With the release of Liferay DXP 2026.Q1, we have evolved from separate Community Edition (CE) and DXP installations to a single, unified, modular platform. Instead of maintaining different distributions, everyone will run the same core Liferay installation.
The Free Tier of Liferay DXP is available to anyone, to test, develop, build proofs of concept and so on - and provides a simple way (if you need to) to become an Enterprise Subscriber.
This category is here so that you can ask any questions you might have about the Free Tier!
Hi, just read the info about the free tier in the liferay blog, sounds interesting.
One query I have is that in that blog post you mention:
Your key is also tied to a specific domain, which you entered during the registration process. You’ll be able to use your Liferay DXP instance for that domain, or locally via localhost.
How does this work if you have multiple sites within the one instance configured with virtual hosts? Or have more than one Virtual Instance on the same server?
They may all have different domain names that ultimately end up reaching the same server. Can you have more than one domain name tied to an activation? Or is the activation just for the main site, and virtual hosts/instances (with their own domain name) will still work as before?
This is the most important point. I don’t know anyone using a Liferay Portal CE instance for just one URL. There are Liferay Portal instances that host dozens and even hundreds of domains. A single Liferay Portal instance can host hundreds of domains tied to companyIds and hundreds of domains tied to groupIds, all sharing only one Liferay Portal CE deploy.
Please could you explain how one only license key can be valid for hundreds of Internet domains inside a single instance of Liferay DXP Free Tier?
Hi @icarrara - thanks for your comment here - and in response to my Blog post. Sorry for the delay on replying, the weekend got in the way!
OK, so trying to put it as simply as possible - the domain value provided in the Activation Key is simply used on initial startup to validate that the server you are running Liferay DXP on matches the value provided in the Activation Key.
Beyond that you can continue to create as many Sites and/or Virtual Instances as you want, each using their own unique domain names.
So, there are no changes in using Liferay to host multiple sites with their own URLs, just a simple mechanism that associates your server with the Activation Key generated for you.