Question 1

Is Cosmos Cloud open source?

Accepted Answer

Cosmos describes its licence as Apache 2.0 with the Commons Clause 1.0. That makes it source-available and free to use, but not open source in the OSI sense: the licence does not allow selling the software, or a service based on it, such as SaaS or PaaS. MSPs who want to run Cosmos as a commercial managed service should discuss commercial terms, which is what the trial is the first step toward.

Question 2

How does Cosmos help with data residency and data-protection questions?

Accepted Answer

Cosmos is software you deploy on infrastructure you choose, so where workloads and records live is decided by where you run it, and Cosmos gives clients an auditable, self-hosted path when their data protection officer asks. It does not by itself make a deployment compliant with any specific law; that still depends on how you configure and operate it.

Question 3

Does self-hosting remove USD and FX exposure?

Accepted Answer

Not entirely. Cosmos’s own plans are priced in US dollars. What changes is the infrastructure and managed-service layer: hyperscaler resale is often billed in USD, whereas running Cosmos on servers you rent or own lets you price your service, and most of the infrastructure behind it, in your local currency.

Question 4

What does the 3-month Business License trial involve?

Accepted Answer

Spectrogram qualifies the SI or MSP and the intended pilot use case, provisions a 3-month Cosmos Business License trial, runs structured feedback sessions at day 45 and day 90, and only discusses partner terms once the pilot path is validated.

Question 5

Who is the trial for?

Accepted Answer

Qualifying systems integrators and managed service providers that want to pilot a managed private-cloud practice with a real client use case or a defined internal sandbox. It is not a generic free-tier signup.

Question 6

How is Cosmos different from Portainer, Coolify, CapRover or Cloudron?

Accepted Answer

Each takes a different shape: Portainer is a container-management UI licensed per node, Coolify and CapRover are app-deployment platforms, Cloudron is an app platform with per-app plans, and Cosmos combines a reverse proxy and security layer, an app store and multi-server management. The comparison table above sets out what each vendor states on its own site; where a vendor does not state something, we say so rather than guess.