Richard G
Verified User
Almost. With legacy licenses it will not be possible to install/upgrade to MariaDB 10.11.
Current and upto MariaDB 10.6 can be used and upgraded.
Current and upto MariaDB 10.6 can be used and upgraded.
What is the future for Legacy DirectAdmin License holders?
- Thread starter beansbaxter
- Start date
- Status
I don't have any lifetime licenses. I see a bulk of the discussion revolving around these license. And I'm sure if I had a lifetime license, I'd be upset about this too.
Still... you have to understand that any "lifetime" offering is always a bad idea. From the producer's point of view (DirectAdmin) lifetime offerings are a way to inject a lot of capital into a product, because presumably you are paying a large fee to get a lifetime supply of that offering. This illustrates the cautionary tale of anyone considering offering a lifetime product. These probably should have been limited to a certain number when they were offered, i.e. the first 100 customers to sign up for a lifetime license. You can always grant more lifetime licenses if you need to, but this allows you to keep the number in check.
From a consumer point of view (someone that purchased a lifetime DirectAdmin license) probably should follow the idiom of "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." The company you are purchasing the lifetime offering from will likely either fold (because they didn't get enough capital to keep the project running) or will get so big that they will eventually look for ways to get out from under those sold lifetime offerings. Perhaps you can milk the purchased lifetime offering for all it's worth. If you bought a lifetime license in 2016 for $300 (no clue if that's the right price), then you've essentially paid $3.57 per month for the past 84 months (7 years) for that license. I'd say that's a pretty good milk, but it's subjective.
Like I said, I don't have any DirectAdmin lifetime licenses - so it's easy for me say that anything with "lifetime" in it's product description should be avoided.
But for me, the biggest hurt in this decision is the datacenter provided DirectAdmin (legacy) licenses. Those licenses are being paid for each month. Sure, they are at a discounted price... but who set those discounted prices? Those licenses were provided to datacenters as a way to promote DirectAdmin and providing datacenters a way to offer a comparatively cheap alternative to other pricier control panels.
Suddenly, after a fiasco with a rival control panel, DirectAdmin became quite a bit more popular. This lead to DirectAdmin raising the prices of their retail license - a license purchased directly from DirectAdmin themselves. But the datacenter pricing wasn't affected, so users still flocked to the datacenter licenses. How could DirectAdmin make more money? One way was to kill the deals with datacenters and only offer DirectAdmin direct-retail licenses. Datacenters could still qualify for cheaper licenses through bulk licensing, but that was still going to be a lot more than the previous datacenter pricing deals.
What about all of those old datacenter provided legacy licenses out there? How do we get them to pay us more money? Easy... start deprecating functions in those licenses, so that server administrators would be forced to pay a higher price for the DirectAdmin direct-retail licenses.
What functions could they deprecate to force this? It would need to be something critical to the server's functionality. Something within the DirectAdmin control panel itself probably wouldn't fit the bill. But stack applications probably would. But how do we do that? Easy, let's integrate the updating of those stack applications into the core DirectAdmin update itself. If you want to upgrade Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, or PHP you will have to be running an up-to-date version of DirectAdmin. We'll do this several months before we deprecate legacy licenses and provide no real explanation for this change, other than some garbage that it's necessary for DirectAdmin. Customers will never know what hit them! Brilliant!
Now we can control how those stack applications are upgraded, by controlling the DirectAdmin core update, which we can then control based on licensing type. Everyone will have to pay us directly for the licenses and we'll make a ton of cash!
This really was a brilliant game of chess and strategy by the DirectAdmin production team. They're playing the long game. They've started this with something that may not have an immediate impact with the MariaDB update. But if that doesn't move the needle enough, they will move to Apache, and eventually to PHP - which sees monthly updates.
As for all of the additional features and functions added to DirectAdmin (and this really applies more broadly to most every control panel out there... so it's not just a DirectAdmin thing. You can replace DirectAdmin with any of those control panels in this discussion) I think it's important to distinguish between those that use DirectAdmin as a tool and those that use DirectAdmin as a full featured server administration suite.
I come from a cPanel background. I'm sorry for mentioning that on a DirectAdmin forum, but I suspect my experience with cPanel would be similar to long time users of DirectAdmin. I remember a time to where the cPanel forums were loaded with users asking questions and having issues and the go to response was "You need to contact your datacenter" or "You need to get a qualified system administrator." Now the go to response is "Please open a ticket with us so we can check it out." I'm not exactly sure when that response changed, but that was when cPanel stopped being just a tool and became a full-fledged server administration suite. Anybody can be a web hosting company, no system administration experience is necessary. Have a problem, open a ticket with your control panel, and they'll fix you right up! And we wonder why the licensing price of control panels have gone up!
