The Users section: your VPN's clients
How to work with the Users section in CreateYourVPN: statuses and limits, the subscription link and QR, granting plans manually, resetting traffic, and reissuing subscriptions.
The first part of the course was about servers and routes. The second is about what it's all for: people and money. We'll start with the Users section — home to everyone who connects to your VPN.
What the list shows
The section gathers clients from all your clusters into one table. At the top — a summary: how many clients in total, how many active, and how many on trial. Finding the right person is easy with:
- status tabs — "All", "Active", "Trial", "Expired", "Disabled", "Limit", each with a counter;
- search by name or note (the client's email is searchable too);
- a cluster filter.
Each row shows the essentials: email, cluster, status, a traffic usage bar (unlimited shows as "∞"), the expiry date, and when the client was last online.
Statuses: who's in what state
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | The subscription works, traffic flows |
| On hold | A "sleeping" account with a trial window: it activates on first connection, and only then does the clock start |
| Limit reached | The client used up their traffic limit — the system stopped them automatically |
| Expired | The subscription end date has passed |
| Disabled | You switched the client off manually |
"Limit reached" and "Expired" are set by the system automatically. You control three states by hand: "Active", "Disabled", and "On hold". A client that's "Disabled", "Expired", or "Limit reached" is brought back by the Activate button, a plan grant (more below), or by editing the expiry and limit. A client on "On hold" wakes up by itself on first connection — or when you grant them a plan.
Adding a client
The Add user button opens a form:
- Email — the account is created from it. The person will also be able to sign in to their personal cabinet on your storefront with this address (what a storefront is — in the next lesson).
- Cluster — which cluster the client lives in.
- Plan — one of your plans, "Unlimited", or "Custom".
- Expiry, limit, and status — for a "Custom" plan: an expiry date (empty — no expiry), a traffic limit in gigabytes (empty — unlimited), and a status of "Active" or "On hold" with a trial window in days.
- Reset — how often to reset the traffic counter: never, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Until a payment provider is connected, the form is even simpler: every client gets the "Base plan — unlimited" with no expiry. Real plans arrive in the lesson on plans.
You don't have to add clients by hand: enable self-signup and people will register on the storefront themselves. Self-signup modes are covered in the lesson on plans too.
The subscription link and QR
Every client has one subscription link of the form https://your-storefront/sub/…. The user adds it to their VPN app (Happ and others) — the app fetches the server list and all settings by itself, and picks up any changes you make in the panel afterwards.
The QR button in the row opens the "QR & subscription" dialog: a QR code to scan with a phone and the link with a "Copy" button.
Or send nothing at all: the client visits your storefront, signs in with a code from an email — and their cabinet already has the subscription, the QR, and app install buttons waiting.
Actions on a client
The row menu (three dots) collects every operation:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Edit | Change status, expiry, limit, reset. Email can't be changed — it's the account identifier |
| Show QR / config | That same dialog with the QR and link |
| Grant plan | Apply one of your plans to the client manually |
| User's servers | Which server the client got on each route and whether it's healthy |
| Reset traffic | Zero the usage counter; the all-time statistics remain |
| Reissue subscription | Generate new access keys for the client |
| Activate / Disable | Switch the client on or off in one click |
| Delete | Irreversibly delete the account — the subscription stops working |
Three actions deserve a closer look.
Grant plan is a manual sale: pick a plan and the system applies it to the client. The plan's days are added to the remaining time (or counted from today if the subscription already expired); if the plan has a traffic limit, it's set anew along with a fresh counter. Along the way, "On hold", "Expired", and "Limit reached" turn into "Active". The one exception is "Disabled": you switched that client off yourself, so automation won't switch them back on.
Reissue subscription is the emergency button for when a client's keys may have leaked. The subscription link stays the same, but the keys inside change: the client's apps will drop until they refresh the subscription from the link. Use it only when you suspect compromise.
User's servers is a window into the balancing from lesson 4: for each route you see which server this client got, with a health dot showing those statuses from lesson 7.
Remember
- The Users section is every client of every cluster: statuses, traffic, expiry, online.
- "Limit reached" and "Expired" are set by the system; your manual statuses are "Active", "Disabled", "On hold".
- One subscription link works in every app; QR in one click; the storefront cabinet means you can send nothing at all.
- "Grant plan" adds days and wakes the client up; "Disabled" is never auto-enabled.
- "Reissue subscription" — only on compromise: it drops connections until apps refresh the subscription.
Next
Your clients are in place — time to dress up the storefront they connect through.