Premium plugins and licenses

Two plugins are premium: the website plugin (designing a site in the admin, see A website without code) and the AI plugin (see AI). In production they need a license key from a subscription; on your own computer they run without one (see Development and production). Everything else, the CMS itself, workflows and webhooks, is open source under the MIT license and needs none.

Licenses are sold on the license portal, licenses.manablox.io. The portal shows the current prices, monthly or yearly, for each plugin and for the bundle of both.

Start a trial or buy

You only need this for production. On a local instance the premium plugins already run without a key, so there is no need to start a trial just to try them out.

Each plugin has a free 14-day trial, once per plugin. The bundle has no trial of its own: to try both, start a trial of each.

From the project folder, run:

pnpm exec manablox license buy

It asks which plugins you want, opens the portal in your browser and shows a short code. Check that the portal shows the same code, sign in with your email address (the portal sends a sign-in link) and finish the checkout. The portal offers the trial when you have not used it yet. Back in the terminal the key arrives on its own: the command writes it into .env and activates it. Restart the CMS.

To go straight to the trial, add --trial; the portal then leads with it and still checks that the plugin’s trial is unused. On a server without a terminal (a script, CI), say which plugins and how often you pay, since nothing can be asked:

pnpm exec manablox license buy --plugins ai --trial --monthly
pnpm exec manablox license buy --plugins ai,website --yearly

You can also buy on the portal directly (Pricing, then Start free trial or Buy). The portal then shows the key under Subscriptions, and the same key comes by email.

See The manablox command for every manablox license command.

Add a key you already have

A key looks like MBX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. Either:

• run pnpm exec manablox license add MBX-... in the project folder, which writes it into .env and activates it, or
• put it into .env yourself and restart: MANABLOX_LICENSE_KEYS=MBX-..., several keys separated by commas, or
• in the admin, open Settings > Licenses, click Add key and paste it (superadmins only).

Keys are secrets, like passwords. Keep them in .env or the server’s environment, never in manablox.config.ts or in git. Keys added in the admin are stored encrypted in the database; keys from .env show there as coming from the environment and can only be changed there.

Settings > Licenses lists every key with the plugins it covers, when the paid period ends, when the current lease runs out and the last refresh. Refresh now asks the license server at once, Deactivate frees the key on this instance, and Buy or manage opens the portal.

In the terminal, pnpm exec manablox license status shows the same: every key, its plugins, state, period end and last refresh, then the state of each premium plugin. A plugin that runs without a license on a development instance shows as development. The command ends with code 1 while a premium plugin of your config is locked (not while it is development), so a deploy script or a health check can stop on it. pnpm exec manablox license refresh asks the license server at once.

One key per subscription

A subscription holds one plugin, or the bundle of both, and has one key. Buying the two plugins separately gives two keys; put both into MANABLOX_LICENSE_KEYS. The instance gets everything its keys cover together.

Changing the plan on the portal (a single plugin to the bundle, monthly to yearly, more seats) keeps the key.

Development and production

A development instance needs no key: the premium plugins run there for free. Production needs a subscription, one seat per production instance.

	Development	Production
Where	NODE_ENV is not production and every address of the instance is private: localhost, names ending in .localhost, .test, .local or .internal, and addresses of your own network	NODE_ENV=production, or any public address
Key	None needed. A key works too and takes no seat	Needed: an active subscription
Seats	None; as many instances as you like	One seat per instance
Limits	Serves private addresses only. A designed site on a public domain answers “This site runs on a development license”, AI refuses to work on a public address	None

The instance decides on its own, by all its addresses: its URLs, every space’s URL and API hosts, and the website’s domains. On a development instance without a production license the admin shows the notice “Development instance: the premium plugins run without a production license, on private hosts only.” As soon as a public address appears (a site domain, a space URL, an API host) or the instance starts with NODE_ENV=production, it counts as production and the premium plugins lock until a key covers them.

A preview server with a public name of its own can count as private: list it in MANABLOX_LICENSE_DEV_HOSTS. MANABLOX_LICENSE_KIND=development makes the instance a development one whatever NODE_ENV says (its addresses still have to be private), and MANABLOX_LICENSE_KIND=production makes it a production one always (see The .env file).

A subscription’s quantity is its number of seats, one per production instance. When every seat is taken, activating another production instance is refused and names the instances that hold the seats: deactivate one, or add a seat on the portal.

Moving to another server

A seat belongs to the instance, not to the server. To move a production instance:

1. On the old instance, deactivate the key: Settings > Licenses > Deactivate, or pnpm exec manablox license remove <key id>. On the portal, the subscription’s page can deactivate an instance too, for a server that is gone.
2. On the new instance, add the key and restart.

A restored backup is the same instance. When the original and a copy both run with the same license (a backup restored on a second server, a copied database), the license server notices: the copy shows “this license is active on another instance” and locks when its lease runs out, unless you run pnpm exec manablox license activate there, which moves the seat to it.

When a license ends

The instance checks its licenses on its own, with no call to the license server while it serves requests. Once a day it asks the license server for a fresh lease, a signed note of what it may use and until when. A lease lasts at most 14 days after its last refresh, and at most 14 days after the end of the period paid for.

What happened	What you see
A payment failed	A banner that links to the billing page. Nothing locks while the payment is retried
The subscription was canceled	Everything works until the paid period ends, then 14 days of grace with a banner naming the date
The license server cannot be reached	A banner. Nothing locks until the lease runs out, 14 days after the last refresh
A development instance has no key	Nothing locks. A notice says the premium plugins run without a production license, on private addresses only
On a production instance: the lease ran out, or there is no key	The plugin locks, with a buy link

Plugins only lock on production instances. Locked never means lost: your data stays, the CMS keeps starting, and a valid key unlocks everything again at once. What locks:

• AI: the whole plugin. The wands, Generate and the Describe buttons show a lock, and AI steps in workflows stop. Providers, keys and the history stay.
• Website: designing (the designers open read-only), adding or changing site domains, and setting up forms. Designed sites keep rendering on their domains and their forms keep taking submissions.

Manablox Cloud

Instances hosted on Manablox Cloud come with their licenses. Settings > Licenses says “Managed by Manablox Cloud”, and there is nothing to buy per plugin.

Offline instances

An instance must reach the license server now and then, over HTTPS from the server that runs the admin and API. Instances without internet access (air-gapped) are not supported yet: without a refresh a lease runs out after 14 days.

What the instance sends

An instance without a key sends nothing to the license server; a development instance only talks to it once you add a key. When it activates or refreshes a key, the instance sends the key, a random id of the instance, whether it runs as development or production, the Manablox and plugin versions, its addresses (its URLs, space URLs and API hosts, the website’s domains) with the admin’s address as its name, and a secret that proves each refresh comes from the same instance. It sends no content, no users and nothing else from your database.