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not faulting or shaming people that use these control panels as full on server administration suites. But the ones that use the control panel as a tool are being forced to subsidize those looking for a complete server administration system through these increased licensing costs.
I came to DirectAdmin in 2019, so I definitely haven't been around very long. Honestly though... I'm still largely using the same checklist for setting up DirectAdmin now as I was back in 2019. There's not been a lot of changes to DirectAdmin that have really changed things for me. I use DirectAdmin (and other control panels) as a tool. DirectAdmin is a means for me to provide accounts to users so that they can log in and create email addresses, upload or create their website, create databases, etc. Honestly, I could still be using the same DirectAdmin from 2019 and I doubt I, nor my users, would notice any difference (the updated - Evolution? - theme is nice, however). I've gone through a lot of updates to the stack applications over those years. But DirectAdmin itself? Not so much.
Give me an interface so that users can control their email accounts, databases, and upload their website files. Give me an API so that I can more easily integrate my own interface into the backend to create and manage web hosting accounts. Give me the ability to modify stack application configurations, in such a way that future upgrades do not mess with those configuration changes. Give me a series of hookable events, so that when an action happens, I can tell the server to do something else with that data. That (unless my memory has failed me... which happens more often these days) is all I need from a control panel.
Is that for everybody? No it's not. But that's me. And I suspect that it is for a large number of people as well. I'm not a fan of rapid release scheduling. I prefer stability over everything else. Rapid releases tend to introduce unforeseen bugs or issues, because quality assurance can't possibly test everything out within the scheduling time frame. And quality assurance won't consist of the number of users that a public release will have. For DirectAdmin specific - I generally keep my servers on the previous DirectAdmin version, until I see a post about the next DirectAdmin version reaching Release Candidate status, then I upgrade to the current DirectAdmin version. Because I value stability. This hampers me a little bit because stack application update are now integrated into the DirectAdmin update itself. So in order to patch that zero-day Apache bug, I sometimes have to forego this DirectAdmin update preference and sacrifice a more stable DirectAdmin experience.
I think too often control panels (not just DirectAdmin) release updates just to prove that they are remaining relevant. "See! We're still working on the product! We're still relevant! We moved the email icon to the first line instead of the second line in your control panel. Now give us some money!" The updates themselves are largely meaningless, but are a means by the control panel to keep their customer entertained. If updates only happened once a year, some customers might forget that they even have a control panel.
One example of all of this might be the CustomBuild GUI. For those that use DirectAdmin as a tool, I would suspect that most of those people are using CustomBuild from the command-line. But some where along the line there became an influx of users that could not understand the command line (again, that's not meant to be said in a faulting tone... maybe in a tone to encourage those users to learn about the CLI) so they had to have a GUI to perform CustomBuild tasks. So a lot of development was put into a CustomBuild GUI. No doubt that took time and money, but users that are using the CustomBuild CLI aren't using the GUI - and might not even know it's there. Yet they are being forced to pay for it because other users wanted it. Developing it was also a means that DirectAdmin can point to, to say that they are still relevant.
Still... you have to understand that any "lifetime" offering is always a bad idea. From the producer's point of view (DirectAdmin) lifetime offerings are a way to inject a lot of capital into a product, because presumably you are paying a large fee to get a lifetime supply of that offering. This illustrates the cautionary tale of anyone considering offering a lifetime product. These probably should have been limited to a certain number when they were offered, i.e. the first 100 customers to sign up for a lifetime license. You can always grant more lifetime licenses if you need to, but this allows you to keep the number in check.
From a consumer point of view (someone that purchased a lifetime DirectAdmin license) probably should follow the idiom of "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." The company you are purchasing the lifetime offering from will likely either fold (because they didn't get enough capital to keep the project running) or will get so big that they will eventually look for ways to get out from under those sold lifetime offerings. Perhaps you can milk the purchased lifetime offering for all it's worth. If you bought a lifetime license in 2016 for $300 (no clue if that's the right price), then you've essentially paid $3.57 per month for the past 84 months (7 years) for that license. I'd say that's a pretty good milk, but it's subjective.
Like I said, I don't have any DirectAdmin lifetime licenses - so it's easy for me say that anything with "lifetime" in it's product description should be avoided.
