Licensing

Profinity uses an offline, signed licence file to control which commercial features and components are available on an instance. There is no activation service and no online licence check: Profinity is designed to run on remote or air-gapped edge machines, so licensing works entirely from a file placed on the instance and a signature that Profinity validates locally. To apply a licence file, refer to Apply a licence, and to read the licence state of an instance, refer to License manager.

A licence sets the commercial ceiling for the instance. The set of available components is the combination of the licence, the OEM customisation file (custom.yaml), and the site configuration (config.yaml), and a component is only available when all three allow it (refer to Choose available components). A licensed feature is controlled by the licence alone, apart from scripting, which config.yaml can also switch off. Config-level toggles can narrow what the licence permits, but never grant more than the licence allows.

What each edition includes

Not every feature described in this documentation is available on every instance. The core product is substantial: the features ticked in every column are available in every edition, including an unlicensed instance, and a licence adds the rest. In the table, means the feature is included, means it is not included, and Add-on means it is licensed separately.

Features by edition

Feature	Desktop	Server	Enterprise
Local web UI (reachable from the same computer only) and the Representational State Transfer (REST) API
Tags: tag tree, derived tags, expressions, linking, collections, and logging and replay
Dashboards and the Dashboard component, plus kiosk mode
Rules, the Alerts Log and the built-in Profinity Log action
Device components: battery management systems, motor controllers, chargers and power, and MPPTs
CAN adapters: CAN bus adapters and the virtual CAN adapter
CAN utilities: send and receive, logging and replay, and DBC files
Loggers: file and SFTP loggers, and the InfluxDB (v1) and Prometheus loggers
Scripting in C#, Lua and Python
Custom components
Custom plugins: custom plugins and dynamic-link library (DLL) plugins
Historians: InfluxDB v2, InfluxDB v3 and TAG SQL
Themes and branding
Tag Rule Actions: Email, Slack, Webhook, and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) rule actions, and the C#, Python and Lua rule scripts that run when an alert fires
Data Relay: Tag Relays (sender, receiver), MQTT Publisher, MQTT Subscriber, Webhook Publisher and the Cloud Dashboard
Two-Factor Authentication
Profinity AI: AI Chat, AI settings and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
Profinity Server: Users & Groups, Roles, remote (non-localhost) web access and the Extensions Web server
Enterprise Security: single sign-on (SSO), System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) provisioning and security-key sign-in
Industrial Protocols: BACnet, EtherNet/IP, Modbus, Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) and S7	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Profinity software development kit (SDK): the `Profinity.Sdk` library, `profinity-component-pack` and `profinity-script`	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on

Unlicensed is the state of a Desktop installation with no licence file, and of any instance after its 14-day local trial expires. Unlicensed Desktop use is limited to personal, non-commercial purposes, as described in Desktop free-use policy.
Without Profinity Server there are no user accounts or roles, and Users & Groups is not shown. A Desktop installation runs as a single built-in admin user.
Kiosk Mode is included in every edition, but it signs a display in as an enabled Profinity user, and a dedicated kiosk user is created in Users & Groups, which needs Profinity Server. Refer to Kiosk Mode.
Themes and branding are not included for an unlicensed instance. The instance keeps its theme.yaml file but shows the default Profinity appearance until a Desktop or higher licence is installed.
The 14-day local trial and sales evaluation licences include everything in the Server edition, but not Enterprise Security. Refer to The 14-day local trial.
Add-on means something licensed separately from the edition, available on any commercial edition. Industrial Protocols is a component group that needs the matching plugin installed as well, and the partner hardware component packs are licensed in the same way as component groups. The Profinity SDK is a developer kit that Prohelion supplies on request.
Pages for licence-dependent features carry a Licence required note at the top. The License manager in the product is always the authority for your instance, because configuration can further narrow what a licence allows.

