Ekvi on-premises: when a firm needs its own installation of its register software

Most companies and firms are comfortable with a hosted register. Some are not allowed to be, or choose not to be. This guide describes who needs their own installation and what Ekvi's contains.

When a firm needs its own server

Data residency. The hosted Ekvi runs in the EU, in Spain. A firm or company with a requirement to keep client data on its own premises, in a particular country or on infrastructure it controls will not be satisfied by that.

A bank or fund policy. Banks, regulated funds and some groups restrict which processors may hold their data, or require a security review for every new vendor. Running the software on your own server turns that review into a review of your own infrastructure.

A corporate service provider with client contracts. A firm that keeps registers for many clients may have promised in its engagement letters where the data lives. An installation it controls lets it keep that promise without relying on another processor.

The location of the register. Cap. 113 requires that the register is kept at the registered office, another office of the company, or the office of the person who maintains it on the company's behalf, and, for a company registered in the Republic, not at a place outside the Republic (s.105(2)-(4)). Whether and how that applies to where electronic data is held is a legal question we do not answer here; if it matters to you, ask your adviser, and note that with your own installation you decide the location.

What an installation contains

One command, just up, builds and starts two containers: a Postgres 16 database and the application. The startup waits for the database, applies the migrations as the schema owner and then starts the application with a separate database role that has no right to bypass row-level security. Data Room files are stored in a directory you choose. A single installation runs one organisation's companies, or a firm's client companies.

It is the same code as the hosted service. Isolation between companies is enforced by the database whether the installation holds one company or two hundred, and the audit trail is the same: events are appended and never edited, and a correction is a new event.

Settings you control

An installation reads its settings from one environment file. Each optional feature stays off until configured: the sign-in providers, the email relay, billing and the assistant. The AI assistant is switched off by default and can be pointed at a model running on your own network, so that no question leaves the installation. Without an email relay, confirmation messages are written to the log rather than sent.

What stays your job

You run the server: backups of the database and the Data Room directory, updates, certificates and access control. Ekvi does not file with the Registrar for you, whether hosted or on-premises; the Registrar has no filing interface, so the forms are submitted by you or your secretary.

How to buy it

On-premises is licensed per installation. The landing page says to talk to Ekvi through the contact form, and installation, support and licence are agreed directly. There is no public price. For firms that want hosting first, the Partner plan is described in Why service providers move registers to Ekvi.

Ekvi is a record-keeping tool and does not provide legal or tax advice.