Mender.io has launched a free, 12-month hosted trial version which allows developers and device makers to try all of Mender's features.

The goal of this free trial is to help prospective users and customers evaluate all the different features and capabilities of the latest Mender releases to enable them to make a better decision when they decide to select a plan for their pre and post-production OTA needs. The free hosted trial version includes the same features of Mender Enterprise hosted for 12 months with up to a maximum of 10 devices. It allows evaluation of all the features of Mender with no credit card requirement.

This is also a way for less advanced users to learn in the OTA software updates area, as they can follow Mender's onboarding process, tutorials, and prepare their devices for the first deployments.

There are two components in the Mender architecture - the server and the client. The client runs on your device in the user space on top of an embedded Linux operating system. The Mender server is the brain of the system. Whether you want to self-manage the server, or use the hosted Mender server instance, the purpose of the server is to ensure integrity and security of updates, store new software versions to be deployed to devices, define and coordinate updates, and ensure you feel confident and safe with your updates.

Mender supports different types of software updates: files, directories, containers, packages, and full system image updates with dual A/B partitions. To support different formats Mender uses Update Modules, which can be tailored to a specific device or environment with capability to do proxy deployment to peripheral devices.

For more information, visit: https://mender.io/