Is it true that directadmin dropped the lifetime licenses (the only advantage to CP)

ozzWANTED

ozzWANTED

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Hi,
On https://www.directadmin.com/pricing.php
I see there is no more lifetime licenses listed. We use internal lifetime license, but we based our hosting partnership idea that we can suggest to buy external and internal lifetime licenses to our partners as well.

That was the ONLY and main reason why we chose DirectAdmin and not Plesk or CPanel.
And now you guys dropped that and became SaaS business?

What about the other customers?
Usually only the support (Q & A) could be for a 1 year or so, but the license and updates should be lifetime.
And that was what we always promoted. Now we cannot promote DirectAdmin anymore, is it true? As it no more have this advantage to CPanel and Plesk.

This makes me really sad about the future of DirectAdmin.
 
Why DirectAdmin cannot follow Envato marketplace model. They have the same model:
Lifetime updates and lifetime license, and the support of for limited time (Q & A).

It can also follow the model of last version in a branch, like PHP does or Windows did, that is LTS (10 years). Meaning that they will be updating that branch, i.e. 1.XX for 10 years. But I could not get 2.XX without buying upgrade license. That would be fair.

Not it feels they want to trap all my partner business with 200 USD / year fee, and we say NO here either:
1. We will either go fully with Windows Azure, which we use already for image storage.
2. We will search for alternative that would be lifetime.
3. We will switch for open-source alternative - as DirectAdmin cases just proves that WE CANNOT TRUST THE ENTERPRISE - they sooner or later go to SaaS model anyway.
4. We switch to Plesk, that is perfectly optimized for WordPress. The only reason why we made all our business on DirectAdmin, is just because it is promised Lifetime licenses, and it was the main success of this business for last 20 years.
 
And personally I'd say that my partners WOULD NOT CARE even if the Lifetime license for server would be 250 USD and for external license - 500 USD. They would still buy it, just they need the fact that it would be lifetime, meaning - NO YEARLY OBLIGATIONS.
 
ozzWANTED said:
Why DirectAdmin cannot follow Envato marketplace model. They have the same model:
Lifetime updates and lifetime license, and the support of for limited time (Q & A).

It can also follow the model of last version in a branch, like PHP does or Windows did, that is LTS (10 years). Meaning that they will be updating that branch, i.e. 1.XX for 10 years. But I could not get 2.XX without buying upgrade license. That would be fair.

Not it feels they want to trap all my partner business with 200 USD / year fee, and we say NO here either:
1. We will either go fully with Windows Azure, which we use already for image storage.
2. We will search for alternative that would be lifetime.
3. We will switch for open-source alternative - as DirectAdmin cases just proves that WE CANNOT TRUST THE ENTERPRISE - they sooner or later go to SaaS model anyway.
4. We switch to Plesk, that is perfectly optimized for WordPress. The only reason why we made all our business on DirectAdmin, is just because it is promised Lifetime licenses, and it was the main success of this business for last 20 years.
Click to expand...

As mentioned by Ditto, please read https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=58091 . This should answer all your questions. BTW, Plesk is now owned by Oakley Capital which owns cPanel and WHMCS + buycPanel. They have already increased Plesk prices in Feb, 2019. cPanel prices were also increased ( in fact the whole licensing system was changed for cPanel ), WHMCS was also changed to SaaS model. Kindly do consider these things before moving to Plesk.
 
gozen said:
That also goes for updates I guess correct? Otherwise why someone will keep development and maintenance for no money?
Click to expand...

Because, that is your product that you SOLD not for free. If that would be free, you can say so. But if it is not free, then you give security as granted as long as you will be developing it. The support (Q & A) can be bought per period, extensions can be bought separately, the next generation versions can not be included, meaning that you may need to support your current 1.X version and the 2.X version. And it would go to 3.X and you would not be able to support the 1.X for 10 years, then you'd give a free upgrade to 2.X (if that reduces the company costs rather than patching the 1.X), and the new customers will be on 3.X.
SaaS model has NO bright future. They will in the end become a NEW FACEBOOK. Meaning next after introducing the SaaS, you introduce infranstructure (your own server OS and hosting that customer may use) and then in next step you demand to use it, and in the final step you drop the Shell access to your customers, meaning it becomes another FACEBOOK business with pages and so on.
If you cannot guarantee patches of security for 10 years of your product, DON'T SELL IT. And it should not be SaaS. While the LIFETIME LICENSE should include in it's stock price the price of doing these patches as long as product is maintained and not removed out of market.
I will teach here about the business, but at least from our case the fact that they remove LIFETIME LICENSE MEANS:
1. We no more promote DirectAdmin to our new customer or partners.
2. We use DirectAdmin for our own servers / hosting only, and later probably switch to Plesk - as WordPress is not what DirectAdmin with Ubuntu is build out of the box - starting with large uploads and finishing with Firewall's, Multisite, Multidomain, and write permission rights from web. Plesk does all that from the default install. As they are focused on WordPress. The only reason why we did not switch to it this February, is that they did not provided Lifetime license. So we chose DirectAdmin. That gave lifetime license meaning that your business is stable and not based on other 3rd party good will.
While services like Hostinger.com decided to build their own hosting panel, and it there were no logic reason for that before DirectAdmin went to SaaS only, today there is 100% reason for that - because you CANNOT TRUST the ENTERPRISE. In the end they will all become SaaS and later - FACEBOOK #2 - with ServerOS and Hosting given by themselves, and you only are 'reseller customer'. Pretty much the same as it is with Windows Azure.
 
DirectAdmin have given plenty of notice regarding the internal lifetime licenses. They have given current users two months to "stock up" on internal licenses.

I am not a big fan of SAAS either. There is a clear case of subscription fatigue kicking in with many. SAAS software as opposed to owned software is also a taxable liability in many jurisdictions. You no longer own the software, it is no longer an asset.

Lots of software carry SAAS based pricing structures while not necessarily providing a steady stream of updates and such (Hey WHMCS!!). I find that DirectAdmin does fit in the SAAS bracket rather nicely. DirectAdmin wants to grow and add functionality. They provide lots of updates, security patches and improvements and I just cannot expect the developers to work for free for a single payment.

Now, you are asking the developer to maintain multiple outdated versions to appease those that do not wish to update / pay for updates. Not only that, you reckon it is reasonable to be offered a free upgrade to a newer version if it becomes too difficult or time consuming to maintain such versions. This is just not fair to the developer and would only lead to a further increase of the development cost.

There are plenty of free panels around and there are still some with a lifetime license. Perhaps this is a better fit for your use case.
 
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