Hi,
I recently set up a self-hosted n8n instance on a VPS and tried to request a Community Edition licence key via the activation flow in Settings → Usage and plan. The email hasn’t arrived.
I think the issue is that I have an existing n8n Cloud account under the same email address from a previous free trial, which may be blocking the key from being sent.
Could you issue a Community Edition licence key for my self-hosted instance? The email address is ben@silverbackgrowth.com.
Thanks,
Ben
Hey Ben,
Welcome to the community!
As an AI Automation Engineer running multiple self-hosted and cloud production instances, I’ve seen this exact collision happen before. Your theory is likely spot on—if your email address is already flagged as an active or historical user in the n8n Cloud management database, the automated transactional mailer for self-hosted activation keys can sometimes get stuck in a verification loop.
While we wait for the core team (tagging @n8n_Team) to manually check the database logs for ben@silverbackgrowth.com and push a key through, there are two solid workarounds you can use right now to keep moving:
Since you are using a custom domain or a Gmail-backed setup, you can usually bypass the system’s duplicate email check instantly by appending a plus sign.
Go back to your VPS instance under Settings → Usage and plan.
Click Unlock and enter ben+n8n@silverbackgrowth.com (or ben+community@...).
Hit request. The automated system will treat it as a brand-new unique identifier and should shoot the activation key straight to your main ben@ inbox instantly.
If you do manage to get a key via an alias but the activation itself throws an error, make sure your VPS isn’t blocking outbound traffic. The community license needs to communicate with license.n8n.io/v1 to initialize the certificate. Ensure your firewall or proxy rules aren’t tightly restricting port 443 or outbound API requests.
The team is usually super quick at unblocking email collisions once they see these threads, but give the alias trick a shot in the meantime so you don’t lose any build momentum!
Hey @Ben_Durrant, one thing worth flagging on the alias trick above, using ben+n8n@silverbackgrowth.com would generate a key tied to that alias identity, not your actual ben@ account, so it’s not really solving the underlying issue, just working around it cosmetically.
Since you suspect it’s tied to your existing Cloud trial account, the fastest real fix is to email support@n8n.io directly with:
Your email (ben@silverbackgrowth.com)
A note that you already have a Cloud account under this email and the self-hosted activation email isn’t arriving
They can manually check if the activation system is silently failing due to the duplicate account and issue the key directly, no need to wait on a forum reply or alias workaround.
In the meantime, double-check spam and any email filtering rules, since activation emails sometimes get caught by stricter filters even when the system did technically send it.
thanks I amabnged to fix this via a comment someone else had entered on the forum
Great to hear 