Licensing and activation

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.

Activate your instance

1. 1
   Copy your activation key

   Sign in to your ZenSailor account. Your active plan card shows a protected activation key and a Copy key button.

2. 2
   Open license settings

   In your self-hosted control plane, open Settings > License. Only a platform owner can access this page.

3. 3
   Paste and activate

   Paste the key and select Activate. ZenSailor verifies the plan, binds it to this instance, and updates the plan limits immediately.

4. 4
   Confirm the Active 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

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 successful verification.