Buying self-host

Self-host is a one-time perpetual licence + an annual support subscription. The first 12 months of support are included; renewal is automatic from the card you used at purchase.

What you pay

	When	What
Licence	Day 0	£7,500 one-time. Perpetual — paid once, never charged again.
Support — year 1	Day 0	Included in the licence. £0 charged.
Support — year 2+	Day 365, then annually	£1,500/year. Auto-renews via Stripe from the card on file.

The support subscription is created server-side at purchase with trial_end = +365 days, so the first charge after the licence is one year out.

What the purchase covers

• The nucleus/control-plane Docker image, all current and future versions
• The nucleus/nucleus-moodle Helm chart, all current and future versions
• The Moodle plugins (local_nucleuscommon, local_nucleushub, local_nucleusspoke)
• 12 months of CVE patches and minor + major upgrades
• Private support — Slack tier + GitHub issues against the private repo

The plugins themselves are GPL — you can use them without buying anything. The licence covers the control plane + chart + support.

What it doesn't cover

• A managed admin UI. Self-host customers operate via the HTTP API or build their own UI. The Vue operator portal is a Hosted-only asset.
• Managed backups. You operate them yourself; the chart includes a CronJob to make it tractable. See Backups.
• Operating your cluster on your behalf. Support is for Nucleus components, not for your Kubernetes operations.

The flow

1. Click Buy licence on our pricing page.
2. Sign up with your work email. Verify the email — the link arrives within ~30 seconds.
3. Complete checkout in Stripe. We accept any card; invoicing is available on Dedicated tier (talk to sales).
4. Receive your registry credentials by email, immediately on payment confirmation. The plaintext password is shown once — copy it into your password manager.
5. Follow the install guide with your new credentials.

The whole flow is self-serve and takes about five minutes from "click buy" to "first docker login".

After purchase

Your operator portal at app.nucleuslms.io/self-host shows:

• Your licence purchase date and reference id
• Your support renewal date and current status
• Your registry username (the password reminder; we don't keep the plaintext)
• Copy-pasteable install snippet pre-filled with your credentials

Renewal

About 30 days before your support expires, you'll get an email reminder. The Stripe subscription auto-renews from your saved card; you don't need to do anything for that to happen.

To change your card or cancel before renewal, message support@nucleuslms.io. (Self-serve cancel is a v1.5 feature; we manage it manually for now.)

What happens if support lapses

Your existing install keeps running indefinitely. There's no remote phone-home in the control plane — your hub and spokes don't call us. What changes:

• Your registry credentials are revoked. New docker pull and helm pull are refused.
• You stop receiving CVE patches and version updates.
• You can re-subscribe at any time from the portal; we mint fresh credentials and you pick up where you left off.

This is a deliberate posture — we want you to keep running our software even if you stop paying us. Trust beats lock-in. The licence covers perpetual use; support covers your right to update.

Refunds

We have a 14-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. If self-host turns out not to be for you in the first two weeks, message support and we refund the licence in full plus cancel the support subscription.

After 14 days, the perpetual licence is non-refundable but you can cancel the support sub before its first renewal at no charge.

Talk to a human first

If you want to chat before buying — about volume discounts, invoicing terms, contract reviews, or anything else — email sales@nucleuslms.io. Volume / multi-deployment licences are negotiable on case-by-case basis.