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License & Tiers

How licensing works, what each tier unlocks, and what happens when a license expires.

How NovaPanel licensing works

Every panel install is bound to a single server via a "machine fingerprint" — a SHA hash derived from the server's hardware/OS identity. The license server issues short-lived JWT tokens (currently 30 days) signed with our Ed25519 private key, bound to that fingerprint.

Your panel verifies tokens offline against an embedded public key. The license server only matters at activation time and during periodic refresh — your panel keeps working through brief outages on our end.

The three tiers

Community

  • Free, forever, auto-issued by the installer
  • 5 sites / 5 databases / 5 customers / 1 admin
  • All core hosting features (Caddy, DNS, FTP, file manager, local backups, cron)
  • License never expires — Community panels keep running indefinitely
  • Locked: WAF, virus scanner, S3/Backblaze backups, email accounts, git deploy, white-label

Pro

  • £4.99/month or £49/year (2 months free)
  • Unlimited sites / databases / customer accounts
  • 3 admin users
  • Unlocks everything: WAF, virus scanner, remote backups, mail, git deploy, white-label branding
  • Subject to renewal — see "expiry" section below

Developer

  • £9.99/month or £99/year (2 months free)
  • Everything in Pro + unlimited admins, priority support, multi-server provisioning hooks
  • Best for agencies running multiple panels and needing deeper support
  • Subject to renewal on the same cycle as Pro

What expiry means

tl;dr: Community never brick — it's free and runs indefinitely. Pro and Developer are paid subscriptions that keep running through a configurable grace window after a billing failure, then disable paid features but leave your sites untouched.

For Pro and Developer, your license has an expiry date driven by the customer's billing cycle (monthly or yearly). Two grace mechanisms apply:

  • JWT refresh: tokens are short-lived (~30 days). Your panel auto-refreshes them in the background as long as the subscription is active and your card is good.
  • Grace period: if a license expires (subscription cancelled, card declined), the panel keeps paid features running for a configurable grace period — default 7 days. After that, paid features become read-only / disabled. Your sites, mail, and data are not deleted.

For Community, the panel ignores JWT expiry entirely — that tier is designed to keep running indefinitely as the free entry point.

Where the license lives on disk

Your activated license is saved at /var/lib/novapanel/license.json. Don't edit it manually — the panel re-validates the signature every time it boots and rejects tampered files.

Moving a license to a different server

Licenses are bound to a specific machine fingerprint. To move:

  1. Sign in to license.novapanel.dev/portal with the email you used at checkout — you'll get a one-click sign-in link
  2. Find the license, click Reset machine binding
  3. On the new server, run novapanel license activate <your-key>

You can reset the binding once per 7 days. More often than that requires support — write to support@novapanel.dev.