Why I ended up building my own Laravel licensing package

While working on a Laravel-based SaaS, I ran into something that’s not very exciting but very necessary - licensing.

I needed basic things:

• Limit seats / activations

• Set expiry dates

• Revoke licenses when needed

• Avoid storing plaintext license keys

• Keep everything self-hosted

I looked at existing options. Most were either SaaS tools (which I didn’t want to depend on), very DRM-heavy, or not very Laravel-friendly.

So I built something small for my own project.

It’s not trying to be “unbreakable.” In PHP especially, that’s not realistic. For me, licensing is more about structured lifecycle management and compliance than perfect technical lock-down.

After using it internally, I cleaned it up and open-sourced it.

Based on feedback, I’m now adding optional signed licenses (Ed25519) for cases where offline or cryptographic verification makes sense.

Curious how others here handle licensing for:

• Self-hosted SaaS

• Paid developer tools

• Laravel packages

Do you roll your own? Use a service? Or skip licensing entirely?