upgrade-from-community.md

title	Upgrade from Community to Commercial Edition
description	Upgrade self-hosted Plane to the latest version. Step-by-step guide for updating your Plane installation safely.
keywords	plane upgrade community to commercial, edition migration, plane pro upgrade, plane business upgrade, self-hosting upgrade

Upgrade from Community to Commercial Edition

The Commercial edition comes with the free plan and the flexibility to upgrade to a paid plan at any point.

Warning

The instructions provided on this page are specific to installations using Docker. If you are running Plane on Kubernetes, you'll need to manually create a database dump and back up your file storage by copying the relevant volumes or storage paths.

Prerequisites

• Install the Commercial Edition on a fresh machine, not the one running the Plane Community Edition.
• Be sure to log in as the root user or as a user with sudo access. The /opt folder requires sudo or root privileges.

:::tabs key:upgrade-options == Standard setup (built-in DB & storage) {#standard-setup}

This upgrade path is for installations using Plane's default PostgreSQL database and MinIO object storage.

Back up data on Community instance

1. Download the latest version of setup.sh.

   curl -fsSL https://github.com/makeplane/plane/releases/latest/download/setup.sh -o setup.sh

2. Run the setup.sh backup script to take the backup of the Community Edition instance.

   ./setup.sh backup

3. When done, your data will be backed up to the folder shown on the screen. e.g., /plane-selfhost/plane-app/backup/20240522-1027 This folder will contain 3 tar.gz files.

   • pgdata.tar.gz
   • redisdata.tar.gz
   • uploads.tar.gz

4. Copy all the three files from the server running the Community Edition to any folder on the server running the Commercial Edition.

   e.g., ~/ce-backup

Restore data on Commercial instance

1. Start any command-line interface like Terminal and go into the folder with the back-up files.

   cd ~/ce-backup
   

2. Copy and paste the script below on Terminal and hit Enter.

    TARGET_DIR=/opt/plane/data
    sudo mkdir -p $TARGET_DIR
    for FILE in *.tar.gz; do
        if [ -e "$FILE" ]; then
            tar -xzvf "$FILE" -C "$TARGET_DIR"
        else
            echo "No .tar.gz files found in the current directory."
            exit 1
        fi
    done
   
    mv $TARGET_DIR/pgdata/ $TARGET_DIR/db
    mv $TARGET_DIR/redisdata/ $TARGET_DIR/redis
    mkdir -p $TARGET_DIR/minio
    mv $TARGET_DIR/uploads/ $TARGET_DIR/minio/uploads/
   

3. This script will extract your Community Edition data and restore it to /opt/plane/data.

== Managed services (external DB and storage) {#managed-services}

This upgrade path is for installations using external or managed database and object storage services (like AWS RDS and S3). Since your data already lives in external services, you only need to update your configuration — no backup and restore required.

Update configuration for Commercial Edition

1. Open the plane.env file located at /opt/plane/plane.env.

2. Configure database connection.

   1. Find the DATABASE_URL environment variable.

   2. Verify it points to your external database:

      DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@your-db-host:5432/plane

      If you need to change it, update the value with your managed database connection string.

   3. Configure object storage

      1. Find the #DATASTORE SETTINGS section in plane.env
      2. Update these environment variables for your external storage:

      USE_MINIO=0
      AWS_REGION=us-east-1
      AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your-access-key>
      AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your-secret-key>
      AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL=https://s3.amazonaws.com
      AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME=plane-uploads

      :::info Setting USE_MINIO=0 disables the local MinIO service and enables external object storage (S3 or S3-compatible services). :::

3. Restart Plane services to apply the configuration:

   prime-cli restart

Your Commercial Edition instance is now connected to your existing external database and storage. :::

:::details Manual backup and restore without CLI

Use this method if you prefer to back up data manually or if the setup.sh script isn't working for your environment.

What gets migrated

• PostgreSQL database (all Plane data)
• MinIO uploads (attachments, images, files)

Prerequisites

• Plane CE and Commercial versions should be compatible
• Shell access to both servers
• Docker installed on both servers

Back up data on Community instance

1. Create backup folders:

   mkdir -p ~/ce-backups/db
   mkdir -p ~/ce-backups/minio/uploads
   cd ~/ce-backups

2. Back up PostgreSQL data:

   docker cp plane-app-plane-db-1:/var/lib/postgresql/data/. db/

3. Back up MinIO uploads:

   docker cp plane-app-plane-minio-1:/export/uploads minio/uploads/

4. Verify backup sizes:

   du -sh db minio/uploads

   Make sure sizes look reasonable (not just a few KB).

5. Transfer backup to Commercial server:

   scp -r ~/ce-backups user@commercial-server:/tmp/

Restore data on Commercial instance

1. Stop Plane:

   prime-cli stop

   Verify all containers are down:

   docker ps

2. Back up existing Commercial data (safety precaution):

   mv /opt/plane/data/db /opt/plane/data/db.bak
   mv /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads.bak

3. Restore PostgreSQL:

   mv /tmp/ce-backups/db /opt/plane/data/db

4. Restore MinIO uploads:

   mv /tmp/ce-backups/minio/uploads /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads

5. Start Plane:

   prime-cli restart

Validate the migration

• Login works
• Projects are visible
• Attachments open correctly

Rollback

If something fails, restore from the backup you created in step 2:

prime-cli stop

rm -rf /opt/plane/data/db
mv /opt/plane/data/db.bak /opt/plane/data/db

rm -rf /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads
mv /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads.bak /opt/plane/data/minio/uploads

prime-cli restart

:::

What's next

• Activate a paid plan license.