Licensing & paid features

Introduced in v1.14.0

The self-hosted ZaneOps core is free and MIT-licensed, and always will be. A small set of team-oriented features are additive, shipped in the Enterprise Edition (EE) build, and unlocked by an optional paid license.

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Free tier

Without any license, your instance runs on the free tier:

Limit	Value
Workspaces	1
Users	3 (workspace members + pending invitations)

Everything else (unlimited projects, services, environments, deployments, preview environments, Docker Compose stacks, Git apps) is unaffected by licensing.

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What a license unlocks

Licenses come in tiers. The Starter tier unlocks:

Feature	Description
Extra workspaces	Create more than one workspace on the same instance
Extra user seats	Add more than 3 users across your workspaces

And more features will be available for licensed instances.

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Enterprise Edition build

Licensing and every paid feature live in the Enterprise Edition image, published as ghcr.io/zane-ops/app:ee-<version>. The default ghcr.io/zane-ops/app:<version> image is pure MIT and contains no licensing code at all: the Server admin > License page and the paid features are simply absent.

To switch an existing instance to the EE image, edit docker-stack.prod.yaml and add the ee- prefix to the image tag on the zane-app, zane-temporal-main-worker and zane-temporal-schedule-worker services:

docker-stack.prod.yaml

  zane-app:
    image: ghcr.io/zane-ops/app:ee-${IMAGE_VERSION}
  # ...
  zane-temporal-main-worker:
    image: ghcr.io/zane-ops/app:ee-${IMAGE_VERSION}
  # ...
  zane-temporal-schedule-worker:
    image: ghcr.io/zane-ops/app:ee-${IMAGE_VERSION}

The zane-proxy image is unchanged. Then redeploy:

make deploy

Same ZaneOps, plus ee/

The EE image is the same codebase with the ee/ directory included. The core stays free and MIT-licensed; only the extra ee/ features need a license to unlock.

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How licensing works

• A license is a signed key issued by the ZaneOps license server (api.zaneops.dev).
• It is bound to your instance: an instance fingerprint (a hash of an ID generated on first boot) is registered with the license server when you install the key. The same key cannot be used on another instance at the same time.
• Your instance re-validates the license with the license server periodically (roughly every 12 hours). If the license has expired, been unbound, or been rebound to another instance, it is removed automatically and the instance falls back to the free tier.
• There is one license per instance (a singleton). Installing a new key replaces the previous one.

Offline instances

Installing, removing and re-validating a license all require your instance to reach api.zaneops.dev over HTTPS. Fully air-gapped instances stay on the free tier.

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Installing a license

Requires the EE build

The Server admin > License page only exists on the Enterprise Edition build. Switch your instance to the ee- image first.

1. Buy a license from zaneops.dev. You receive a License ID.

2. In ZaneOps, go to Server admin > License. This area is only available to the instance owner (the first user of the instance).

   

3. Enter your License ID, then submit. ZaneOps contacts the license server, binds the license to this instance, and installs it.

4. Once installed, the page shows the tier, expiry date, who installed it, and the instance fingerprint the license is bound to.

Removing a license

From the same page, choose Uninstall. ZaneOps unbinds the license from this instance on the license server, so you can re-use it elsewhere, and stops the periodic re-validation. The instance returns to the free tier.

Going back over the limits

If you remove a license (or it expires) while you have more than one workspace or more than 3 users, existing resources keep working, but you won’t be able to create new workspaces or invite new users until you are back under the free-tier limits or install a valid license again.

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Privacy

Installing a license shares your instance fingerprint and license ID with the ZaneOps license server so the key can be issued and bound. See the Privacy Policy for what is collected and retained.