# Activate GitLab EE with a license **(STARTER ONLY)**
To activate all GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) functionality, you need to upload
a license. After you've received your license from GitLab Inc., you can upload it
by **signing into your GitLab instance as an admin** or adding it at
installation time.
a license. It's only possible to activate GitLab Enterprise Edition, so first verify which edition
you are running. To verify, sign in to GitLab and browse to `/help`. The GitLab edition and version
are listed at the top of the **Help** page.
If you are running GitLab Community Edition (CE), upgrade your installation to
GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE). For more details, see [Upgrading between editions](../../update/README.md#upgrading-between-editions).
If you have questions or need assistance upgrading from GitLab CE to EE please [contact GitLab Support](https://about.gitlab.com/support/#contact-support).
The license is a base64-encoded ASCII text file with a `.gitlab-license`
extension. You can obtain the file by [purchasing a license](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/)
or by signing up for a [free trial](https://about.gitlab.com/free-trial/).
After you've received your license from GitLab Inc., you can upload it
by **signing into your GitLab instance as an admin** or adding it at
installation time.
As of GitLab Enterprise Edition 9.4.0, a newly-installed instance without an
uploaded license only has the Core features active. A trial license
activates all Ultimate features, but after
...
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@@ -108,8 +116,9 @@ To remove a license from a self-managed instance:
## License history
You can upload and view more than one license,
but only the latest license is used as the active license.
You can upload and view more than one license, but only the latest license in the current date
range is used as the active license. When you upload a future-dated license, it