But for me, the biggest hurt in this decision is the datacenter provided DirectAdmin (legacy) licenses. Those licenses are being paid for each month. Sure, they are at a discounted price... but who set those discounted prices? Those licenses were provided to datacenters as a way to promote DirectAdmin and providing datacenters a way to offer a comparatively cheap alternative to other pricier control panels.
Suddenly, after a fiasco with a rival control panel, DirectAdmin became quite a bit more popular. This lead to DirectAdmin raising the prices of their retail license - a license purchased directly from DirectAdmin themselves. But the datacenter pricing wasn't affected, so users still flocked to the datacenter licenses. How could DirectAdmin make more money? One way was to kill the deals with datacenters and only offer DirectAdmin direct-retail licenses. Datacenters could still qualify for cheaper licenses through bulk licensing, but that was still going to be a lot more than the previous datacenter pricing deals.
What about all of those old datacenter provided legacy licenses out there? How do we get them to pay us more money? Easy... start deprecating functions in those licenses, so that server administrators would be forced to pay a higher price for the DirectAdmin direct-retail licenses.
What functions could they deprecate to force this? It would need to be something critical to the server's functionality. Something within the DirectAdmin control panel itself probably wouldn't fit the bill. But stack applications probably would. But how do we do that? Easy, let's integrate the updating of those stack applications into the core DirectAdmin update itself. If you want to upgrade Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, or PHP you will have to be running an up-to-date version of DirectAdmin. We'll do this several months before we deprecate legacy licenses and provide no real explanation for this change, other than some garbage that it's necessary for DirectAdmin. Customers will never know what hit them! Brilliant!
Now we can control how those stack applications are upgraded, by controlling the DirectAdmin core update, which we can then control based on licensing type. Everyone will have to pay us directly for the licenses and we'll make a ton of cash!
This really was a brilliant game of chess and strategy by the DirectAdmin production team. They're playing the long game. They've started this with something that may not have an immediate impact with the MariaDB update. But if that doesn't move the needle enough, they will move to Apache, and eventually to PHP - which sees monthly updates.
As for all of the additional features and functions added to DirectAdmin (and this really applies more broadly to most every control panel out there... so it's not just a DirectAdmin thing. You can replace DirectAdmin with any of those control panels in this discussion) I think it's important to distinguish between those that use DirectAdmin as a tool and those that use DirectAdmin as a full featured server administration suite.
I come from a cPanel background. I'm sorry for mentioning that on a DirectAdmin forum, but I suspect my experience with cPanel would be similar to long time users of DirectAdmin. I remember a time to where the cPanel forums were loaded with users asking questions and having issues and the go to response was "You need to contact your datacenter" or "You need to get a qualified system administrator." Now the go to response is "Please open a ticket with us so we can check it out." I'm not exactly sure when that response changed, but that was when cPanel stopped being just a tool and became a full-fledged server administration suite. Anybody can be a web hosting company, no system administration experience is necessary. Have a problem, open a ticket with your control panel, and they'll fix you right up! And we wonder why the licensing price of control panels have gone up!
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not faulting or shaming people that use these control panels as full on server administration suites. But the ones that use the control panel as a tool are being forced to subsidize those looking for a complete server administration system through these increased licensing costs.
I came to DirectAdmin in 2019, so I definitely haven't been around very long. Honestly though... I'm still largely using the same checklist for setting up DirectAdmin now as I was back in 2019. There's not been a lot of changes to DirectAdmin that have really changed things for me. I use DirectAdmin (and other control panels) as a tool. DirectAdmin is a means for me to provide accounts to users so that they can log in and create email addresses, upload or create their website, create databases, etc. Honestly, I could still be using the same DirectAdmin from 2019 and I doubt I, nor my users, would notice any difference (the updated - Evolution? - theme is nice, however). I've gone through a lot of updates to the stack applications over those years. But DirectAdmin itself? Not so much.
Give me an interface so that users can control their email accounts, databases, and upload their website files. Give me an API so that I can more easily integrate my own interface into the backend to create and manage web hosting accounts. Give me the ability to modify stack application configurations, in such a way that future upgrades do not mess with those configuration changes. Give me a series of hookable events, so that when an action happens, I can tell the server to do something else with that data. That (unless my memory has failed me... which happens more often these days) is all I need from a control panel.
