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- Case study · Software licensing · .NET and nopCommerce
Montage
An online store for software licences, with vendor payouts and bookkeeping built in
Industry: Software vendors and licensing,
Built in: about 5 months · Client:
- Buy a licence, invite your team, done
- Every sale split and booked automatically
The problem
Selling software licences by hand does not scale
sells software products made by several vendors. Before Montage, a sale meant a manual invoice, a licence key emailed by hand, users added one by one, and a spreadsheet to work out how much of each sale belonged to which vendor. As the catalogue grew, so did the mistakes.
Montage is the store and the back office in one. A company buys a licence, invites its people, and they get access. Behind the scenes the sale is taken through PayPal, fees are deducted, the vendor’s share is calculated, and the accounting entries are written without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
We built it on nopCommerce and .NET, the client’s existing stack, rather than starting from zero. Faster to ship, and their own team can maintain it.
Key Capabilities
What it does, from the buyer’s click to the vendor’s payout.
Product catalogue and pricing
Licences: issue, renew, revoke
Company accounts with roles
PayPal checkout and vendor split
Invite your team by email
Bookkeeping entries written automatically
Orders and order history
Emails that actually arrive
What it looks like
Four screens from the product
Under the hood
What it is built with
The client’s existing Microsoft stack, extended rather than replaced. Nothing exotic, so their own developers can maintain it.
Frontend & Backend
- nopCommerce on ASP.NET MVC, custom plugins and REST APIs
Database
- Microsoft SQL Server
Payments
- PayPal (checkout, fees and vendor split)
Authentication
- Company accounts with role based access
Email Services
- SMTP with retries for invitations and receipts
Version Control
- Perforce (the client's existing version control)
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What made it hard
Money and invitations: the two places software licensing goes wrong
Every sale involves three parties: the buyer, the vendor and the platform. Every licence involves a company and the people it invites. Get either wrong and someone is paid the wrong amount or locked out.
For the business
Business challenges
Many organizations encountered the following operational issues:
- Products and licences tracked in separate places
- Adding a customer's team meant manual account setup
- Vendor shares worked out by hand, with errors
- No clear order history for support to look at
- Invitation and receipt emails going missing
Engineering
Technical Challenges
What we had to solve in the code:
- Invitations: new user, existing user, wrong company, expired link, all handled
- Fees, vendor share and accounting entries correct to the cent
- Emails that retry and report failure instead of vanishing
- A dark mode across a nopCommerce theme not designed for one
- PayPal integration that never stores card data
How it works
Five parts, in the order a sale flows
A buyer invites, pays, gets an order, gets an email,and sees it all in a clean interface. Each part had to be right on its own before they worked together.
Invitations that cover every case
A company admin enters an email. Montage works out whether that person is new, already a user, already in another company, or clicking an expired link, and does the right thing for each without support getting involved.
- Every invite case handled
- Company level checks
- A different email for each case
- STEP 01
Payment and the vendor split
Checkout runs through PayPal. On success, Montage deducts fees, calculates the vendor’s share, and records both sides as accounting journal entries, so the books always match the bank.
- PayPal checkout
- Fee calculation
- Vendor payout and journal entries
- STEP 02
Emails that arrive
Invitations and receipts retry if the mail server is slow, log every attempt, and raise an error a person can see if delivery fails for good.
- SMTP delivery
- Automatic retries
- Visible failures
- STEP 03
Orders you can look up
Every purchase becomes an order with a status and history, so support can answer ‘what did I buy and when’ in one click. The slow queries in the original order flow were rewritten.
- Order records
- Status tracking
- Faster queries
- STEP 04
A theme that works in dark mode
nopCommerce themes are not built for dark mode. We added a global theme layer so every page, plugin and email preview renders consistently in both.
- Global theme layer
- Dark mode
- Consistent rendering across plugins
- STEP 05
Problems on the way
Five things that were hard, and what we did
In plain terms, with the result each one produced.
Invitations kept breaking on edge cases
Solution
Mapped every case (new, existing, other company, expired) and wrote one path for each, with its own email.
Result
Companies add their own people without a support ticket.
Vendor payouts did not add up
Solution
Built one transaction engine that deducts fees, splits revenue and writes the journal entries in a single step.
Result
Payouts match the books to the cent.
Emails went missing
Solution
Fixed the SMTP setup, added retries and made failures visible in the admin.
Result
Invitations and receipts arrive, and when they cannot, someone knows.
Orders were slow to load
Solution
Rewrote the slowest queries and simplified the order processing flow.
Result
Order pages load in [CONFIRM: time] instead of [CONFIRM: time].
Dark mode on a platform that did not support it
Solution
Added a global theme layer above nopCommerce so every screen respects the chosen mode.
Result
One consistent look in light and dark, including third party plugins.
- Where it stands
Montage is live and. Sales, licences, invitations, payouts and bookkeeping run without manual steps, on a stack the client’s own
team can maintain.
~65%
Improvement in order processing performance
Feedback
Hear it from our clients
Reviews
What clients say after launch
Unedited reviews from real projects
The project went well, the team was professional and got up to speed quickly on the work and performed effectively. They help us get the project back on track and now we are in a good position. I will definitely use them in the future for subsequent tasks as they arise. I recommend them and look forward to working with them again in the future!
Jonathan Torleson
I approached Sunil to assist me with a specific part of a project. His quick understanding of the project and clear technical skill and proficiency resulted in his involvement growing into a lead role. Will definitely be working with again in the future.
Adam New
Rajvjay and his team delivered exactly what they promised on time and within budget. They handled every requirement with great care, and I have to say, they're true masters of process. I actually learned a lot about Agile practices and tools like Jira and Trello from them. I'd highly recommend this team to anyone who values a structured, process-driven approach for smooth and efficient project delivery.
Shivangi
Working with Arun has been a great experience! The team is very knowledgeable and has provided several design and product enhancement ideas along the way. I highly recommend!
Gil Comeaux
Sunil showed strong technical knowledge and delivered high-quality work. Communication was clear, deadlines were met, and they handled all tasks professionally. I would be happy to work with them again
Adam New
The RAPROD team sincerely appreciates the work delivered during the development phase. The contractor played an important role in building the core platform and helping establish a stable functional foundation with the current feature set. Their responsiveness, technical capability, and ability to execute on requirements contributed meaningfully to the project’s progress.
Mitesh Shetty
My second engagement with the WebAtlas team was just as great as the first. I handed off a very large codebase to them to take over from a previous developer, which was in a broken state, and they were able to effectively piece it back together, get it running again, and add new capabilities. I highly recommend the team, they are professional and easy to work with. They were flexible and responsive.
Jonathan Torleson
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