DirectAdmin License Price change (again)

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mmgenius

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Am I reading this good? Is there again a price change for the DirectAdmin Licenses?
Important License Changes

We came from (internal) lifetime licenses to monthly paid (internal) licenses and now when we need new licenses we will be forced to buy a standard $29/month license?
And what will happen with the old ones? Still working, but what with the updates, new features, ...? And for how long?

(:cry: I loved the good old DirectAdmin times, where DirectAdmin made the difference :cry:)
 
Can you please publicly confirm that your datacenter account is spending at least the same monthly rate as a retail customer with only one Standard license ($29/month)?
 
We have enough licenses to go over the $29/month.
When we should all pay them with the internal monthly license price we would pay > $29/month
(we have a mix of lifetime and monthly paid licenses)
 
Please provide a screenshot showing your account has spent over $29 in the prior month.

Of course, feel free to hide any personal information. (y)
 
Like told in the previous post, now at this moment we don't pay more than $29/month, because we have the internal prices (and the lifetime prices)
 
Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be an appropriate complaint. Our internal (datacenter) pricing was nothing more than simple quantity pricing (the concept that larger accounts should have larger discounts).

If an account, by their own admission, can't even match the spending of a regular customer with only one Standard license, it becomes bizarre to say they are a high-volume account worthy of a volume discount. It makes no mathematical sense and it is unfair to those paying regular retail prices.
 
We are maybe not such a big customer, but in the good old days we asked and we met the conditions for internal prices.

It's not a complaint either, it's just an observation that directadmin is changing from a good (and cheap) alternative for the big tech companies at that time to one of the mastodons itself.

I think many of your customers in that time have been started with DirectAdmin to not be part of the big companies where customers are only numbers that gives money to the shareholders. My feeling is that it is going the same way with directadmin now.
From July 1, 2019 to August 1, 2023 the prices where rocket launch (or how do they say this in English) from $89 one time fee to $29 per month. And OK the prices for the lifetime licenses didn't change over the years, and yes nobody need to work for free. But our fear is, because so much has changed last time at DirectAdmin, that later you will say the old licenses will stay working but you don't get any updates or new features. If then you need change all the licenses from 'free' to $29 per month (even with the 25% discount it is a lot more).

Maybe an idea: what costs money? Support. Sell cheap(er) licenses (without support), and separately sell support plans (per ticket, per hour, per month, ...). For example a customer with 5 licenses, need to buy 5 licenses and 1 support plan.
 
mmgenius said:
or new features
Click to expand...
That is already the case for the legacy lifetime licenses, which is why they are called legacy. New features like the pro pack are not included anymore.
However, some other improvements are. Otherwise it would indeed be developping and working for free for all new things. I also don't really like this legacy situation, but it's not unfair and I can't disagree with them either. Prices are kept the same for way over a decade, try that with other company's.
Also it's quite fair that businesses that were big in the past and now are not big enough for internal discount, do not get that internal discount anymore, that's just logical.
DA stayed provided us the longest time with lifetime licenses (internal and external) and stable prices.

As for the rocket launching, there was no big increase. Only thing was stopping the lifetime licenses, so if internal were $89 and ours were 300 (or 299) then datacenters owing them already had a very big discount, no reason to complaint.
And as far as I know, internal lifetime license can still be used without further costs, you only miss some new features developped now, which weren't there in the past anyway.
Only new ones are not sold anymore, same way other company's did it before.

As for the idea, I would also support some kind of option where for example extra features (like pro pack) or something, can be bought for the legacy licenses.
 
Richard G said:
As for the idea, I would also support some kind of option where for example extra features (like pro pack) or something, can be bought for the legacy licenses.
Click to expand...
I also think if the licenses itself doesn't cost so much, legacy license owners are willing to pay a small fee / month to change there legacy licenses to non-legacy/new licenses.
 
mmgenius said:
I also think if the licenses itself doesn't cost so much, legacy license owners are willing to pay a small fee / month to change there legacy licenses to non-legacy/new licenses.
Click to expand...
DirectAdmin already offers that but it will be a conversation from lifetime license to a monthly license.

I do not know of they are just changing the license or that you get a fixed discount for conversion. (As I am myself not a lifetime license owner.) But maybe @DirectAdmin Sales could clarify what steps need to be taken to convert lifetime licenses into licenses with all the features and what discount they may give for converting the license.
 
realcryptonight said:
DirectAdmin already offers that but it will be a conversation from lifetime license to a monthly license.
Click to expand...
That is no offer, that is a license change. An offer is what they did in the beginning, if you bought a support pack for 1 year with the lifetime license, the pro pack would be included too (for the time the support pack was paid for). I don't know if that is still the way it works nowadays. Maybe @DirectAdmin Sales can enlighten us about that?
 
