Free Licenses
Sometimes we provide free license keys for selected items of software. To take advantage of these offers, all you need to do is simply to publish a mini-review and then link to it from the home page of your public website. You'll need to tell us where the mini-review link is and once we've verified it we'll issue a free license to you. As an alternative you can always purchase a commercial license.
We also issue free licenses of any of our software to worthy causes and notable individuals on a discretionary basis. In general worthy causes and notable individuals are subject to relaxed rules on mini-reviews. However the fact that we relax the rules here does mean that there is a level of discretion involved and that not everyone who applies will get accepted.
You can enjoy the full use of our product without the need to apply for this special offer right away. All of our products will work on a 30 day trial basis uninterrupted, giving you time to decide whether or not to apply for a free license.
Please note that a mini-review entitles you to one licence covering one software installation. If you need to install on more than one system you must purchase extra licenses.
We expect that the mini-review and link will be maintained at least as long as you are using our software.
Mini-review Guidelines
If you find a product of ours useful then we'd really like you to tell the world!
In your own words simply describe how it provides a good match for your requirements. There's a great chance your comments may help someone else out there faced with a similar task.
Ideally the mini-review should be published on your public website. Other sites such as blogs and public forums may also be suitable locations for mini-reviews, however they must be openly accessible. Note that sites requiring registration or password verification are not what we would regard as suitable. As a general rule, if your review can be found by submitting queries to the main page of a public search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, then we will regard your article as publicly accessible.
You'll also need to link directly to the mini-review from the default page of your public website. This should be the site that best represents you and your organisation. We expect to see at least five pages of content on your public website, and verifiable contact information such as addresses and telephone numbers. The domain owner of the website must also be verifiable, and not hidden by a proxy service. Please note that we do not accept placeholder sites or subdomains such as intranets, extranets and portals. This is because they are not what we would classify as your public web site. Almost by definition subdomains only represent one aspect of your company. Almost by definition a placeholder site does not represent you properly.
The mini-review must include a hypertext link to our website. People typically link through to a product specific page, although you can use one of our URLs: http://www.html-to-pdf.org, http://www.websupergoo.com, http://www.abcpdf.com, http://www.abcupload.com, http://www.abcdrawhtml.com.
Using meaningful text and descriptions in links will assist visitors in deciding whether to visit our site or not. For example, if you're using ABCpdf to convert web pages to PDF, you might choose wording such as:
We recommend ABCpdf for converting HTML documents to PDF…
Worthy Causes
We like to support the community. So we're willing to offer free licenses of any of our software to charitable groups and other worthy causes.
Please do not assume that we will know you are a worthy cause unless you have emailed us first. We have very specific requirements. Simply entering notes into the application form is not sufficient.
Please be aware that we judge worthy cause applications on both worthiness and also need. Not every worthy cause will be judged eligible. Not every non-profit organization will be judged suitable. Please do not take this as any reflection on you or the quality and utility of your work.
To take an example - the US Military. It's a non-profit organization and it's a worthy cause staffed by responsible people doing good work. However it's not really the type of organization we're going to be issuing free licenses to because it's well funded and it doesn't need this kind of help.
Please write to us explaining what kinds of things you do and how your cause is organized. If your organization has accounts we'd like to see them to establish how income is apportioned. We expect financial transparency - your accounts must be publicly available. The only exceptions we make are for organizations which obviously have no need of accounts such as Scout Packs and school projects.
We like to support causes with lots of volunteers. We like causes like Medecins Sans Frontieres. We are unlikely to support causes which provide directors or employees with large salaries (eg more than $100,000 per year) or which do not result in the majority of aid being passed on to those who need it.
If you are applying as a worthy cause you will need to place a link on the site on which it is used. You will need to state that the software has been kindly donated by WebSupergoo. We'll probably state this on our site as well.
Notable Individuals
So what is a notable individual?
We're looking for people who are passionate about areas that interest us. People who make a significant public contribution in these areas. By public contribution we mean something done for free. A service provided as a gift to the community and not for profit.
For example we think Wikipedia is great and we're happy to offer free licenses to those who make significant contributions in areas that interest us. No linkback is required for this type of free license.
So if you make regular contributions to the PDF, PostScript and JPEG pages you might be interested in a free license for ABCpdf. Alternatively if you make regular contributions to the HTTP and .NET pages you might want to look at a free license for ABCUpload .NET.
In the case of Wikipedia we need to look up your name so that we can find out in what ways you've contributed. As such please supply us with a URL to your Wikipedia user page. So that we can verify that you are who you say you are - please put your email address on your user page - this should match up with the email address you use when you contact us. If you don't wish to advertise your complete email address just note the domain name. Please do not use freemail addresses such as hotmail or gmail.
We judge your application on a number of factors based on your contributions over the last calendar month. In general we'll be expecting to see a number of contributions totaling at least four hundred words on pages directly relevant to areas we're interested in. However there is some leeway if we feel that the quality or relevance of your contributions is particularly notable.
Just because we talk about Wikipedia doesn't mean we're restricting this offer to it. For example if you make similar contributions to newsgroups we're happy to look at these as well. However we may not be familiar with other platforms and we can find it difficult to judge the quality of your work. In these cases we tend to err on the side of caution so it may be that the bar is slightly raised for platforms we don't understand.
If you feel you might be a notable individual please contact us providing the information listed above. Please bear in mind that notable individuals are by definition rare and that you can always apply on the basis of a mini-review - the same basis as everyone else.
Telling Us
Please use our standard application form to submit your application. Please don't be put off by the legal nature of the form - it just repeats what's said on this page.
Please allow five working days for the issue of your license. Links have to be manually checked and this can take a little time. Once you get your license, take care of it. If you lose it you will have to reapply to get it reissued.
Current special offers are for 'ABCpdf .NET Standard', 'ABCUpload ASP', 'ABCUpload .NET', 'ABCDrawHTML' and 'ABCEventLog'. Other products are not available on special offer.
Please note that special offers do have a limited life span. We'll extend any offer a couple of weeks if you've been relying on it. However we can't extend offers indefinitely.
We want people to use our products. Help us help you.