Licensing¶
KubeSentry uses fully offline licensing. Your license is a signed token that the collector verifies in-cluster using a built-in public key. There's no phone-home, no license server your cluster talks to, and no telemetry — activation works in air-gapped environments.
Trial¶
Every fresh install starts in a 7-day trial with full functionality. You'll see a yellow banner in the dashboard for the duration. The trial state is tracked inside the cluster on the collector's data volume, so restarts don't reset or extend it.
When the trial ends, activate a license to keep the banner off and continue receiving updates.
Plans¶
| Plan | Price (one-time) | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | $99 | Individuals / very small clusters |
| Team | $299 | Small teams |
| Pro | $499 | Larger deployments |
Each plan includes 12 months of updates. After that, updates continue for $49/year — your existing install keeps running either way; renewal only affects access to new versions.
Purchase from the KubeSentry site. Checkout is handled through Lemon Squeezy; your license is emailed to you automatically right after purchase.
Activate your license¶
Your license arrives by email as a token string. Apply it as the license Helm value and upgrade:
helm upgrade kubesentry kubesentry/kubesentry \
--namespace kubesentry \
--set license="<your-license-token>"
The chart stores the token in a Kubernetes Secret automatically and mounts it into the collector — it's never kept as a plain-text env value.
Keep the token out of your shell history
Tokens are long. To avoid pasting it on the command line, put it in a file and use --set-file, or reference it from your values.yaml:
After the upgrade rolls, reload the dashboard — the trial banner disappears and your plan is shown. Any alerts collected during the trial are preserved.
How verification works¶
Licenses are signed with an Ed25519 key. The matching public key is compiled into the collector, so it can validate a license entirely offline — it checks the signature and the embedded plan and expiry without contacting anything. If a token is missing, malformed, or its signature doesn't verify, KubeSentry falls back to trial/expired-trial behavior rather than failing shut.
Renewing updates¶
When your 12 months of included updates lapse, renew for $49/year from the same account. Renewal issues a fresh token; apply it the same way as the initial activation.
Lost your license?¶
Licenses are tied to your purchase email. Retrieve it from your Lemon Squeezy order confirmation, or contact support (see the KubeSentry site) with your order details.