Activating Your License

DeployOS licenses are verified offline, inside the app itself — there's no phone-home check and no account required to keep working. The portal only exists to issue and manage the key; the app never has to call home to validate it.

Get a key

• Signing up at /login with just an email mints a Free license immediately and emails it to you.
• Buying Solo or Pro from pricing mints a paid key the moment checkout completes — see License Plans & Billing.
• AppSumo buyers redeem their code at /appsumo-redemption — see Redeeming an AppSumo Code.

Every key is also visible in your dashboard, with a Copy key button.

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Activate it in the app

1. Open DeployOS and go to Settings → License.
2. Paste the full key (it's a long signed token, not a short code).
3. The app verifies the signature locally and unlocks the plan's features immediately — no internet connection required after that point.

Your plan badge appears in the sidebar once activated.

Attaching a key you already have to a different account

If you were issued a key under one email but want it visible in a different portal account, go to /dashboard/activate and paste it there — it only attaches if the key was issued to that account's email address.

What activation checks

1. The key's Ed25519 signature is verified locally — this always works, offline or not, and is what actually unlocks the plan's features in the UI.
2. The app also pings the portal to register the device against your license's seat count (Solo = 1 device, Pro = 3 — see License Plans & Billing). If you're over your seats, that call fails with a clear message telling you which device names are already using it.
3. If the portal is unreachable — no internet, firewall, mydeployos.com is down — that seat check is treated as a soft pass. You are never locked out of an already-working install just because it can't phone home.

To free up a seat, go to Settings → License → Deactivate on the device you're retiring, or upgrade to a plan with more seats.

💡 Tip — a one-time license keeps unlocking its features indefinitely, independent of the portal. What lapses after your updates window ends (see License Plans & Billing) is eligibility for new app updates — not the license itself.

Next: Adding a Server.