I've been looking for solutions that provide a couple of types of protection and dotfuscator has been what I've landed on each time I look. Specifically, I like:
Now, I know that there's lots of alternatives to the first, some of which are free, but are there alternatives to the others? It's not that I don't want to pay the cost of dotfuscator suite, but I want to be informed before I write the cheque.
As an alternative, you can try the CryptoLicensing + Crypto Obfuscator package which will get you all that you want:
Usage analytics - CryptoLicensing provides ability to notify the license service whenever the license is validated (typically app start-up). You can mine these notification entries to determine usage stats.
Tamper detection/notification - Both Crypto Obfuscator and CryptoLicensing has tamper detection features.
Shelf-life enforcement - I am assuming this means nothing more than time limited licenses? If so, CryptoLicensing allows this using various parameters - max usage days, max unique usage days, max executions, absolute date of expiration, max run-time, max cumulative run-time.