Know What the Licence Buys
An unactivated instance runs with limited capability regardless of which tier you hold. Planning a deployment around threat intelligence or categorization that the licence does not include produces a control that passes the pilot and fails the first real policy decision. Settle the tier before sizing and before policy design — both depend on which feeds are available.Compare the tiers
SafeSquid offers two licensing tiers.
The free licence has no time limit. Upgrade to commercial at any point through the Self-Service Portal; the deployment steps are the same for both tiers.
Plan around what the tier excludes
The two exclusions that most often surprise a deployment:- URL categorization. Category-based access policy is central to most acceptable-use designs. On the free tier those rules have no categorization database behind them, so the policy exists but does not classify.
- Disaster-recovery backup. Configure Cloud Restore depends on the commercial tier. A DR plan built on it needs the licence to match.
Treat licence state as audit evidence
Activation also matters for audit: licensed state is visible in the Configuration Portal and serves as evidence that the gateway is correctly licensed. The activation key itself is not the audit artifact — store the key securely and capture licence-state evidence from the interface instead.Capture licensing evidence
Store these artifacts with the deployment record:- The tier the deployment assumes, and who approved it.
- The activation key storage location and its access control.
- A record of licensed state from the Configuration Portal.
- The subscription renewal owner, for commercial deployments.
Troubleshoot licensing assumptions
Next steps
- Register and Get Your Key - obtain the activation key.
- Activate Your License - apply it to the instance.
- Manage Subscription State - handle renewal and expiry.