Why are software keys cheaper here than on the vendor site?

It is the right question to ask, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a marketing one.

Discounted licence keys reach resellers through several routes. They are not equally legitimate, and the difference matters to you because it determines whether your licence still works in a year.

Where cheaper keys come from

Regional pricing. Vendors price the same product differently by market. A key sourced where the local price is lower is genuinely cheaper, though moving licences across regions may conflict with the vendor's terms.

Volume allocation. An organisation buys a large activation pool and does not use all of it. The surplus gets sold on. Whether that is permitted depends entirely on the volume agreement — often it is not.

Unbundled OEM. Licences meant to ship pre-installed on hardware, sold separately. Cheap, and permanently tied to the first machine.

Recovered or fraudulent keys. Keys bought with stolen cards, or harvested from refunded orders. These get revoked, usually weeks or months later — long after the seller has your money. This is the category to avoid, and it is the reason "too cheap" is a real signal.

What actually protects you

Price alone tells you very little. These do:

• Does the seller state the licence type? Retail, OEM, Volume, BIND. A seller who will not say is a seller who does not want you to know.
• Is there a stated replacement or refund policy, with a time window? A key that dies in month three is only a problem if nobody stands behind it.
• Can you reach a human before you buy? Test it. Ask a question and see what comes back.
• Does the price make sense for the type? An OEM key at a steep discount is ordinary. A volume-only enterprise product at consumer pricing is not.

Being straight about our own position

We are a reseller. We are not Microsoft, Adobe or any other vendor, and we do not claim to be an authorised partner of the vendors whose products we list. What we do commit to:

• Every listing states its licence type where the supplier provides it.
• If a key does not activate, we replace it or refund you under our refund policy.
• If you want to know the source of a specific listing before buying, ask us — contact support — and we will tell you what we know.

If a seller will not answer that last question, that is your answer.