What to Expect During HiveMQ Cloud Starter Maintenance

Question

HiveMQ Cloud Starter is a managed MQTT broker offering ideal for small-scale or non-critical workloads. As part of its shared infrastructure model, maintenance on HiveMQ Cloud Starter clusters may occur without advance notice.

This article outlines what users can expect during these maintenance events, how to mitigate potential impacts, and considerations for production-grade deployments.

Answer

🔍 What Happens During Maintenance?

During routine maintenance operations (e.g., performance tuning, load balancing, or infrastructure optimization), the following may occur:

Temporary disconnection of MQTT clients
- Clients may be disconnected unexpectedly.
- These disconnections typically occur between 13:00–15:00 UTC, but this may vary.
No data loss or broker downtime
- Disconnections are brief and the cluster remains operational.
- MQTT clients are expected to automatically reconnect.
No customer-specific maintenance window control
- Users on the Starter plan cannot schedule or defer maintenance.

🔁 Expected Client Behavior

Clients using proper MQTT client libraries (such as HiveMQ MQTT Client, Eclipse Paho, etc.) with auto-reconnect mechanisms will:

Reconnect seamlessly within a few seconds.
Resume subscriptions and data flow as per MQTT session configuration (Clean Start, Session Expiry, etc.).

If your client disconnects and does not automatically reconnect, you may need to:

Enable reconnect logic.
Implement exponential backoff to avoid flooding the broker with rapid reconnect attempts.

📚 More info: Reconnect Handling with HiveMQ MQTT Client

📉 No Visibility in Dashboard

HiveMQ Cloud Starter does not provide advanced monitoring or historical event views for connection/disconnection events. You must rely on:

Client-side logs.
External monitoring tools, if integrated.

🔒 How to Avoid This Impact in Production

If consistent uptime, predictability, and visibility are business-critical:

Feature	HiveMQ Cloud Starter	HiveMQ Cloud Enterprise

Feature	HiveMQ Cloud Starter	HiveMQ Cloud Enterprise
Maintenance control	❌ No	✅ Yes
SLA / Uptime guarantee	❌ No	✅ Yes
Support escalation	❌ Limited	✅ Dedicated TAM
Monitoring & alerts	❌ Minimal	✅ Full
Custom maintenance windows	❌ No	✅ Yes

🔗 Upgrade path: Talk to Sales / Get a Quote

✅ Summary

What to Expect	Action You Can Take

What to Expect	Action You Can Take
Temporary disconnects	Implement reconnect logic
No alert or dashboard visibility	Monitor via client logs
No SLA or scheduling	Upgrade to Enterprise if needed

Still Have Questions?

Please reach out to HiveMQ Support or your account manager for more information.