Editions¶
Ferrule comes as Community, which is free, and paid editions, Business and MSP, which add the features below. Every new install starts with a 30-day trial of the paid features. Pricing will be announced.
Settings → License shows your edition, the days left, and the paid features with which are on.
What each edition has¶
| Feature | Community | Trial and paid |
|---|---|---|
| Everything that watches and alerts: UniFi, Protect, the WAN, servers and storage | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gotify, ntfy, Pushover, Discord and email alerts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Maintenance mode | ✓ | ✓ |
Marking ports whose computer sleeps, with PORT_SLEEPS |
✓ | ✓ |
The admin sign-in, from ADMIN_PASSWORD |
✓ | ✓ |
| Backups to an NFS or SMB share, and restoring from any backup | ✓ | ✓ |
| Taking an inventory by hand, and downloading the newest | ✓ | ✓ |
| Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, webhook and Apprise alerts | ✓ | |
| Local users and groups | ✓ | |
| Single sign-on through OIDC or LDAP | ✓ | |
| Alert thresholds tuned on Settings | ✓ | |
| Backups to S3-compatible storage | ✓ | |
| Scheduled inventories, their history and the sheet of what changed | ✓ | |
| The reporting database | ✓ | |
| Capacity planning: forecasts, runway alerts and headroom | ✓ | |
| What-if planning: VMs, hosts, moving VMs, adding disks (next release) | ✓ | |
| The add-host check: switch ports, power, rack, addresses, licenses (next release) | ✓ | |
| Reclaim, right-sizing and orphaned disks (next release) | ✓ | |
| The monthly capacity summary (next release) | ✓ | |
| Reserving switch ports and racks on Settings (next release) | ✓ | |
| PDUs, phpIPAM and NetBox as sources, and vCenter's license list (next release) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The assistant | ✓ |
Community is free for personal use, with everything for one site. Business and MSP both have every paid feature above today.
The 30-day trial¶
During the private beta
There's no trial yet, and Ferrule needs a license key to run: without a key in force it watches nothing, sends no alerts, and shows Private beta: not watching above every tab. A key that's withdrawn, or can't be confirmed online for 30 days, stops it the same way. Ask for a key on the Ferrule Discord.
After launch:
- It starts the first time Ferrule runs with settings, and needs no key.
- Every paid feature is on. Settings → License counts down the days.
- When it ends, Ferrule carries on as Community, or as your paid edition if you've entered a key (Enter your license).
- It's remembered on the stack's archive volume. Without a writable archive there's no trial, and Settings → License says why.
When a trial or license lapses¶
Paid features pause. Sign-in and monitoring never stop. Nothing you set up is deleted, and it all comes back when a license is in force again.
| Feature | While paused |
|---|---|
| Paid alert channels | Each sends one message saying it has paused. PagerDuty resolves what it opened. The free channels carry on |
| Local users and groups | Everyone already added keeps signing in, and can still be disabled, deleted or given a new password. You can't add more |
| Single sign-on | Stops. The local admin still signs in, and the sign-in page says why. The dashboard never opens up |
| Alert thresholds | The built-in thresholds apply. Yours are kept |
| S3 backups | Pause. Share backups carry on, and restoring from S3 still works |
| Inventories | The daily run stops and earlier ones are hidden, never deleted. Taking one by hand still works |
| Reporting database | The copy pauses. What's in it stays |
| The assistant | Explain and Review say it needs a license. Answers already given stay readable |
| Capacity planning | The tab, forecasts, runway alerts, metrics and the monthly summary stop. The daily history is still kept, so nothing is lost |
| Reserved ports and racks | Stop showing and stop counting. They're kept, and come back with a license |
A paid key that reaches its expiry date keeps working for another 14 days, so a renewal that's a few days late switches nothing off. Settings → License shows the date. A key that can't be confirmed online for 30 days also pauses the paid features (License check and privacy).