1.5.1. Indeed, that issue was corrected but when testing with a client, the licensing always failed. It was very strange because it would work ok on my machine. After much dealing with support, they said to have the client log into NT8 with the username instead of the email address and the correction would be in a future version. This made sense because I always start NT8 with my user name. This did work in testing with my client. Now I am running 8.1.6.0 and the email licensing works whether clients login with their email or user name.
That is great news, thank you for sharing! I think @fc77 will be happy to hear this also. Those details really help me formulate a plan to migrate Quagensia to the new system.
I am really looking forward to converting over to the new system, but since as you mentioned it was still an issue in version 8.1.5.1 (launch date: June 10, 2025) and was only for sure fixed by version 8.1.6.0 (launch date: September 25, 2025), I think I will wait a few months so that our current users and new prospective customers will probably have upgraded to version 8.1.6.0 or above.
Thank you again @eDanny both from me as well as from the other vendors that probably have the same question.
Thank you for sharing the additional information @eDanny. The personal experience you shared is gold to us at Quagensia. No worries that you are a little fuzzy on the timelines/versions for when things were totally fixed. For me it is enough to know that it was still broken in version 8.1.5.1 (launch date: June 10, 2025) to want to wait a bit as we are pretty conservative regarding when to implement a new technology like a new licensing system. All I know for (almost) certain is that we are going to switch over to the new system ârelatively soonâ, probably in 2025 or in the first half of 2026 as the new user-based vendor licensing system seems quite compelling once a large majority of NinjaTrader users are using a version of NinjaTrader with no known bugs in the new licensing system. We are extremely thankful to NinjaTrader, Inc. for the privilege of using the previous NinjaTrader Machine ID-based licensing system and I am further thankful that the new licensing system stacks on advantages that the older licensing system lacks.
Thank you again @eDanny for helping us at Quagensia have as much information as possible regarding switching from the old to the new NinjaTrader vendor licensing system.
I just came across this thread and wanted to say thanks for bringing up the new email-based licensing system - this is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to find when I logged in.
I actually received my invite just yesterday, so I wasnât part of the beta and thankfully didnât run into some of the earlier issues others have mentioned. That said, I havenât implemented the new system yet. Iâm still reviewing everything to determine the best way to move forward with it.
Itâs been really helpful reading through everyoneâs feedback and hearing about your experiences - itâs given me a better sense of what to expect. Iâm planning to do a test run with one of our products over the weekend to see how everything flows.
Appreciate everyone sharing their insights - definitely helps vendors like me get up to speed more confidently.
We had a very similar experience. We were also in the beta, reported the issues we found, and didnât hear back until this new invitation.
By the way, we solved this years ago with our own custom system. It allows you to manage licenses (enable/disable) from a Google Sheet and it isnât tied to the Machine ID. We mentioned it to NinjaTrader back then to see if they were interested, but no luck.
Weâve been offering it to other partners since then, so if anyone is looking for an alternative that is already up and running, just know that ours is available.
Same here. I built my own access control mechanism since the old machine ID based NT license portal can easily be bypassed/defeated and there are many who have done this. I use my method in conjunction with NT license portal. I still use NT portal to manage free trials, etc. My method is an additional layer to catch and remotely disable offenders who bypass the NT portal restrictions.
When I get around to utilizing the new method, Iâll keep my method in place to see if the new mechanism can be cheated. I donât want to sound cynical but itâs probably a matter of time before someone figures it out so a multi-layer approach is probably not a bad idea.
I tried setting up the UBL system, but I wasnât satisfied with its functionality, so I ended up creating my own user portal on a next.js app with Clerk.com user portal auth that validates my users indicators based on the userâs NinjaTrader account ID. Here are the questions I asked NinjaTrader and their corresponding responses:
1. Runtime Entitlement API: Is there currently a NinjaScript-callable API to check if the logged-in user has an active entitlement for a specific product? Something like: bool hasLicense = NinjaTrader.Core.Licensing.CheckUserEntitlement(âProductNameâ);
1A. There is no means to call out to verify a license for Machine ID nor User Based Licensing. The same limitation of the NinjaScript callout only occurring on load of the Add On still applies.
2. Blocking Mechanism: Without this runtime check, what is the recommended approach to prevent unauthorized indicator execution? Should we continue using VendorLicense() alongside UBL for now?
