Licensing and Activation
Connect a paid plan to your self-hosted control plane.
Your purchase lives in your ZenSailor account. Your paid features turn on after you connect that purchase to the self-hosted control plane. Activation takes about a minute and does not require an environment change or container restart.
Before you start: you need an active ZenSailor plan, platform-owner
access to the control plane, and outbound HTTPS access to znowsoft.com.
Activate your instance#
- Copy your activation key — sign in to your ZenSailor account. Your active plan card shows a protected activation key and a Copy key button.
- Open license settings — in your self-hosted control plane, open Settings → License. Only a platform owner can access this page.
- Paste and activate — paste the key and select Activate. ZenSailor verifies the plan, binds it to this instance, and updates the plan limits immediately.
- Confirm the status — the license page shows the verified tier. You can return there at any time to check the entitlement, replace a key, or refresh the lease.
What each status means#
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active | The paid entitlement is verified and the plan limits apply. |
| Grace period | Paid access continues while the control plane retries a failed entitlement refresh. |
| Needs attention | The key could not be verified. Check the key and outbound connectivity, then select Check again. |
| Community | No activation key is connected, so Community limits apply. |
How the key is protected#
- The control plane stores the activation key with its private instance identity on the persistent data volume.
- The private Ed25519 identity key never leaves your server.
- Entitlement leases are signed and bound to this specific ZenSailor instance.
- Replacing a key keeps the local instance identity stable and commits the new state only after a successful verification.
Existing deployments that use ZNOWSOFT_LICENSE_KEY keep working. Open
Settings → License once to manage future changes from the UI.