Enterprise Setup

Pinchy Enterprise unlocks features like Groups, agent access control, and priority support. Activating it takes one step: enter a valid license key.

Getting a license key

• Trial key — 30 days, all Pro features, no credit card. Start at heypinchy.com/pricing; the key arrives by email.
• Paid key (Pinchy Pro) — Annual license, renewable. Buy at heypinchy.com/pricing. Need more seats than the published plan? Email sales@heypinchy.com for a quote you can accept online.

No per-agent or per-message fees. Activation works fully offline — your instance never contacts us.

Activating your key

There are two ways to enter your license key. Use whichever fits your workflow.

Option 1: Settings UI (recommended)

1. Log in as an admin.
2. Go to Settings → License.
3. Paste your license key and click Save.

The key is validated immediately. If valid, enterprise features activate instantly — no restart needed.

Option 2: Environment variable

Set PINCHY_ENTERPRISE_KEY in your Docker Compose configuration:

services:
  pinchy:
    environment:
      - PINCHY_ENTERPRISE_KEY=eyJ...your-key-here

Then restart the container:

docker compose up -d

Tip

The environment variable takes priority over a key entered in the Settings UI. If both are set, the env var wins.

Verifying your key

After entering a key, go to Settings → License. You should see:

• License type — Trial or Paid
• Organization — The name tied to your key
• Expiry date — When the key expires
• Days remaining

The enterprise features (Groups tab, agent access control) should now be available.

Seat cap enforcement

License tokens include a maxUsers field that limits how many seats your organisation can use. A seat counts as either an active user or a valid pending invitation — both consume a seat.

Soft cap with a grace window

The seat cap is a soft cap. Invites keep working up to 120 % of your licensed seats (floor(1.2 × maxUsers) — 12 seats on a 10-seat license), so a new hire never waits on procurement:

• Up to 100 % — everything works normally. The user list shows a permanent counter (7 of 10 seats used).
• 100–120 % (grace) — invites still work. Admins see a factual notice in the invite flow and a dismissible banner pointing at the quote path. Nothing turns red, nothing is blocked.
• Beyond 120 % — new invites are paused. The API returns 403 Forbidden with { "error": "Seat limit reached", "graceCap": 12 }, and the UI offers to email sales@heypinchy.com for a quote.
• No existing users are locked out. Pinchy never deactivates an account to enforce a cap. Only new invitations pause.

Freeing up a seat

To invite someone new when invites are paused, you can:

1. Revoke a pending invitation — if an invite was sent but not yet claimed, revoking it frees the seat immediately.
2. Deactivate an existing user — deactivated users no longer count toward the seat total.

Both actions take effect immediately.

Trials and unlimited licenses

A maxUsers value of 0 means unlimited seats. Newly issued trial keys include up to 50 seats — enough to evaluate Groups and access control with a realistic team; older trial keys may carry unlimited seats. Paid keys include the seat count of your order.

Note

The seat count shown in Settings → License includes both active users and pending invitations. If the count looks higher than expected, check for unclaimed invites in Settings → Users.

What happens when a license expires

Pinchy fails closed: an expired license never silently widens access. Your access restrictions exist to protect you — they don't disappear because a renewal slipped.

Paid keys carry a paid-until date plus a 30-day grace window (the key stays fully valid during grace). After the grace window:

• Existing restrictions stay enforced. Agents with Restricted visibility stay restricted; group-based access keeps working exactly as configured.
• Management locks. Creating or editing groups, adding users to groups, changing agent visibility, analytics, and CSV export pause until a new key is entered.
• Restriction-tightening operations always work, even without a license: removing a user from a group and deactivating a user. An admin must be able to revoke a leaving contractor's access at any time — a license that blocked that would itself be the security risk.
• Nothing is lost. All data, agents, groups, and configuration stay intact. Enter a new key and everything reactivates instantly.

Returning to community semantics

If you decide not to renew, you don't have to keep the restrictions: Settings → License offers Remove all license-gated configuration. It deletes all groups and makes restricted agents visible to all users — an explicit, audited admin action, never something an expiry does on its own.

Note

Admins see a factual banner during the lifecycle: trial keys show the remaining days throughout the trial, paid keys show a renewal reminder from 14 days before the paid period ends, and expired keys state that restrictions remain enforced. All banners are dismissible per session.

Enterprise features

This is the canonical list of features that require an active Pinchy Enterprise license. Any feature documented elsewhere with an Enterprise badge or a "Enterprise feature" callout maps to one of the rows below.

| Feature | Where it appears | Documentation | | ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | Groups | Settings → Groups | Groups | | Agent Access Control | Agent Settings → Access tab (visibility modes, group assignment) | Agent Settings | | Group-scoped invites | Settings → Users → Invite User (Groups field when inviting) | User Management | | Per-user usage breakdown | Usage Dashboard → Per-User Breakdown card | Usage Dashboard | | Usage CSV export | Usage Dashboard → Export CSV button | Usage Dashboard | | Priority Support | Direct contact with the Pinchy team with priority response times | — |

When a license is not active, Enterprise-gated UI shows clear upgrade prompts rather than hiding completely — so you always know what's available.

Offline validation

License keys are validated locally using cryptographic signatures. No internet connection is required — Pinchy never phones home. This makes enterprise features fully compatible with air-gapped and offline deployments.