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Self-hosted or hosted? ​

Both options run the same License Server, with the same API and the same behavior. Nothing you build against one has to change to work with the other. The decision is about where the data lives, who operates the server, and what you want to be responsible for — not about features.

This page is the long version. The short one is on casazium.com/pricing.

The honest summary ​

Take the hosted tier unless you have a reason not to. It is free for up to 5 active licenses, there is no server to run, and you can leave with your data at any time.

Self-host when your data has to sit on infrastructure you control — a regulatory requirement, a contract with your own customer, an air-gapped environment, or a considered preference — or when you expect to outgrow the hosted plans and would rather pay for a license than a subscription.

Most people asking this question are one developer shipping a desktop app. That person should use the hosted tier and spend the afternoon on their own product instead.

What actually differs ​

Self-hostedHosted
Where it runsYour own server or containerCasazium-managed
SetupDeploy the image, configure four secretsSign up
Data locationYour own databaseCasazium's multi-tenant database
IsolationPhysical — your own instanceLogical — tenant scoping enforced on every request
Upgrades and patchingYouCasazium
Contacts CasaziumNeverContinuously, by definition
Active license limitNone imposed by Casazium5 on Free, 100 on Pro
CostLicensed, with a 30-day evaluation$0, or $39/month for Pro
If Casazium stopsA final build with no activation check, yours to keep — EULA §890 days' notice and an export window — Terms

The self-hosted build never phones home ​

Worth stating plainly, because buyers of on-prem software assume the opposite: the self-hosted build does not contact Casazium at all. Not for license validation, not for telemetry, not on a schedule.

Its own license is a signed file, verified locally against a public key (Installation's TIER_A_LICENSE_FILE). That is not a setting you switch off — the call-home module is a build-time choice and is not compiled into the build you receive, so there is nothing to disable, firewall or audit for.

Practically, this is what makes it deployable in an air-gapped network, behind an egress allowlist, or anywhere a security review would ask "what does it talk to?" and expect a list.

(The license does expire, and a lapsed one is a commercial matter between you and Casazium — not something the software reports on. See EULA §8 for what happens if Casazium stops operating: a final build with the activation check removed, yours to keep running.)

What does not differ ​

  • The API. Same endpoints, same request and response shapes, same rate-limit categories. The API reference applies to both.
  • The SDK. @casazium/license-sdk points at whichever base URL you give it.
  • Your exit. Both let you export every license, activation and billing record you own, as JSON, with no support request and no waiting period. See Exporting Your Data.

That last row is the point of the whole arrangement: choosing one does not lock you out of the other.

The part people underestimate ​

Self-hosting is not hard to start — it is a container, a database and four secrets. What it costs you is ongoing: patching the host, watching the disk, testing that your backups actually restore, and noticing when it stops responding at 2 a.m. That is real work, and it does not go away.

A licensing server also has an unusual property: when it is down, your customers cannot use software they have already paid for. Verification failures are the visible kind of outage. If you self-host, plan for that — which is what the v1.2.0 continuous replication feature is for — or let someone else carry it.

Cost, honestly ​

The hosted Free plan covers 5 active licenses, which is enough to integrate, test, and ship to your first few customers. Pro is $39/month for 100.

Self-hosting is licensed, not free — you buy a license, and there is a 30-day evaluation to try it first. Add your own hosting on top: a small VPS and object storage for backups. Past roughly a hundred active licenses the license starts to look cheaper than the subscription; below that it rarely does, once your time is counted.

Switching later ​

You can move in either direction. Export your data from one side, import it on the other, and repoint the base URL in your application — the keys your customers hold keep working, because the license key is not tied to the host that issued it.

The one thing to plan for is the base URL itself: if your shipped application has a Casazium URL compiled into it, changing hosts means shipping an update. Read it from configuration rather than hardcoding it, and this stays a five-minute change.

Next steps ​