Activate HashiCorp Flex

Follow these steps to activate HashiCorp Flex for a Standard or Plus Edition HCP Terraform organization.

Prerequisites

There are several prerequisites for activating HashiCorp Flex:

Create an HCP organization.
You must be a member of your HCP Terraform organization's "owners" team.
You must have the HCP organization "admin" or "owner" role.

Step 1: Create the required user accounts

There are two ways to activate HashiCorp Flex. If you already use HCP Terraform and HCP, we recommend that you create a unified HCP user account. Otherwise, you can create separate HCP Terraform and HCP accounts.

Create a unified HCP user account

Go to HCP Terraform and click Continue with HCP account.
Create a free HCP account or sign in using your HCP email. If you have an existing HCP Terraform account, HCP prompts you to link it. If you do not have an HCP Terraform account, HCP creates one for you and links it to the HCP account.

Create separate HCP Terraform and HCP user accounts

Go to HCP Terraform and create a free account or sign in to your existing one.
Go to HashiCorp Cloud Platform and create a free HCP account or sign in to your existing one.

Step 2: Provision the required HCP Terraform team and HCP roles

After you create your user accounts:

Become an HCP Terraform organization owner: an HCP Terraform organization owner must invite you to the "owners" team. You must be an owner to see the Plan & Billing page in the HCP Terraform organization settings.
Become an HCP admin: An HCP admin or organization owner must invite you to the HCP organization that HashiCorp Flex is allocated to and grant you the admin role.

Organization members may be owners or admins in only the HCP Terraform or HCP organization. To safeguard access to your Flex balance, determine whether to invite HCP Terraform organization owners to the HCP organization, or whether to invite HCP admins to HCP Terraform. Consider the following as examples to decide which approach is right for your organization.

The HCP admin offers HCP Terraform as a multi-tenant managed service. They manage the billing relationship with HashiCorp Cloud Platform and services customers of HCP Terraform. The HCP admin should be invited to the HCP Terraform customer organizations to activate Flex.
The HCP admin manages the billing relationship with HashiCorp Cloud Platform and owns all the HCP Terraform organizations. They can use either approach and invite HCP admins to HCP Terraform organizations or make HCP Terraform organization owners into HCP admins.

Step 3: Activate your Flex plan

Your sales account manager will email your organization's tech contact a code to activate your HCP Flex plan a day or two before your plan begins.

Complete the following steps to activate your Flex plan:

Copy the HCP Flex activation code from your email.
Click the link in your activation email to access your HCP organization or log into your HCP portal.
Navigate to Billing > Payment Methods and find the Contract section.
Add the activation code you copied to the Contract section.

HCP will notify you if your contract is successfully activated. Your Flex balance may take up to an hour to appear.

Step 4: Verify HashiCorp Flex balance allocation

Navigate to the HCP Org > Billing. If HashiCorp sales has allocated Flex, the page displays a Contract Summary with an available balance. If it only shows your credit card information or a $50 free trial credit, your HashiCorp Flex account may be scheduled to be allocated at a future date. Please contact your HashiCorp Sales Account Manager for more information.

Note: All New HashiCorp organizations are automatically allocated $50 in trial credits. If your HashiCorp Flex account is not yet allocated, you can use the trial credits to temporarily activate Standard Edition for your HCP Terraform organization and immediately access paid features such as team management or more concurrency.

A view of the HCP Terraform account summary showing billing summary and available balance

Step 4: Edit the HCP Terraform organization plan

Navigate to your HCP Terraform organization setting's Plan & Billing page. If your HCP Terraform user account is not managed by HCP, you will be prompted to log in to an HCP account that has the admin role in the HCP organization with HashiCorp Flex allocated. You must have admin privileges in the HCP organization to manage the HCP Terraform organization's billing plan.

Prompt for user to link their HCP Terraform account to an HCP account

Note: If you have a unified HCP account, you do not need to log in and HCP Terraform will automatically identify HCP organizations that your unified HCP user account is a member of and are a member of the Flex HCP Terraform organization.

Click Edit Plan to go to the Plan Activation page.

If your HashiCorp user account has the owner or admin role in multiple HCP organizations, you will need to select a billing account.

A view prompting the user to choose the billing account to link against

After selecting a plan, confirm your selection and review the Cost Estimate.

If you meet all the necessary prerequisites, the Plan Selection page will show HashiCorp Flex at the bottom left. If you see Pay-as-you-go, please review steps 1-3 or contact HashiCorp support for more assistance.

A comparison of the option to activate Flex vs Pay-as-you-go

Finally, confirm your selections and verify that the Monthly estimate meets your expectations. If you have any questions, contact your HashiCorp Sales Account Manager.