# Moving to Cloud

> What you gain, what migration involves, and how to decide whether it's worth it.

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/llms.txt).

Source: https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/community/project/upgrade-to-cloud

---
The Community Edition covers projects, tasks and manual time entry. If you have
outgrown that, the commercial editions add the modules that were removed.

## What you gain

| Area | Community | Cloud |
| --- | :---: | :---: |
| Projects, tasks, comments, attachments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Subtasks, milestones, checklists, labels | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manual time entry | ✓ | ✓ |
| Kanban board | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gantt chart, critical path | — | ✓ |
| Sprints, backlog, epics, velocity | — | ✓ |
| Custom fields and statuses, automation | — | ✓ |
| Timesheets, approvals, running timer | — | ✓ |
| Resource management and availability | — | ✓ |
| Budget, cost and invoicing | — | ✓ |
| Reports and dashboards | — | ✓ |
| Test case manager, defects | — | ✓ |
| Wiki and documents | — | ✓ |
| GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket / Azure DevOps | — | ✓ |
| Google Calendar and Drive | — | ✓ |
| SSO, teams, business units, audit trail | — | ✓ |
| Developer API and MCP server | — | ✓ |

Not every feature is in every tier — see
[Plans and limits](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/cloud/plans/plans-and-limits).

## Choosing a destination

- [Orangescrum Cloud](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/cloud/get-started/introduction): We host and operate it. No servers, no upgrades, no backups to run.

- [Commercial self-hosted](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/self-hosted/get-started/introduction): You keep the data on your own infrastructure and get the full feature set.

If you self-hosted the Community Edition for **data residency or control**
reasons, the commercial self-hosted edition is the natural move — the Cloud
would undo the reason you self-hosted.

If you self-hosted mainly because it was **free**, price the operational cost
honestly — backups, upgrades, TLS, monitoring, someone on call — against the
subscription before assuming self-hosting is cheaper.

## What migration involves

> **There is no one-click migration**
>
> The Community Edition was carved out of the commercial codebase and its
> database schema was trimmed — roughly 149 tables against the full product's
> ~310. Moving is an assisted data migration, not a config change. Talk to
> Orangescrum before planning dates.

**Take a full backup**

    Database and attachments. See
    [Backup and restore](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/community/operate/backup-and-restore).

**Contact Orangescrum**

    Share your version, roughly how much data you have, and which edition you
    are moving to.

**Agree what moves**

    Projects, tasks, comments, attachments, users and time logs are the core.
    Confirm what is in scope before work starts.

**Rehearse**

    Migrate into a trial workspace and have your team check their own projects.
    Do not validate this yourself — the people who own the data will spot what
    you cannot.

**Cut over**

    Freeze the Community instance, run the final migration, redirect people.
    Keep the old instance read-only for a while rather than deleting it.

## Keep your backups either way

Whatever you decide, do not decommission the Community instance until the new
one has been in real use for a few weeks and your backups of the old data are
somewhere safe.

- [Compare editions](https://helpdesk.orangescrum.com/guide/cloud/plans/editions): The full breakdown.

- [Talk to sales](mailto:sales@orangescrum.com): Migration and licensing questions.