Been building self-hosted delivery/licensing infra for a while now, and there's a pattern I keep running into with indie sellers: they treat delivery as an afterthought.

Here's the usual flow — you build a great tool, wire up a payment button, and then... manually email the file. Or worse, you rely entirely on a platform's built-in file delivery with no expiring links, no download caps, no license binding. Within a week your product is on three "leak" Discord servers.

The fix isn't complicated, it's just usually skipped because it feels like backend busywork:

1. Expiring, single-use download links. A permanent public URL to your zip file is a piracy invitation. Links that expire after N hours or M downloads cut casual redistribution dramatically.

2. Per-order license keys with activation limits. Even a dead-simple key check (issued per order, capped at 2-3 activations, revocable) stops naive resharing. It won't stop a determined cracker, but that's not the threat model — casual sharing is.

3. Device binding for anything higher-value. If you're selling a desktop app or a tool with real recurring value, binding a key to a hardware ID or machine fingerprint raises the bar further.

4. Zero-touch fulfillment. The moment a payment succeeds, delivery and key issuance should happen automatically via webhook — not "I'll email it when I'm back at my laptop." Manual fulfillment doesn't scale past your first 20 sales and creates support tickets you don't need.

The honest tradeoff: self-hosting this stuff means you own a VPS, you're on the hook for uptime, and you're not paying a subscription to a third-party delivery SaaS — but you are paying ~€5-15/month in hosting either way. For most indie sellers doing meaningful volume, that math works out in your favor within the first month.

If you're currently manually delivering files or relying on unprotected public links, it's worth the afternoon to fix.