Remote web access needs Profinity Server

Without a Profinity Server licence, including on a Desktop host, Profinity listens for web connections on 127.0.0.1 only, which means the web interface and API can be reached from the same computer and not from another one. This applies to an unlicensed instance and to an instance whose 14-day local trial has expired. When the web server starts, Profinity forces any HTTP or HTTPS address that is not a loopback address, such as 0.0.0.0, to 127.0.0.1, whatever is entered under Profinity Web and even if Config.yaml holds another value, and records a message beginning "Remote web access requires a Server license" in the Profinity log. A user who cannot reach Profinity from another computer should check the licence on the License page before changing the address or the firewall.

Opening the Profinity web interface from another machine, and creating user accounts and roles, need the Profinity Server licensed feature, which the Server and Enterprise editions include. Local access on the same machine needs no licence. A new installation that is not a Desktop host starts a one-time 14-day local trial with the Server features, and then drops to the unlicensed feature set, so remote access and user accounts stop working until a licence file is applied under ADMIN > License. Production use of Profinity Server on Windows, Docker, Linux, or macOS needs a licence from Prohelion; contact Prohelion through the Prohelion contact page.

The 14-day local trial

A Profinity instance that has never had a licence applied issues itself a one-time, 14-day, server-tier trial automatically on first startup, provided the installer build has trial issuance enabled; some OEM-customised builds may not offer this local trial. This local trial:

Requires no network access and no request to Prohelion.
Runs for a maximum of 14 days from first startup.
Grants server-tier entitlements (the same feature set as a standard Commercial server licence), not enterprise-only features.
Is issued once per installation. Reinstalling or resetting the instance does not restart the trial, because the trial is recorded against the instance fingerprint.
Reports the state Trial while more than 7 days remain, and Expiring for the last 7 days. A signed trial licence file is reported as Trial while more than 30 days remain.
Is not available on Desktop hosts, which have a separate free-use policy (Desktop free-use policy).

When the 14-day trial ends, Profinity drops the instance to the same unlicensed entitlement set a Desktop installation uses, and shows an expiry notice on the Home screen linking to the License pill on the ADMIN page. Profinity does not stop, lock users out, or switch to a read-only mode: the engine keeps running, and features and components outside the unlicensed set become unavailable until a suitable commercial or extended evaluation licence is uploaded.

Desktop free-use policy

An unlicensed Desktop installation is provided for personal, non-commercial use only and must not be used for commercial purposes. Commercial use requires a purchased Desktop licence from Prohelion. A Desktop installation does not need a licence for personal use, and does not issue or consume the automatic local trial described in The 14-day local trial. It keeps the unlicensed entitlement set indefinitely and shows a notice on the Home screen explaining the non-commercial-use restriction and directing commercial users to contact Prohelion to purchase a Desktop licence. If a trial or commercial license.yaml is installed on a Desktop host manually, Profinity validates and applies it in the same way as on a server host. A Desktop host that holds a Server licence also accepts connections from other machines and creates the default admin account, as a server host does; the built-in desktop sign-in used by the application window still works from the same computer only. Do not put a reverse proxy on the same computer in front of a Desktop host, because requests that come through it look as if they came from the computer itself. Profinity refuses the desktop sign-in on a request that carries forwarding headers, but the safe set-up is to run Profinity as a server host behind the proxy instead.

The machine fingerprint

The fingerprint is a value computed from the installation itself, unique to that machine and Profinity install. It has two purposes:

It ties a signed license.yaml to one specific installation, so a licence file cannot be copied to another machine and reused.
It is the only piece of information an administrator needs to send to Prohelion to request a licence or evaluation, which keeps the process usable for edge machines with no internet access.

A licence is signed for one machine's fingerprint. A licence issued for one instance does not apply to another, and Profinity rejects an upload of a licence issued for a different machine, reporting the state WrongInstance if such a file is placed directly in the licence folder. The fingerprint is shown on the License manager, with a button to copy it.

Apply a licence: upload or place a licence file on an instance.
License manager: read the licence state, fingerprint, and licensed features of an instance.
System Information: instance version and licence summary shown alongside other system details.
Roles and Permissions: assigning the Security administration permission needed to manage licences.
System Configuration: the site-level configuration layer that can narrow, but never exceed, what the licence permits.