Editions: Cloud vs Community

ControlBird comes in two editions that share the same core: the same Store, the same visual builders, the same integrations, and the same protocol services. They differ in how they are deployed, which advanced features are included, and how access is managed.

• Cloud: a managed offering with enterprise features, managed deployment, multiple environments, and single sign-on.
• Community Edition (CE): a free, self-hosted Docker image that runs a single node on your own infrastructure.

At a Glance

Running Each Edition

Cloud

Cloud users sign in with single sign-on and work through the cloud control plane to manage instances, environments, nodes, users, and licenses. From there you can deploy nodes, run multiple environments side by side, and enable secure tunnel access for nodes that live on a local network. See the configure walkthrough and the certificates guide for setup details.

Community Edition

Community Edition runs as a single Docker container. Mount a data directory for persistence and publish the web port:

docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -v /path/to/data:/opt/controlbird/data \
  controlbird/ce:latest

The kernel port (9100) is deliberately not published. Services inside the container reach the kernel over localhost, and the Shell app runs the cb-* tools there too, so a single node needs nothing else. Publish 9100 only if you are running several nodes that peer with each other, or driving the CLI tools from the host. Even then, only do it on a network you trust, because that port has no authentication of its own.

Once the container is running, open the local web UI and sign in with local credentials. The dedicated CE walkthrough covers this in three steps: install Docker, run the container, and access the UI.

By default, a Community Edition node stores entity and field data in a durable SQLite database, with a bounded memory footprint. Setting STORE_BACKEND=memory at startup switches it to the in-memory store, which keeps the whole dataset resident in RAM for sub-millisecond reads. Durability is the same either way, since both backends persist through the same write-ahead log and snapshots, so the trade-off is RAM rather than data safety. That matters most on memory-constrained hosts like a Raspberry Pi.

What's Included Where

Community Edition is a complete, free way to run ControlBird on a single self-hosted node. It includes the Store, the visual builders, and the core protocol services (Modbus, MQTT, HTTP, CoAP, OPC UA, and SMTP), so you can model devices, build schematics, and create automations end to end. It also includes the historian for time-series data retention, alarms and alarm history, and ControlBird AI, so a single self-hosted node is already a complete automation platform, not a trimmed-down trial. ControlBird AI works with your own LLM provider key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama, OpenRouter, and others), on both editions.

Cloud adds capabilities aimed at larger and team deployments:

• Managed hosting with multiple environments and nodes, so there is no server to maintain.
• Centralized management through the cloud control plane.
• Secure tunnel access to nodes that live on a local network, with no port forwarding to set up.
• Enterprise single sign-on.
• Industrial protocols: BACnet, DNP3, and EtherNet/IP.
• White labeling.

When you outgrow a single self-hosted node, the same models and workflows carry forward, so moving to Cloud is a matter of changing where ControlBird runs rather than relearning the product.

For a deeper look at the entity tree these editions configure, see Data Model, and for how the Store and services fit together, see Architecture Overview.