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SSH Teams

SSH Teams makes it easy to give your team secure access to servers without the hassle of managing SSH keys.

Power-User Quick Access

Prefer to jump straight into commands? Check out the Power-User Cheatsheet.

What SSH Teams Does for You

SSH Teams helps you control who can access your servers, and for how long. You can:

  • Add servers to your team in just a few steps.
  • Create simple rules that decide who can connect and when.
  • Register each user's laptop or workstation once.
  • Issue short-lived access passes automatically when someone connects.
  • Manage users, devices, and access rules from one central place.

Why It’s Better Than Sharing SSH Keys

With regular SSH keys, you usually have to copy the same public key onto every server. When someone leaves, you have to remember to remove it from each one. That gets messy fast.

SSH Teams avoids that by using short-lived certificates instead of long-lived keys. That means:

  • Access expires automatically, so there’s no old key left behind.
  • You set the rules in one place, and every server follows them.
  • When someone leaves, you revoke their access centrally.
  • You spend less time chasing keys across servers.
  • You have a clear record of who had access and when.

Quick Start with Docker

You can run SSH Teams locally using Docker. This example opens ports 8080 and 8443 and stores your data in a ./nitrate folder.

mkdir -p ./nitrate/conf.d ./nitrate/data

docker run -d \
  --name nitrate-sshteam \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -p 8443:8443 \
  -v "$(pwd)/nitrate/conf.d:/app/conf.d" \
  -v "$(pwd)/nitrate/data:/app/nitrate/data" \
  -e SSHTEAM_PERSISTENCE_BACKEND=nitrate \
  -e HTTP_PORT=8080 \
  -e HTTPS_PORT=8443 \
  jadaptive/sshteam:latest

Once it’s running:

  1. Open https://localhost:8443 in your browser.
  2. Follow the first-time setup to create your team and admin account.
  3. Start adding servers and setting up access rules.

Licensing

SSH Teams is available as a fully featured Community Edition. There are no user limits, and you can run it yourself with Docker.

At Jadaptive, we believe the software itself should be freely available, while expert help and advanced support are where the value lies. You can read more in our manifesto.

What’s Included in Community Edition

  • The full SSH Teams experience.
  • No limits on team size.
  • A simple Docker-based setup you host yourself.

Keeping Community Edition Active

The Community Edition needs to connect to activation.jadaptive.com occasionally. It sends a small, anonymous heartbeat so we know the service is active. This heartbeat includes simple counts like how many teams, users, and servers you have. It does not include any personal information such as names, email addresses, or SSH keys.

When You Need a Commercial License

A commercial license is useful if you need:

  • An offline or air-gapped deployment.
  • Direct technical support.
  • Help meeting compliance requirements.
  • Advanced features such as multi-tenancy.