With Pro Pack ending in favor of unified codebase (all licenses having all features), there will no longer be a separate group of features that can be bundled to an old license. This means Pro Pack through a support extension becomes a technical impossibly.

@Richard G is correct that it is a license change. This was covered back in the August announcement but support extensions have been extremely unpopular (barely utilized) so I would guess that is why there hasn't been much discussion about it. In short, the hybrid legacy+extension product gets replaced with a modern product with no price increase (actually, it's a bit less than the old support extension price). Another option is just to go back to the legacy product and if a modern license is needed later, it would need to be ordered separately.

Most people maintain their support extensions, so it should just be a price reduction to them. A few may not like the license change because they lose the ability to go back and forth but it should be remembered that everything mentioned in the August announcement (not just support extensions) have a use-it-or-lose-it condition (billing must be maintained) so the possibility of going back and forth isn't an option anyway.
 
Richard G said:
And as far as I know, internal lifetime license can still be used without further costs, you only miss some new features developped now, which weren't there in the past anyway.
Click to expand...
No one bought a lifetime license thinking it wouldn't include the features included in future versions, and they didn't advertise it at the time either. It's legal deception that they are playing games now, to get out of those lifetime obligations after they ranked in the profits from the customers who logically expected "lifetime" to mean "lifetime". And I think they might find themselves in legal trouble for doing so.
 
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DavidK said:
No one bought a lifetime license thinking it wouldn't include the features included in future versions, and they didn't advertise it at the time either.
Click to expand...
Not a single company does something like that. Only a few are still maintaining lifetime licenses, lots of others just stopped supporting them in total. If you buy Windows, you can keep using it -as is- now, you can't use W10 new features in XP either, so this is normal.
You can't expect for such low price, to keep using everything until you're dead, including all newly to be developped features. Find me a company which does.
Lifetime can have various meanings, you might need to dig deeper into that.
It can mean:
- until you're dead
- the current version (and no new versions or features) like with most forum software for example
- until it's declared end of life (like vBulletin did with VB 3.8)
So there are more options.

DA lifetime licenses you can still use and even still upgrade, you just don't get newly developped things, be glad they did not declare it end of life!
 
Richard G said:
Not a single company does something like that. Only a few are still maintaining lifetime licenses, lots of others just stopped supporting them in total. If you buy Windows, you can keep using it -as is- now, you can't use W10 new features in XP either, so this is normal.
You can't expect for such low price, to keep using everything until you're dead, including all newly to be developped features. Find me a company which does.
Lifetime can have various meanings, you might need to dig deeper into that.
It can mean:
- until you're dead
- the current version (and no new versions or features) like with most forum software for example
- until it's declared end of life (like vBulletin did with VB 3.8)
So there are more options.

DA lifetime licenses you can still use and even still upgrade, you just don't get newly developped things, be glad they did not declare it end of life!
Click to expand...
Microsoft never advertised any windows version as a "lifetime" license so I don't think that example applies.

I think advertising "lifetime" without very clear stipulations of what that means is deceptive marketing unless you clearly plan to meet those obligations for a true lifetime. Just declaring it end-of-life (which means they can effectively kill the product whenever they feel like it) wasn't ever a lifetime license in truth. Saying only the current version would be maintained perpetually could be ok if they are very clear about that in the marketing and license terms. I don't believe directadmin was clear that they didn't mean a true lifetime of future support in their marketing or terms, as far I as know.
There is a reason companies can get in trouble for failing to deliver what they market, because there are protections against consumer fraud in a court of law.
 
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another example: if you buy car in 1980's with lifetime free fuel - this not mean that when ABS/ESP/autopilot/lidar/cruise/start&stop invented - they will be implemented in your car for free too :)
you still have same functionality that was here when you bought license and will have it, until some things become insecure/obsolete. (like mod_php, suphp, old php-versions etc.)
 
Man we cannot work for free and get only one time payment, its better to always have buisiness model from the clients to be paid a monthly to keep living normally, we also must chareg our clients on monthly basis for managing webshop, sites, maintenance and monitoring of anything, even if it is 5$ or 150% dont mather, but we need to keep it stable, because guys we are not selling the wood and furniture, we sell intelligence and knowledge, that can be only reliable business model. I dont understand guy who want all lifetime to get its impossible and i am running out of that kind of peoples, to keep something maintained and updated and stable and good for communitiy we must pay it regulary monthly model, like l. forge, now directadmin etc... this is nice and fair from DA, DA is a great product and I LOVE it very very user friendly and nice that helping us in our business success, Just dont go out of the road , like to sell your company to some big company, or to go with CPANEL road, only that can make things bad, beucase i know min 20 guys who had 10+ servers on CPANEL, now all of them migrated to DA, so yes price model with monthly payment always, but dont cut it on each account like cpanel did that is very stupid and they will just lose with that! Keep the things like now and dont change anything!! :) big success to all my dear friends :)
 
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