Starlink Enterprise Management: The Complete Guide

Starlink Enterprise management means running every Starlink account, service line and terminal an organisation is responsible for through one consistent process, using the Enterprise API that Starlink makes available to all Enterprise accounts. The Starlink dashboard manages one account at a time. The API manages them all, but it is a set of endpoints, not a tool: providers build or adopt the software that turns it into day-to-day management.

This guide explains what the Enterprise API covers, how its building blocks fit together, where its limits are, and what to demand from a platform built on it. Every statement about the API comes from Starlink’s public documentation.

# Who can use the Starlink Enterprise API?

Starlink’s developer documentation states that the API “is available to all Enterprise accounts”. Starlink’s support centre adds that API access is available for “Starlink Authorized Resellers, Enterprise or larger Business Customers”. In practice that covers three groups:

• Enterprise customers running their own estate of terminals across sites, vessels or vehicles.
• Multinational corporations with Starlink accounts in many countries, held by one organisation.
• Authorised Resellers and providers that create and run accounts on behalf of their customers.

Access runs through a service account, created in the Starlink dashboard by a user with the Admin or Service Account Management role. The service accounts guide covers permissions, secrets and revocation.

# What are the building blocks?

Starlink’s API is organised around a small set of objects:

• Account. The billing entity, with a number such as ACC-.... Providers hold a provider account and create customer accounts in the same country and currency (creating accounts).
• Address. A service location bound to the account by latitude and longitude.
• Service line. The subscription that carries a terminal’s service, with its product, data blocks and usage. Service line numbers begin with SL-, or AST- for lines created before 15 January 2024.
• User terminal. The Starlink hardware itself, added to the account and attached to a service line.
• Service account. The credentials an integration uses: a client ID, a permission set and up to 20 secrets (V2 service accounts, authentication).

Management is the work of keeping all of these right, across every account, every month. For an estate spread over many accounts, see how to manage multiple Starlink accounts.

# How do managed accounts work?

Managed accounts are Starlink’s answer for organisations that control many accounts. A manager account sits at the top of a tree, managed accounts sit beneath it, and the tree can run several levels deep. Starlink performs the initial set-up through the customer’s account manager.

The practical gain is credentials. A service account created in the manager account can request a short-lived token for any account below it, by account number. One secret then reaches the whole tree. Permissions follow the same shape: a role granted at one node applies to that node and everything beneath it. Managed accounts explained goes further.

# What does the Enterprise API let you manage?

Across those objects, the API covers the work an operator does every month:

• Service lines: create, deactivate, rename, change product, enable a public IP.
• Terminals: add to or remove from the account, attach to a service line, reboot.
• Data: recurring data blocks, one-time top-ups, and priority data opt-in and opt-out (managing data plans).
• Usage: daily usage per service line for the current billing cycle and up to six previous cycles, with overage and its cost (data usage).
• Billing: invoices, balance and proration estimates for plan changes.
• Telemetry: a stream and a cache of terminal readings, aggregated over fifteen seconds (telemetry API).

Some work has no single endpoint. Starlink states plainly that “the Starlink APIs do not include a native transfer process”. Moving a service line between accounts is a multistep process the provider builds from the endpoints above. The service lines guide sets out activation, plan changes and transfers, and the usage and data blocks guide covers data month to month.

# What are the limits to plan for?

Three limits shape every management tool built on the API:

1. Rate limits. 250 requests a minute per account, as a sliding window, and 1,000 token requests per 15 minutes per client IP (rate limits). Starlink’s own advice is to sync data into your own database on a schedule, rather than calling the API on every page view. More in Starlink API rate limits in practice.
2. Limited history. Usage reaches back six billing cycles through previousBillingCycles. Anything older has to be stored as it arrives.
3. Credential custody. Starlink requires providers to hold service account credentials in a key management system, and validates it during onboarding (API access management). There is no API for managing service accounts, by design.

# What should you demand from a management platform?

The API makes management possible. A platform makes it routine. Whatever you build or buy, look for:

• Every account in one view, including the managed account tree, without switching between dashboards.
• A synchronised store, so screens never wait on the API and never spend the rate limit.
• History kept beyond six cycles, stored as it arrives.
• Changes that cite the API, with each action traceable to the endpoint it calls and the permission it needs.
• Clients kept apart, so one customer never sees another’s service lines.
• The terminal’s own view. The API’s telemetry is a fifteen-second summary. A terminal’s own readings, second by second, come only from the terminal.

# How does Nexus Telemetry Enterprise approach this?

Nexus Telemetry Enterprise is a multi-tenant SaaS platform for every Starlink Enterprise account, built on Starlink’s public v2 API from the ground up.

• It reads every connected account, the managed account tree, service lines, terminals and usage, and keeps them in its own store on a schedule, as Starlink recommends.
• It manages service lines, data blocks and priority data through Starlink’s API, with each action traced to Starlink’s public documentation.
• It integrates each terminal’s account records with the telemetry that Nexus Telemetry Fleet reads directly from the terminal: the obstruction map, alignment and power draw, every second.

Access stays in your hands: deleting the secret or disabling the service account in the Starlink dashboard ends it at once.

# Where do you start?

Start with the account you already have. Check that your Starlink dashboard shows a Service Accounts section under Settings: if it does, the API is available to you. Then decide whether you build on the API yourself or adopt a platform built on it, and judge either against the list above.