Deployment options
The same Guidepost, hosted for you.
Guidepost is one platform with two ways to run it. You can deploy it inside your own network, or we can operate the infrastructure on your behalf — an arrangement we call Guidepost Cloud. What your people log into is the same product either way.
One product, two deployment options
The difference is who runs the servers. That is the whole difference.
This is not a lighter edition, a starter tier or a trimmed-down version. Both options run the same application, at the same version, with every capability described elsewhere on this site.
Option one
Self-managed
You deploy Guidepost inside your own boundary and administer it yourself. No public internet dependency at runtime, no external data repository. Closed and air-gapped networks are the design target rather than a supported exception.
- Your infrastructure, your control
- Works with no route to the public internet
- You handle hosting, updates and backups
Option two
Guidepost Cloud
We operate the infrastructure and you use the platform. Your organization still administers Guidepost itself — your hierarchy, your roles, your courses, your data — but nobody on your side has to stand up a server or plan a maintenance window.
- We handle hosting, updates and backups
- Your own isolated environment
- Reached over the internet, on your own address
What stays exactly the same
Everything you actually evaluate the platform on.
The rest of this site describes Guidepost. All of it applies to a hosted deployment without qualification — these pages are not written about a different edition.
The organizational hierarchy
Organization, Schoolhouse, Group, Course — four real levels, with visibility and management authority following placement automatically.
Authoring and course content
Eleven content block types including branching popups, tabbed panels and embedded quizzes, with version history on everything you author.
Scheduling and rosters
The visual course calendar, weekly schedules released on your timetable, nine live roster fields, waitlists and pre-course questionnaires.
Assessment and certification
Quizzes with five question types, automatic and manual grading, and certificates issued on genuine completion and independently verifiable by code.
The access model and audit trail
The same layered access control, the same restricted-course lock, and the same attributable, timestamped record of every enrollment, grade and certificate.
Accounts and integrations
Accounts are still provisioned by your administrators, with no public self-registration. Active Directory, student records and SCORM export remain available and inert until configured.
What is actually different
We take on the operational work. You keep the platform.
Worth being precise about, because "hosted" can mean anything from a managed server to handing over control of your own data.
- We run the infrastructure. Servers, storage, updates, backups and availability are ours to operate, monitor and keep current.
- You still administer Guidepost. Your hierarchy, your roles, your courses, your enrollments, your content. Nothing about day-to-day administration moves to us.
- Your data is yours. Hosting it does not make it ours. It is not pooled, not mined, and not used to train anything.
- It is reached over the internet. Your organization gets its own address. That is the one genuine trade against a self-managed deployment.
- Updates arrive without a maintenance project. You get new versions as they ship rather than scheduling an upgrade.
- Backups are taken and tested. Not merely configured — an untested backup is not a backup.
Tenant isolation
Your data sits in its own environment, not in a shared pool.
This is a fair thing to ask a hosted vendor, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a reassuring adjective.
Every hosted organization gets its own database and its own file storage. Your records are not rows in a shared table separated by a customer column, and your uploads are not files in a shared folder distinguished by a prefix. The separation is structural.
Each environment can reach its own data and no other. That boundary is enforced by the infrastructure itself rather than by application code remembering to filter correctly, and it is verified directly — from both sides — as part of setting up a new organization, rather than assumed to have worked.
We would rather state this at the level a buyer can hold us to than describe an architecture. If your review process needs the detail underneath it, ask and we will provide it.
In practice
What that means for you
- Your own database, not a shared one
- Your own file storage for uploads and media
- No path from another organization's environment to yours
- Backups taken per organization, and restored to prove they work
Who this suits
Organizations that want Guidepost, not a second infrastructure project.
A good fit
- Roughly 100 to 1,000 people, with real training to administer
- No dedicated infrastructure team, or one already fully committed
- Training runs on the public internet rather than a closed network
- You want the platform working without a hosting decision attached to it
- You would rather evaluate the product than plan a deployment first
Self-managed is the better answer when
- Your training network is closed or air-gapped
- Policy or accreditation requires data to stay inside your boundary
- You already operate infrastructure and prefer to keep custody
- You need the deployment to survive with no external dependency at all
Most organizations know which of these they are within a sentence or two. If you do not, describe your environment when you get in touch and we will tell you which one we would recommend — including when that is the option you were not expecting.
How a hosted deployment starts
With a conversation, not a checkout.
There is no self-service signup and no published price list. Setting up a hosted organization is a deliberate, human process, and it begins the same way every other Guidepost engagement does.
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You tell us about your organization
How you are structured, roughly how many people, and whether hosting is something you want or something you are weighing against running it yourself.
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We tell you which option fits
Honestly, including when that is self-managed. Recommending hosting to an organization that should not have it helps nobody.
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A walkthrough against your shape
The same demonstration either way — pointed at the hierarchy you described, not a generic dataset arranged to look tidy.
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Your environment is set up for you
We provision it, verify it, and hand you an administrator account. You carry on from there as the administrator of your own organization.
Next step
Tell us whether you want to run it, or want it run for you.
Either answer is a good one, and "not sure yet" is the most common. Describe your environment and we will tell you which option we would recommend and why.