Defining and counting pageviews in a webfont licence.

What a pageview means in a web licence

Many web licences cap the licensed site’s traffic at a number of pageviews a month and stop there, with no definition of a pageview. Buyers then read it in whatever way their analytics tool counts, which is usually the most generous one. A definition in the licence settles it before anyone has to argue.

A workable definition answers four questions.

What is counted

The usual answer is one load of one page in a browser, on a licensed domain, however many styles the page uses. Ten styles on one page are still one pageview. Decide whether you count every page on the site or only pages that use the fonts. Counting the whole site is simpler for the buyer, since it is the figure their analytics already show. Counting only pages with the fonts is fairer to a large site that uses your face on a single campaign section.

Over what period

Most licences say “per month”. Say whether that means a calendar month, and whether a single month above the limit is a breach or whether you look at an average. An average over three months absorbs a launch or a news story that triples traffic for a week. A licence measured on the peak month pushes buyers to a higher tier than their normal traffic needs.

Across which domains

Say whether the limit is a total across every licensed domain or applies to each domain separately. A total is the common choice and the easier one to check.

What is left out

Traffic from bots and crawlers is usually excluded, though analytics tools filter it differently. Staging, development and local copies of the site are best excluded by name, which the next section covers.

Domains, subdomains and staging sites

A web licence names the sites it covers. Write down how a domain is read: whether example.com includes www.example.com, whether it includes shop.example.com, and whether a wildcard licence for every subdomain is available and at what price. A company with a dozen regional subdomains is a different customer from one with a single site.

Allow staging and development copies by default. Every site is built and tested somewhere before it goes live, and a licence that makes the developer buy a second tier for a password-protected staging server produces either an annoyed email or a quiet breach. Many foundries allow a small number of extra non-public domains for this and exclude them from the count.

Agencies building for clients raise the same question as on desktop: the licence should be in the client’s name, for the client’s domains, with the agency allowed to install it. The guide to font EULAs covers the agency clause.

Designing the pageview tiers

Units vary widely between foundries. A survey on Alphabettes counted 24 different units of measure across the licences it looked at (The font licensing mess), and web licences alone are sold by pageviews, by visitors, by domains and by year. Pageviews are the most common unit for web, and a buyer can read their own number from their analytics before they pay.

The bands below are an example, priced as multiples of the smallest tier.

Traffic in each band is four to five times the band below, while the price only doubles. That flattening is deliberate: a site with ten times the traffic rarely has ten times the type budget, and a steep curve sends large buyers to a free family instead. Keep the number of bands small. Each extra band is one more choice a buyer can get wrong at checkout.

Put a ceiling on the published bands and quote above it. A site with several million pageviews a month usually wants other terms as well: more domains, an app, a term with renewal, and an invoice in its own company name. A quote lets you settle those together.

Self-hosted files and hosted kits

With a self-hosted licence, the buyer downloads WOFF2 files and serves them from their own server. It is simple for them, quick for their visitors, and keeps visitors’ IP addresses away from a third party, which some European buyers ask for. You see nothing afterwards: the count rests on the buyer reporting their own traffic, and the files can be copied to another site without you knowing.

With a hosted kit, the buyer links a stylesheet that you serve. You can check which site asks for the fonts and count the requests. In return you take on keeping the service up, since a client’s site depends on it, and their visitors’ browsers send requests to you, which your privacy policy and the buyer’s should both mention.

Many foundries offer both and let the buyer choose. A self-hosted licence then relies on trust and the occasional check, and a hosted one on a count.

How usage can be measured, and its limits

There are three common sources for a pageview figure, and each misses something.

The buyer’s own analytics

Easy to ask for and familiar to the buyer. It depends on their honesty and on their analytics tool, and ad blockers and consent banners keep many visits out of it.

Requests for the stylesheet

A hosted kit can count loads of its stylesheet. Browsers cache the stylesheet, so a visitor reading several pages within the cache time is counted once. Single-page applications, which change pages without reloading the stylesheet, are undercounted in the same way.

Requests for font files

Font files are usually cached for a long time, often a year, so file requests track new visitors far more than pageviews. They are a poor measure on their own.

Checking the site that asks for the fonts relies on the address the browser sends. That stops another website from using your kit. It doesn’t stop someone fetching the files with a script that sends a fake address, and those requests are counted too. Every figure is an estimate. Use it to start a conversation with a buyer, and keep fingerprinted files or a signed order record for the cases where you need proof of where a copy came from.

When a site goes over its licence

Switching a kit off when a site passes its limit breaks a client’s live website, usually one built by an agency that has since moved on, and punishes the person who bought a licence in good faith. It also tends to happen on the site’s best day.

A better order of events, written into the licence so the buyer knows it in advance:

1. Look at whether the site has been over for more than one month or had a single spike.
2. Write to the licensee with the figures, the tier they hold and the tier their traffic fits.
3. Offer the upgrade at the difference in price between the two tiers, so they pay only for the extra.
4. Give a period to respond, such as 30 days, before treating it as a breach.

The guide to font EULAs covers versioning the licence text when you add a clause like this. This isn’t legal advice. Have a lawyer read your own text.

Renewals and term web licences

A perpetual web licence with a pageview cap is the most common shape, and it leaves you with no natural point to look at usage again. A web licence sold for a year, renewed at the tier that fits the past year’s traffic, builds that point in. Buyers accept it more readily for large sites, which are used to annual software contracts, than for small ones. Whichever you choose, say in the licence what happens to a hosted kit when a term ends or a payment is refunded.

Where Typetin fits

Typetin can host a kit for each web licence: a stylesheet the buyer links, with WOFF2 files fingerprinted for their order, including the licensee’s name, or their email when no name was given, served only to pages on the licensed domains and up to five extra staging domains. Each load of the stylesheet counts as a pageview, totalled by calendar month against the tier’s limit. Nothing is cut off when a kit goes over: you see the usage in the admin and decide what to say to the buyer. Hosted kits start on the Foundry plan. How hosted webfonts work in Typetin.