Bitwarden self hosted & mobile app access

Hi all, I have a few problems with my Bitwarden self-hosted instance that I’d greatly appreciate your assistance. Thanks for your time!

I’m new to self-hosting Bitwarden. I’ve created my own instance on-prem with Proxmox with the following specifications:

  • Let’s Encrypt: N (host locally)
  • Have a SSL certificate to use? N
  • Generate a self-signed SSL certificate? Y – (use cloudflared tunnel for reverse proxy)
  • SMTP gmail set up with app password:

globalSettings__mail__replyToEmail=no-reply@your.domain
globalSettings__mail__smtp__host=smtp.gmail.com
globalSettings__mail__smtp__port=587
globalSettings__mail__smtp__ssl=false
globalSettings__mail__smtp__username=
globalSettings__mail__smtp__password=

These are the problems that I’ve been unable to find solutions online:

  1. I didn’t receive a verification email after completing the set up. This is the message on the Subscription page of the web vault:
  • To create an on-premises hosted organization you need to upload a valid license file. Your license file will be named something like bitwarden_premium_license.json

  • I believe because of this I do not have access to the premium services: ie., unable to create folders/ organizations, generate reports for data breaches or exposed passwords etc.
  • I’ve tried to create several different users but none of them are “email verified” on the admin page
  1. The admin page is accessible but not configurable:
  • unable to perform actions like Remove all 2FA, Deauthorize sessions, Delete User, Disable User, etc
  • possibly related to problem #1?
  1. Unable to change or add new Login with the chrome extension:
  • An error has occurred

    Unexpected token ‘<‘, “<!DOCTYPE”…is not valiad

  • Everytime this happens, I have to log out of the chrome extension > log in to the web vault > log in to the chrome extension
  1. Unable to log in android mobile app - see the following log:
  • Stacktrace:
    kotlinx.serialization.json.internal.JsonDecodingException: Unexpected JSON token at offset 0: Expected start of the object ‘{’, but had ‘<’ instead at path: $
    JSON input:

    <head..... td.i.d(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:32) td.i.e(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:35) C.a.l(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:61) C.a.m(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:13) C.a.B(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:92) C.a.g(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:45) td.s.c(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:42) com.bitwarden.network.model.InternalPreLoginResponseJson$$serializer.deserialize(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:1) com.bitwarden.network.model.InternalPreLoginResponseJson$$serializer.deserialize(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:2) td.s.s(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:279) com.bitwarden.network.serializer.BaseSurrogateSerializer.deserialize(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:12) td.s.s(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:279) sd.c.a(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:29) z3.e.d(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:34) Pd.A.c(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:54) r0.m.r(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:5) zd.m.run(r8-map-id-068ba0e44f928840d694163f3e085fb646f62693ecff8492f3d3bafaee71f88e:55) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1156) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:651) java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1119)

    Version: 2025.8.0 (20577)
    Device: samsung SM-S911U 15@35 prod
    CI: commit: bitwarden/android/release/2025.8-rc32@1c525b9dfc588105e1fd8f3ad2d4196803c19cd7
    build source: bitwarden/android/actions/runs/16834718954/attempts/1

@Reliance3582 Welcome to the forum!

Please post a screenshot of your Admin Dashboard.

any ideas on what’s going on?