Licensing of self-hosted servers

The Sternway apps, the sync server and the documentation are © 2026 IRONPINE LABS LLC, all rights reserved. Using them is governed by Sternway’s own licence terms.

The apps work on their own, offline, with no account and no licence. Licences matter only for teams on a sync server you run yourself.

Without a licence file

A self-hosted server with no licence file (or one past its grace period) gives every team the features that existed before team policies:

• teams with any number of members, shared vaults with edit and view access, and access with an end date;
• read-only session sharing;
• single sign-on, both server-wide OpenID Connect and per-team SAML;
• the Require two-factor authentication and Require single sign-on policies;
• the team audit log, and its export by the owner.

Everything an individual uses (sync, folder sync, two-factor, passkeys, local session recording) needs no licence on any server.

Teams › Licence in the app shows “No licence” with that list.

What a licence adds

A Business or Enterprise licence adds the rest of team administration: admins and the other team policies, governance switches, device reports and compliance reports, and admins’ audit exports. Enterprise adds custom roles, and pushing audit events to a SIEM (also available to Business as an add-on). Team policies shows which policy needs which plan.

Plans and prices are not settled yet; the plan names here are the ones the code uses. Business licences start at 10 seats and Enterprise at 25.

The licence file

The server reads the file STERNWAY_LICENCE names, at start and every hour, so a new file takes effect within the hour without a restart (Run the sync server). It has two parts, each signed by Sternway:

• the entitlement: the plan, the seats, any add-ons, and when it starts and ends;
• the address binding: the server addresses (at most 5) the licence is for. STERNWAY_PUBLIC_URL must be one of them, or the server treats the licence as expired.

To use a licence at a new address, its addresses are moved in the licence portal, at most 3 times in 30 days, and the new file is put in place. The portal is not online yet; until it is, Sternway moves the addresses by hand within one business day. Old files stay valid.

None of this is copy protection: the checks keep a licence to the servers it was issued for.

Expiry and seats

• Expiry. Warnings start 30 days before the end date. After it comes the licence’s grace period, then the licensed features can no longer be turned on anew. What a team already uses keeps working: policies in force stay in force, safety changes (removing a member, revoking access) always work, and data stays reachable. Audit push stops.
• Seats count the accounts in teams that use team policies, with 10% overage allowed. Past that, the app shows a banner, and after 30 days new invites to those teams stop until seats are added or members removed. Removing members always works.
• The clock. The server checks the licence against the latest of its own clock and its last hourly readings, so setting the clock back does not extend a licence. After a real clock correction, an administrator resets that record with sternway-server licence reset-clock (recorded in the audit log).

What a licence never touches

A licence decides which features a team may turn on. It has no part in encryption, in the signed member list or in who can read a vault, and nobody, Sternway included, gains access to a team’s data through it.