Direct Admin Question before pulling the trigger (want to leave cPanel)

Agility

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Hi there guys

I guess this question is for Direct Admin themselves and hopefully they check this forum.

I am really tired of the hold cPanel has over my business right now and looking to leave.
After trying many different panels, I have decided on Direct Admin as my choice, simply because it integrates with Cloudlinux and also OpenLitespeed.

The only concern I have is that I dont want to be down the same path with Direct Admin if they start charging for additional accounts above 100 or 50 etc.

I know over time the cost will increase, but I dont want to be charge for extra accounts approach.
At the moment im paying Cpanel $45 plus around $15 per month, and the cost doesn't really bother me. The issue is im always trying to limit the amount of accounts I have. The way we develop is to clone or copy accounts and work on them in development. Or just create some new accounts to test some things on and dont think its fair to charge me for that, also to constantly having to worry about each account I create is just bothering me too much.

So im looking for some kind of guarantee that Direct Admin will never charge per account like cPanel currently do.

Thanks

Walter
 
Hi there guys

I guess this question is for Direct Admin themselves and hopefully they check this forum.

I am really tired of the hold cPanel has over my business right now and looking to leave.
After trying many different panels, I have decided on Direct Admin as my choice, simply because it integrates with Cloudlinux and also OpenLitespeed.

The only concern I have is that I dont want to be down the same path with Direct Admin if they start charging for additional accounts above 100 or 50 etc.

I know over time the cost will increase, but I dont want to be charge for extra accounts approach.
At the moment im paying Cpanel $45 plus around $15 per month, and the cost doesn't really bother me. The issue is im always trying to limit the amount of accounts I have. The way we develop is to clone or copy accounts and work on them in development. Or just create some new accounts to test some things on and dont think its fair to charge me for that, also to constantly having to worry about each account I create is just bothering me too much.

So im looking for some kind of guarantee that Direct Admin will never charge per account like cPanel currently do.

Thanks

Walter
After your first payment has been received and your license gets activated, you will not get an price increase. (This is even guaranteed on the plans page itself. (See: https://www.directadmin.com/pricing.php)) (Do note there are of course a couple exceptions like inflation of course.)

Do note that one license can only be used on one server/VPS at a time. (I do not know how CPanal deals with this so I am just mentioning it to be safe.) And if you need multiple licenses later you will need to pay the prices of that time. (Meaning the price guarantee is only for your existing license(s)) But from personal experience DirectAdmin prices do not change. (It only happens when they got rid of the Life-time license since as they said before that type of license is not good from DirectAdmin in the long run. And anyone who has that license can still use it. It's just not sold anymore.)
 
In our nearly 20-year history, we have never priced-increased anyone's active licenses. I believe our track record speaks for itself but this cPanel price hike has left people suspicious, and sometimes unreasonable. Can someone name any software company that posts a guarantee that they will never change prices or licensing structure?

Besides, there is already a way to guarantee your license never changes. We don't have any limit on how far into the future it can be prepaid. So if someone wants a legal, contractually-obligated guarantee that nothing will change for 10 years, I suppose they can prepay for 10 years. :)
 
Hey guys

So great, now I get an email that WHMCS is now also changing to a per account licensing model, limiting me to 250 customers.
What difference does it make how many cpanel accounts or WHMCS customers I have?

This is purely money grabbing now.

Maybe if we were using cpanel servers and they have additional bandwidth or disk usage, I can understand a per account pricing model.

Also considering direct admin wont say that will not follow suite with this kind of a pricing model, it seems that this is going to be the way forward for all hosting software products.

By all means increase prices, but to change to a per account/customer model makes no sense and is clearly nothing more than a money grab now.

Sigh
 
WHMCS is a seperate tool which can be used on more panels. cPanel and DA are not responsible for what WHMCS of AWBS or kindlike billing systems are doing.

As DA sales already mentioned, they did not change pricing of active licensing. They change pricing in 2019 which was the first time I've seen that happening in 11 years. And this was only for new customers, not existing licenses/customers.
In fact doing this they also added as first professional panel a lite option for 1 admin with 10 domains for a cheap price. They are not out to get you. Ofcourse they are a business but they always have been very fair.

So imho what DA sales is saying is trustworthy, I've been with them now for fat more then a decade, others even way longer.
But be aware that nobody is responsible for 3rd party price changes.
 
In our nearly 20-year history, we have never priced-increased anyone's active licenses. I believe our track record speaks for itself but this cPanel price hike has left people suspicious, and sometimes unreasonable. Can someone name any software company that posts a guarantee that they will never change prices or licensing structure?