2A. VendorLicense() is still the callout function as it was for Machine ID Based Licensing.
3. Timeline: If the runtime API isnât available yet, can you provide an estimated timeline for when this functionality will be released? This will help me plan my product launch and migration strategy.
3A. There is no plan for a run-time API.
4. Best Practices: For vendors currently in the UBL beta, whatâs the recommended approach for production indicators? Should we maintain dual licensing (VendorLicense + UBL) until the runtime API is available?
4A. User Based Licensing is not in Beta, it is in production.
5. Session Refresh: When a license is revoked via the Ecosystem API, what triggers are required for the platform to recognize the change? Is a full restart necessary, or will signing out/in be enough?
5A. Just like with Machine ID Based Licensing, the User Based Licensing still require the restart of the platform for the user to see the change to their license.
Thank you sharing all of that really helpful information.
The Clerk.com service you are using looks really good⌠feature-rich and affordable. I hadnât heard of it, thank you! I could see using it for different purposes in the years ahead to make sure we get paid for certain other products or services we may sell in the future (not just an alternative user-based licensing system specifically for commercial NinjaScript indicators, strategies, add-ons, etc.).
The official responses from NinjaTrader you shared were really helpful also. I understand the things you were asking for, and how the NinjaTrader vendor licensing system does not handle those things. For us at Quagensia, we only have one product that needs to be protected using the NinjaTrader vendor licensing system, and we have decided we are OK with a user whose paid license has expired or that has been revoked being able to use Quagensia until they close and reopen NinjaTrader, as our belief is that it is only a matter of time before the trader needs to close and reopen NinjaTrader or reboot their computer.
Hi @QuantKey_Bruce, Thank you for sharing information about your really impressive licensing (and much more!) service. I took a look at your website and pricing page⌠so impressive really! We at Quagensia will certainly keep your offering in mind in the future, and I highly recommend that other business owners (and aspiring business owners) who offer products for NinjaTrader users to take a look at the page @QuantKey_Bruce linked to above.
I just started as a vendor, so I have only used the user-based licensing (although I am a user of a couple machine-based licenses). Almost everything has worked really well â automatic free trials, modifying licenses, etc.
The only problem Iâve had seems to stem from users who use the âSign in with Googleâ option â no free trials are assigned to these users, and manually creating licenses for them doesnât work either. The only fix I have found is creating a new NT account and using the normal username/password method to sign in. Iâve contacted support to see if there is a fix for this issue.
Thanks @Travis_Wagner for this valuable information. You are the first vendor to mention this issue in this thread. I (and I am sure the other vendors in this community) would really appreciate it if you would post back to this thread if you hear back from the NinjaTrader team about this âSign in with Googleâ issue one way or another. This is yet another reason for the perhaps overly cautious vendors like me to wait a little longer before adding user-based licensing to our products. User-based licensing sounds so promising once any remaining issues get ironed out or at least get documented officially by NinjaTrader so we vendors know what to tell our customers (like âif you use âSign in with Googleâ you will need to let us know so we can do such-and-suchâ).
After setting it up and testing it, I actually do like the concept behind the new email-based licensing system - from a usability standpoint, having activation tied to the customerâs email is straightforward and convenient. That part works well.
The issue I ran into, however, is what I consider the real value proposition of the system: automation. Specifically, the ability to integrate NinjaTraderâs API with PayPal so that license activation and deactivation can happen automatically based on payment status.
Unfortunately, NinjaTrader hasnât yet released any documentation - or at least none that Iâve seen - to guide vendors on how to make that integration happen. Iâve been in touch with vendor support, and it sounds like this feature just isnât fully fleshed out yet. No webhook documentation, no clear endpoints, nothing we can plug into our checkout systems.
Thatâs the roadblock for me. The whole reason I was excited about the new system was to automate licensing - have a PayPal checkout trigger an API call to activate the license, and if a payment fails or a subscription is canceled, deactivate it. Without that, it still leaves a manual bottleneck, which is exactly what I was hoping to get rid of.
So right now, Iâm stuck in limbo - the tech has potential, but until they release proper integration support, itâs not something I can rely on for live use.
Would love to hear if anyone else has figured out a workaround or has inside info on when documentation might be released.