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

Vantage runs in two deployments. They are the same software; what differs is who operates it and how licensing, users and data lifecycle 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 Written for you when you buy or create the instance Pasted in, or claimed from HQ
Team members Granted from HQ; the instance holds a projection Created in the instance itself
Free tier Yes, one per account Yes, one per account
Expired Free instance Eventually deleted, after warning Never deleted

Cloud

You create an instance from the HQ portal and it exists a few seconds later, already licensed. People you grant access to get a real user inside that instance see People and roles but HQ owns their password, role and existence.

:::info The instance does not phone home A grant writes a user row into the control plane once. After that the instance authenticates that person entirely on its own. HQ being down does not stop anyone signing in to a running instance. :::

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

Self-hosted

You run the Docker Compose stack on your own infrastructure. Nothing about the control plane requires an internet connection to HQ at runtime a licence is a signed file, verified locally.

Two ways to get one:

  1. Free link the install to an HQ account and claim it (Claim a Free licence).
  2. Paid buy from HQ, which creates a placeholder, then paste the install's real instance UUID to bind and issue (Self-hosted instances).

Self-hosted users are local (or OIDC). There is no projection from HQ, and the three member endpoints in HQ refuse to touch a self-hosted instance at all.

Which should you pick

Pick cloud if you want the thing running now and do not want to own a MongoDB. Pick self-hosted if your policy requires the control plane inside your own network, or the servers you manage cannot reach the public internet.

Moving between them is a migration, not a switch instances are bound to a deployment at creation, and a licence binds to an instance UUID.

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