Understanding Self-Hosted License Types

Self-hosted licenses operate differently depending on whether you choose Premium or Advanced plans. These differences significantly impact how you manage user access and plan your deployment strategy.

Premium Self-Hosted License Management

Premium self-hosted licenses provide granular control over which users receive premium feature access. Once you register a premium license on your instance, you must manually assign seats to specific users before they can access premium features.

This manual assignment process allows you to optimize your licensing costs by providing premium access only to users who truly need advanced features. You can combine multiple Premium licenses if your user base grows beyond a single license capacity, providing scaling flexibility for large organizations.

The seat assignment process requires administrative attention but provides precise cost control. You choose exactly which users receive premium access, allowing you to mix free and premium users within the same instance based on their actual feature requirements.

Advanced Self-Hosted License Management

Advanced self-hosted licenses operate on an instance-wide basis, meaning all users on the instance receive Advanced plan access regardless of individual seat assignments. This approach simplifies user management but requires different planning considerations.

Unlike Premium licenses, you cannot combine multiple Advanced licenses because the license applies to all instance users automatically. This limitation stems from the Advanced plan’s comprehensive feature set, including single sign-on and role-based permissions that must operate consistently across the entire instance.

Currently, Advanced licenses have relaxed enforcement, allowing you to purchase minimal seats while supporting larger user populations. However, this flexibility will change in upcoming updates. Baserow plans to automatically convert users beyond your licensed seat count to read-only access, making proper seat planning essential for continued functionality.