Licensing and activation

A Portiger licence is a key from the customer portal, activated once and kept current afterwards. This page describes how that works and - more importantly - what happens when it does not: an unreachable licence server never stops anything you are running.

Getting a key

Keys are issued in the customer portal, one licence per purchase. The Community key is free and is issued from the same place. There is no installation without a key, and version 1 has no offline or air-gapped licence.

Activating it

Normally at install: portiger install <licence key> verifies and activates before anything else is written, so a key that is already fully used says so at the start rather than half way through.

Afterwards, in the panel under Settings > Licence. Paste the key - they look like PGR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX - and activate. A new key replaces the current licence. That page also shows every limit on the plan with how much of it is in use, which is the same pair of numbers a refused create will quote back at you.

Keeping it current

The entitlement is re-checked with the licence server every six hours, and the check tolerates failure: a check that cannot reach the server records an error you can see in the licence status and never shortens what you already have. A machine that is off the network for an afternoon does not lose its licence.

Only the installation itself talks to the licence server. A node that has joined the pool does not: it is handed what it needs by the installation that activated the key.

Nodes and the key

A licence carries a number of node places. The installed machine takes the first one; each machine added over SSH takes another. When they are all in use the panel says so before you fill anything in, and adding is refused rather than half-done. See Add a node.

When the licence lapses: restricted mode

Losing the licence never stops anything already running. Restricted mode refuses exactly one class of action - create or grow: a new stack, a new node, a new resource. Everything that exists keeps running, stays visible, and can be operated, restarted and backed up. Nothing is stopped, locked or deleted over a billing question.

Plans

Four plans, no add-ons: everything is inside the plan you are on. The full table is on Plans, and current prices are on portiger.com/pricing.