Hello,
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▎ I’m the principal of 7Flows Consulting, a US-based consultancy that builds and operates n8n workflows for mid-size manufacturers. Our clients self-host n8n in their own environments and own their instances and licenses directly; we author the workflows and operate them under retainer. We’re currently on Community.
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▎ Data sovereignty is central to what we sell, so we document precisely what does and does not leave a client’s network. Two questions I can’t fully answer from the public docs.
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▎ 1. License server communication on self-hosted Business/Enterprise
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▎ The docs confirm N8N_LICENSE_SERVER_URL defaults to https://license.n8n.io/v1, that the full Cloudflare IP range must be allowlisted, and that with autorenewal disabled a license must be manually renewed every 10 days or “all licensed features” are disabled. What I can’t confirm from primary documentation:
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▎ - How frequently does a self-hosted licensed instance contact the license server?
▎ - What data does that request contain? I’ve seen it stated secondhand that it includes production execution counts for usage tracking, but I can’t find this in your documentation. Is that accurate, and is there a complete list of transmitted fields?
▎ - Is any workflow content, execution content, credential metadata, or node/workflow naming ever included? My assumption is no — I’d like to be able to state that on your authority rather than my inference.
▎ - Is there a supported option for genuinely air-gapped or egress-restricted deployments? Several of our prospects run segmented OT/plant networks where “allowlist all Cloudflare IPs” is a significant security review, and some sites have no outbound path at all.
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▎ I’m asking because I won’t put a claim in front of a client’s IT or security team that I can’t source. If the answer is documented somewhere I’ve missed, a link is a perfectly good response.
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▎ 2. Partner / NFR licenses for implementation consultancies
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▎ Because features are gated at runtime, an unlicensed build environment and a licensed client instance on the same pinned version are not the same runtime. Our standing rule is that nothing we author may depend on a licensed feature, which makes this mostly moot — but it wouldn’t cover a client who mandates external secrets management.
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▎ Does n8n offer a not-for-resale or partner development license for consultancies to author and test against client entitlements in a non-production environment? I’m not asking about hosting or resale rights — our clients own their own instances and licenses. Purely a dev/test parity question.
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▎ If that’s handled through the Expert Partners program rather than here, I’m happy to be redirected. We expect to meet the three-active-customer threshold within the next year.
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▎ Thanks,
▎ Larry Crane
▎ Principal, 7Flows Consulting LLC
▎ larry.crane@7flows-consulting.com
Hi there,
As a partner u can get a nfr license, that would be the place to go for that.
With regards the license communication with the server I cannot give any real insight, as it was never an issue for me sofar.
1 curtida
For the first question I would capture the outbound hostnames from a clean startup and compare them with the documented telemetry settings. Keep the partner-license question separate since it depends on account terms rather than the network trace.