Besides, there is already a way to guarantee your license never changes. We don't have any limit on how far into the future it can be prepaid. So if someone wants a legal, contractually-obligated guarantee that nothing will change for 10 years, I suppose they can prepay for 10 years. :)
I can confirm - I bought a Direct Admin owned licence in 2004. Haven't paid them a cent since. I've probably changed that licence across to new servers about 8 times since then, they have done it without any issues. They even gave me a trial licence so I can have 2 servers running at the same time on occasions to give me time to transfer accounts across and not charged me any fees. I've posted this comment because Every other company have wanted support $$$ and Direct Admin never has, so morally feel like we should be giving something back if you get my drift.

Nobody can ever guarantee that a company will never change their charging model, but best to judge them by their actions as opposed to their promises. cPanel // WHMCS have made their bed. As a WHMCS owned licence holder, I'm also checking out the alternatives.
 
I guess this question is for Direct Admin themselves and hopefully they check this forum.
Best to email [email protected]
I am really tired of the hold cPanel has over my business right now and looking to leave.
A lot of us left cpanel in June of 2019.
The only concern I have is that I dont want to be down the same path with Direct Admin if they start charging for additional accounts above 100 or 50 etc.
It's impossible to predict the future. Only God knows mens hearts. As other have said It has not happened yet. I have had Licenses since 2017 no extra charges have ever been forced on me.
So great, now I get an email that WHMCS is now also changing to a per account licensing model, limiting me to 250 customers.
I stopped using WHMCS a very long time ago... They are owned by the same company that own cpanel. Plesk will be next... Use Blesta.
This is purely money grabbing now.
if the market will bear it cpanel will charge it.
 
I will only say that since DirectAdmin changed its license structure, increased prices, eliminated lifetime licenses, eliminated support for existing ones, the license for a single user is a joke... and many more recent changes, it has become the worst option today.
We have been customers for years, without prior notice they removed our reseller status, further increasing the cost per license, as we are not OVH we are no longer good resellers.
The services and changes they make from CustomBuild are becoming more and more problems, they are published without testing, they are ignored the threads of problems in the forum, which I understand since they want to earn more money for the support.
Earn more money, yes, but offer more... uhmmm... since September 27 of last year they have not updated anything, more than half a year without updates, this is a joke or what? and all the new features that we have been asking for for years, now they plan to publish them under a new package that will not be included in DirectAdmin and that will have to be paid separately.
Another funny thing, if we want the panel in our language, we have to do it ourselves, nice.
In short, I have been here for 14 years and I have never seen Directadmin in a worse state, I suppose their goal will be to increase numbers and be acquired by Oakley Capital, that is the only explanation I can think of.

Although I have been a great supporter of Directadmin for many years and have recommended it over Plesk or CPanel, sadly, with the latest licensing changes and the apparent abandonment of development, it no longer seems to me to be the best option, and even we have already started to evaluate other options.

:cry:
 
Our reseller status was also removed without any notice. No long time customer. We still hold 20+ CP licences, 1/2 "one times fee"s.

They also kickend me out from bug tracker. after I've postet the possibility (here on this forum) to use it, which I find a total shame. I thought it would be helpful if more customers could post the bugs directly, it was probably a mistake.

When I report an error/bug, they says "you don't have valid support", great! I've only owned and lifetime licences (some with support).

Long story short, we have ordered new Dell servers and now have 5x more customers (cpanel one times) on them than before and migrate a maximum of one customer per day to DA.

The support is also snotty (except John & Mark).

From my point of view, the new "pro pack" is also an ashing of long-standing customers (which pay for updates).

There are certain things in DA that are really cool but without linux knowledge it will be hard.

In conclusion, I would stay stay with CP!
 
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eliminated lifetime licenses,
They did not eliminated lifetime licenses, they just stopped selling them. All existing lifetime licenses still work.
Also mind that they were the very last of the professional panels to do that. CP Already did that somewhere in 2003 if I'm not mistaken. DA could have done it then too... they didn't.

As for support payment, you can't run a business without going broke the way they did, and they did it for many years. Since you're also here 14 years you do know that. You also know they do test things and releases were always done the same way and not every month.

I do agree on the thoughts about the pro pack. However as said, they have to earn money to keep existing, pay their employees zo they can keep developping to please all the cPanel customers coming over, who often expect cPanel working and support for the price of DA. It doesn't work that way.

I think DA is way better now since they created lots of improvements since former cPanel customers came over.
You think otherwise, but before this happened, lots of people have seen DA as being non-modern. You just can't have a lot of more options and development without it's being payed for. Be glad prices did not change for over 14 years. I don't know any business which did not raise prices for such a long time.

I can't speak about your reseller statusses. I do tend to agree that the pro pack is not a good idea this way for long existing customers.

In conclusion, I would stay stay with CP!
If you want great ticket support, little work for yourself, there is a cost to it, but indeed then you can choose CP.
Mercedes and Volkswagen both run fine. Don't expect to get a Mercedes for a VW price. And.... even VW will get more expensive and change things some time. Nothing to do about that, things get more expensive, the VW boss can't stay at ancient prices either.
 
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