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cloud-vs-self-hosted Cloud or self-hosted Cloud or self-hosted

Vantage runs in two ways. It is the same software; what differs is who runs it, and how licensing and user accounts work.

At a glance

Cloud Self-hosted
Who runs it We do You do
Where you sign in <your-slug>.vantage.hostxtra.co.uk Your own hostname
Database and backups Ours Yours
Licence Installed for you You paste it in
Team members Granted from Vantage HQ Created in the instance itself
Free tier Yes, one per account Yes, one per account
Expired Free instance Eventually deleted, after warning emails Never deleted

Cloud

You create an instance from the Vantage HQ portal and it is ready seconds later, already licensed. People you grant access to get a real account inside that instance, but Vantage HQ owns their password and role. See People and roles.

Your instance keeps working whether or not Vantage HQ is reachable. Signing in and managing servers never depend on it.

Cloud instances on the Free tier are deleted some time after their licence expires, with warning emails first. See Free tier.

Self-hosted

You run Vantage with Docker Compose on your own infrastructure. It needs no connection to us at runtime, because a licence is a signed file your install checks for itself.

Two ways to get one:

  1. Free. Link the install to a Vantage HQ account and claim it. See Claim a Free licence.
  2. Paid. Buy from Vantage HQ, then paste your install's instance ID to have the licence issued. See Self-hosted instances.

People who sign in to a self-hosted install are created in the install itself, either with a password or through single sign-on. Vantage HQ cannot add them for you.

Which should you pick

Pick cloud if you want it running today and would rather not run a database. Pick self-hosted if your policy requires the control plane inside your own network, or the servers you manage cannot reach the internet.

Moving between the two means migrating your data, and a new licence, since a licence is tied to one instance.

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