For the Enterprise Edition (excluding the legacy pricing), licenses are created based on the number of administration panel users (soft-cap). This is subject to the terms of your specific license, if you have questions on the below definition please do create a ticket.
What is an Admin User
A Strapi "admin user" is anyone who has the ability to login to your Strapi admin panel, this is not limited to the role of the user.
For more detailed information on the definition of "Admin Users" and "Admin Seats" see the following support article.
Some examples of admin users (not limited to):
- Are Admin users
- Super Admins (default role with full access)
- Content Managers
- Content Editors
- Localization Managers
- Anyone who can login to the Strapi admin panel in a production environment, including SSO
- Are not Admin users
- Developers in a staging or development environment
- Automation accounts in any environment
- "End-Users" (IE using the end-user REST or GraphQL APIs)
What is the difference between "Admin User" and "End User"
Strapi has two very different authentication systems depending on the use-case, and we will soon be adding a third.
- Users-Permissions Plugin
- This plugin is for end-users and handles generic authentication for the REST and GraphQL endpoints (also known as the "content api"). It is currently required but will become optional in the Strapi v4.
- Admin core package
- This package handles the Strapi admin panel and also has it's own authentication system that is separated from the Users-Permissions plugin. This is where users are limited based on license and pricing will change to reflect the number of users you have. For more details on this see our User Guide, or reach out to our sales team.
- API token feature
- This will be the default replacement for the Users-Permissions plugin, it will provide generic authentication without needing to register specific users but will not function as replacement in the Strapi admin panel. This feature is only available in Strapi v4.