Standalone works fine here, without serial number, but without any of my custom shop models.
Hard to understand why a serial number would be required for a free edition of a product, when a user account is already required. Only reasons I could think for a serial number
in addition to a user account would be if a user account could have multiple free edition serials (that's weird, and at least rare?) or could sell models attached to the serial but not the account (also odd?). Neither case is worth putting a speed bump in the sales funnel for.
Thinking of speed bumps in the sales funnel...I predict IK could
double its revenue if it spent a quarter removing all of them for all their products. I figured that would be a key design objective for the new product manager/custom shop etc but apparently no. It's like a bureaucracy...stand in line at the DMV to get your serial number, then pay the cashier to get gear credits (maybe with jam points, and don't confuse those!) and then log in with your user account to buy models for that serial number within that account and...
Anyway this is the moment you get useful feedback from customers, once they are through the funnel they forget all that. You don't hear from the ones that didn't make it through the maze...