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Traefik Hub Licensing

This document provides information about licensing.


Request a Free Trial License

If you're interested in trying out Traefik Hub, head over to our signup page and request a free 14-day trial license.

What's Included

All features of Traefik Hub are available for 14 days without any limitations.

Is a Credit/Debit Card Required for the Free Trial?

A credit/debit card is not required for the 14-day free trial.

How Can I Track the Remaining Time of My Trial?

Once your trial license is activated, you will see a counter in the dashboard, displaying how many days are left.

What Happens When the Trial License Expires?

After the trial period, the workspace will be locked, and no changes can be made to it anymore. Your account will not be lost after your free trial expires, you will still be able to log into your Traefik Hub account to view your dashboard.

To continue using Traefik Hub after your free trial, you can purchase a license.


How to Get a License

The Traefik Labs team will unlock your Traefik Hub workspace(s) where you can invite colleagues to collaborate on your API initiatives.


Managing Your Licenses

Traefik Hub is a SaaS solution, you don’t have to do anything, everything is handled by the Traefik Labs team based on your entitlements and contracts.


Updating Your License

You don’t need to perform any license upgrade, renewal or application configuration changes, it’s all handled by the Traefik Labs team.

Please get in touch with your sales engineer or our sales team to ask for the license renewal at the end of the licensed period.

ℹ️ When Traefik Hub gateways are deployed in offline mode (without Internet access), you need to update the license tokens used by your Traefik Hub deployment to reflect the new license expiration date.

Updating License Tokens for Offline Gateways

  1. Contact Sales: Please get in touch with your sales engineer or our sales team to renew your license at the end of the licensed period.
  2. Generate New Token: After your license is renewed, log in to the Traefik Hub dashboard and generate a new token for your gateway.
  3. Update Gateway Configuration: Update the configuration of your offline gateways with the new token.
  4. Restart Gateway: Restart your Traefik Hub deployment to apply the changes.

By updating the license token, you ensure that your offline Gateway are aware of the new license expiration date and continue to operate without interruption.


Increasing Your License

If you want to increase your licensed amounts (amount of Nodes and API Developer Portals), please get in touch with your sales engineer or our sales team.


What Happens When the License Expires?

Traefik Hub licenses have an expiration date, after which your Traefik Hub instances may not function as expected. It’s important to understand how license expiration affects your Traefik Hub deployment, especially in both online and offline scenarios.

License Expiration Notifications

30 days before the license expires, a counter appears in the top left corner of the Traefik Hub dashboard to show a countdown of the remaining days of the licensed period, along with a link to get in touch with the sales team.

Dashboard showing the license expiry date.

15 days before the license expires, both you and our sales team will receive an email notification to discuss the situation and plan for renewal if needed.

Behavior After License Expiration

If the license expires and you decide not to renew it, the behavior of your Traefik Hub instances depends on whether they can communicate with the Traefik Hub SaaS control plane (online) or not (offline).

Online Scenarios

If your Traefik Hub gateways can communicate with the Traefik Hub SaaS control plane, they will receive updates about the license status directly from the platform.

  • License Expired but Within Grace Period: After the license expires, a 30-day grace period begins during which your gateways continue to operate normally, the Traefik Hub dashboard workspace remains accessible but enters a read-only mode where you can view configurations but cannot make modifications, and you will receive notifications to renew your license.
  • License Expired and Grace Period Over: If the license is not renewed within the 30-day grace period, your gateways will stop working. The Traefik Hub dashboard workspace will be locked, and no modifications can be made.

Offline Scenarios

If your Traefik Hub gateways cannot communicate with the Traefik Hub SaaS control plane, they rely on the license token provided during installation, which contains the license expiration date.

  • License Token Expired: If the expiration date in the token has passed, the gateway will not start. If the gateway is already running when the token expires, it will enter a 30-day grace period. During this period, the gateway will continue to operate but will log messages indicating that the license has expired and the grace period has begun.

  • Grace Period Over: After the 30-day grace period, if the license is not renewed and the token is not updated, the gateway will stop working.

Importance of Updating License Tokens

In offline scenarios, even if you have renewed your license with Traefik Labs, you must update the license token in your gateways to reflect the new expiration date. The gateways rely on the expiration date in the token when they cannot contact the Traefik Hub SaaS control plane.

To update the license token:

  • Generate a new token from the Traefik Hub dashboard after renewing your license.
  • Update your gateway configuration with the new token.
  • Restart the gateway to apply the changes.

Read-Only Mode

When the license expires and the grace period has ended, the Traefik Hub dashboard workspace is locked, and no modifications can be made. The gateway will enter a read-only mode, which discards any configuration changes performed via the dashboard or CRDs but continues serving traffic on the data plane without service disruption. However, after the grace period, the gateway will stop working entirely, especially in offline scenarios.

If you decide to renew your license, update your license tokens (especially for offline gateway), and all operations will return to normal without any configuration loss.

API Management Requires Internet Access

If you are using the API Management features of Traefik Hub, the gateway must have access to the Internet to communicate with the SaaS control plane. If the gateway cannot connect to the control plane, it will not start when API Management is enabled.


How Do You Control Licensing?

Traefik Hub is licensed per the number of Nodes hosting the services behind the APIs, and the number of API Developer Portals.

The reporting is done by the Traefik Hub gateways connected to the SaaS control plane.


How Can I Track My Usage?

There are two ways to track your usage.

You can check the floating quota meter on the Traefik Hub dashboard screen:

Dashboard showing the floating info about used quotas.

Or, if you prefer, you can track your usage under your workspace settings:

Workspace showing the used quotas.


What Happens If I Exceed My Entitlements?

We understand that sometimes the most interesting incidents can result in scaling to many more Nodes or that you face unexpected workload for a short period of time.

We want Traefik Hub to be there for you, so Traefik Hub will automatically trigger burst protection for a period of 6 hours.

The only visible impact will be your usage tracking dashboard turning red to notify you.

Dashboard showing quota warning.

Workspace showing quota warning.

If you exceed your Nodes entitlement for a longer period, everything will continue to work, our sales team will be notified and will reach out to you for an agreement to either lower your usage or purchase additional rights.

Six hours burst protection diagram.

If you have any questions about licensing, do not hesitate to contact your sales engineer or by sending an email to [email protected].

What Data Are Shared between the Traefik Hub’s SAAS Control Plane and the Kubernetes Cluster(s)

Please read our data sharing page to learn what data are shared.