Licenses

Total CMS is licensed on a per domain basis. There are 3 different pricing tiers that will control what features you will have access to.

Lite

Basic collection schemas available to all editions:

• code
• color
• date
• email
• file
• feed
• gallery
• image
• number
• styledtext
• svg
• text
• toggle
• url

Features:

• Templates

Standard

Everything in Lite including:

Schemas:

• blog
• depot

Features:

• Access groups
• Barcodes
• Image watermarks
• Mailer form actions
• MCP server (anonymous, read-only — see below)
• Passkeys
• QR codes
• RSS import
• Text watermarks
• Whitelabel templates

Pro

Everything in Standard including:

Schemas:

• Custom schemas

Features:

• Algolia search
• API keys
• Automations
• Bulk mailer
• Data views
• External REST API
• OAuth server
• Webhook form actions
• Whitelabel Pro templates

MCP and AI access

The MCP server is included from Standard upwards, so a Standard site can expose collections for an AI agent to read. Lite does not include it.

What Pro adds is the ability for an agent to act as somebody. Both credentials that grant a non-anonymous MCP persona are Pro features — API keys for admin access and the OAuth server for per-user access — so writing to your site from an agent, and any access scoped to a particular user’s permissions, requires Pro.

Free Trial

You can install Total CMS and use it for 45 days for free on any domain. Trial licenses have full Pro-level access.

Development License

Development licenses have full Pro-level access.

Offline Licensing

For deployments that cannot (or must not) reach the internet — air-gapped networks, classified environments, strict data-sovereignty setups — Total CMS supports a fully offline license. Available for Pro licenses; contact us to arrange one for a specific deployment.

How it works: we generate a cryptographically signed license file for your domain, which you install at:

tcms-data/.system/{domain}-offline-license.key

The file is checked before any online validation, so with it in place there is no validation callback, no periodic check-in, and no outbound connectivity of any kind. The signature is verified locally against a public key that ships with Total CMS.

Installing an offline license also disables error monitoring automatically — a network-isolated deployment never attempts an outbound call, regardless of the settings toggle. See Error Monitoring.

Updates for offline deployments are downloaded separately, transferred across the network boundary by whatever process your environment permits, and installed manually.

Edition Simulation

During a trial or with a development license, you can simulate lower editions (Lite or Standard) via the admin settings. This allows you to test how your site will behave with different license tiers before purchasing.

Important: If you create data using features from a higher edition and later purchase a lower edition, your data will not be deleted. However, you will lose access to that data until you upgrade to an edition that supports it.