How licensing works
What a 3AM licence is, the three tiers, how services are counted, and what happens when a licence changes or runs out.
A 3AM licence is a small file signed by Warden, our licence service. 3AM checks the signature itself, with a key built into the product, so a licence works offline. When 3AM can reach Warden, it also checks in about once an hour. That's how renewals and changes reach your installs without you uploading anything.
To try 3AM first, start a trial: free for 90 days for a limited time (usually 30), one per company.
Tiers
Every tier includes all of 3AM: every feature, connector and pack, and unlimited people. Tiers differ in how much they cover and how they're supported.
| Starter | Enterprise | Strategic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | 50 | 250, more available | Unlimited |
| Installs | Production and DR | Up to 10 | Every install you run |
| Keychain | Yes | Yes | |
| Support | Business hours | Business hours, or 24×7 | 24×7, with a named engineer |
What counts as a service
A service is something your organisation runs and someone gets paged for, like payments-api or core-banking-db.
Hosts, pods, clusters and connections aren't services.
- What's counted: each service in your estate, or that alerted in the last 30 days. One that's been quiet longer frees its place by itself.
- Across installs: a service watched by several installs (production and DR, say) is counted once.
- Over the limit: up to 10% over, everything keeps working and the console warns you. Beyond that, the newest services are held: their alerts are recorded, but not investigated. Trials have no 10%.
- Choosing: owners can pin the services that must always be covered, under Settings → Licence.
When a licence changes
Renewals, upgrades, more services and new installs are all made on our side, in Warden. Each install picks up the new licence at its next check-in, checks it, and switches over with no restart. Your audit log records the change.
To ask for an upgrade, use Request an upgrade on the licence card in Settings → Licence.
When there's no valid licence
3AM goes into setup mode: you can sign in and install a licence, but nothing is watched and nothing changes. Connections, history and the audit log are all kept, and 3AM carries on the moment a valid licence is installed.
After a paid licence expires, there's a 14-day grace period first (Renew).
What a licence is tied to
Each install has a fingerprint, a hash that identifies it without revealing anything about the machine:
| Install | Fingerprint comes from |
|---|---|
| Linux server | The server's machine id (and its hardware id, when installed as root) |
| Kubernetes | The cluster: its kube-system namespace |
Reinstalling on the same server or cluster keeps the fingerprint. A new server is a new install, which you can add yourself.
Packs
3AM's knowledge of each technology (its causes, checks and fixes) comes as sealed packs: encrypted files that open only inside 3AM, with your organisation's licence. Warden prepares them for your organisation and delivers them with the licence check; air-gapped installs get them inside the download.
Common questions
The licence, the install's fingerprint, 3AM's version, and signed usage counts: how many services, and how many investigations a month. Services are sent as hashes, never names. Nothing about your incidents, code or systems.
3AM keeps running on the licence's signature, and tries again every 15 minutes. Air-gapped installs never need to reach it.
Yes, for a cancelled contract or a leaked copy. The signed list of revoked licences comes with every Warden answer and every release, so it reaches offline installs too.
No. Every tier has unlimited people.