Cleat Licensing
Cleat costs 29 dollars once, with a fourteen day trial and no activation server. How keys are verified on your Mac, and what the year of updates covers.
Cleat costs $29, once. That covers every feature and every update released within a year of purchase. After the year the app keeps working, at the last version you received.
The trial
Cleat runs for fourteen days without a key. After that a reminder row appears in the palette and nothing is disabled, locked or removed. Every feature keeps working; you are asked, not stopped.
Activation
Settings › License has a field for the key. Keys look like CLEAT-… and are verified on your Mac with a public key. There is no activation server, no account and no limit on the number of Macs you own.
Updates
Updates come through Sparkle from getcleat.app. They are signed, and the app checks that a release falls inside your update window before offering it.