Hosted checkout
The billing provider owns payment, tax, invoices, renewal, and cancellation.
BETTERKAFKA LICENSINGSigned access.
Signed access.
Clear operating boundaries.
Online activation and offline entitlements use separate, cryptographically signed workflows. Billing never becomes the product trust anchor.
ONLINE LICENSING
Pay, receive the key once, and activate.
A verified billing event creates the entitlement. The activation key is revealed through the authenticated account once; the authority stores only a protected hash.
Signed entitlement
The BetterKafka Licence Authority validates the commercial mapping and issues the one-time key.
Installation binding
The first activation binds the licence to one stable installation identity and returns an ES256-signed lease.
Bounded renewal
The installation renews short leases online and has a visible, finite authority-outage grace boundary.
OFFLINE ENTITLEMENTS
Finite by design.
An air-gapped installation cannot receive immediate suspension or revocation. Offline files are therefore installation-bound, prepaid, signed to a finite expiry, and normally annual. Refund or cancellation cannot shorten a file already imported into a disconnected environment.
ES256 signed materialBound to one installationFinite paid-through expiryNo runtime authority dependencyNo hidden perpetual modeNo instant offline revocation claim
DATA MINIMIZATION
Licensing does not become Kafka telemetry.
Never sent
Broker addresses, namespaces, topic names, consumer-group names, message keys, message values, headers, and user identities.
Aggregate heartbeat
Pseudonymous installation identity, product version, and aggregate configured-cluster count for entitlement enforcement.
Local verification
The product verifies issuer, audience, key ID, signature, installation binding, dates, features, and cluster limit before Kafka access.