Is that for everybody? No it's not. But that's me. And I suspect that it is for a large number of people as well. I'm not a fan of rapid release scheduling. I prefer stability over everything else. Rapid releases tend to introduce unforeseen bugs or issues, because quality assurance can't possibly test everything out within the scheduling time frame. And quality assurance won't consist of the number of users that a public release will have. For DirectAdmin specific - I generally keep my servers on the previous DirectAdmin version, until I see a post about the next DirectAdmin version reaching Release Candidate status, then I upgrade to the current DirectAdmin version. Because I value stability. This hampers me a little bit because stack application update are now integrated into the DirectAdmin update itself. So in order to patch that zero-day Apache bug, I sometimes have to forego this DirectAdmin update preference and sacrifice a more stable DirectAdmin experience.
I think too often control panels (not just DirectAdmin) release updates just to prove that they are remaining relevant. "See! We're still working on the product! We're still relevant! We moved the email icon to the first line instead of the second line in your control panel. Now give us some money!" The updates themselves are largely meaningless, but are a means by the control panel to keep their customer entertained. If updates only happened once a year, some customers might forget that they even have a control panel.
One example of all of this might be the CustomBuild GUI. For those that use DirectAdmin as a tool, I would suspect that most of those people are using CustomBuild from the command-line. But some where along the line there became an influx of users that could not understand the command line (again, that's not meant to be said in a faulting tone... maybe in a tone to encourage those users to learn about the CLI) so they had to have a GUI to perform CustomBuild tasks. So a lot of development was put into a CustomBuild GUI. No doubt that took time and money, but users that are using the CustomBuild CLI aren't using the GUI - and might not even know it's there. Yet they are being forced to pay for it because other users wanted it. Developing it was also a means that DirectAdmin can point to, to say that they are still relevant.
mashanz23
Verified User
Left DA and DA forum, removing post content
Last edited:
bertvandepoel
Verified User
While I think this technical discussion is valuable, wouldn't it make more sense to use this topic to focus on the future of DirectAdmin licensing and dealing with the current situation when it comes to practical and financial concerns? Then it's also easier for @DirectAdmin Sales to respond for example.
Richard G
Verified User
It's gotten very quiet here, only few people responded. We all waited for a reply form Directadmin and now they replied and it's getting quiet.
Come on, let them now if and/or that you are prepared to pay a fee to keep the license or maybe a bit more to make it non legacy or whatever.
Give the required idea's or state you want to pay a fee. Now is the time to change things, if you keep quiet you missed your chance to maybe change the future a little bit for the licenses.
It hasn't gone and been done a should be by DA, but at least they are listening to ideas and one never nows.
Come on, let them now if and/or that you are prepared to pay a fee to keep the license or maybe a bit more to make it non legacy or whatever.
Give the required idea's or state you want to pay a fee. Now is the time to change things, if you keep quiet you missed your chance to maybe change the future a little bit for the licenses.
It hasn't gone and been done a should be by DA, but at least they are listening to ideas and one never nows.
alwaysbusy
Verified User
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2020
- Messages
- 108
I posted already my thoughts.... hope lots more will follow that DirectAdmin will find for us as customers a satisfied solution.
Active8
Verified User
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2013
- Messages
- 1,813
Lets wait what DA can offer to the legacy license holders, @DirectAdmin Sales maybe an poll can help ?
Richard G
Verified User
To me this seems they are trying to create some also taking idea's in consideration. So it seems to me they do not know yet.
But a poll would be good maybe too if they already have some idea's.
I am completely fine if I have to pay for yearly updates (and no support for lifetime licenses). As long as it is a resonable amount. Just to thow a number out there say $100/year (for legacy/lifetime) just for updates and no support. Would at least make an addional source of income for them that didn't exist before and help pay for developers time. I don't expect to get the latest features for that, just a functional product that I can keep patched and resonably up-to date. I have paid for suport in the past, which i really don't use (i primarily come to the forum), mostly paid to help support them when I have extra money (in these times don't have a lot of extra money floating around).
LeonDynamic
Verified User
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2020
- Messages
- 46
I think the ball is in Directadmin court now. People have commented and suggested. Let’s see what comes back
Richard G
Verified User
Only very few have, considered how many lifetime holders there are, hence my request to reply (to those who haven't yet). Because most likely when they come with something, it might be something final, so people should at least try now and don't complaint afterwards if they don't try.
But yes, I'm also curious to see what comes back.
JosKlever
Verified User
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2015
- Messages
- 42
I'm using only 1 server, that I hire from my supplier with DA (legacy license) included. He didn't get any messages about this license change, so he had to hear it from me as I'm following the release posts on this forum.
I know I have to buy my own Standard license now (soon) and I don't mind paying for that, but I agree with the people before me, that at least the communication should have been better and even now it would be good to pick it up including an apology about all the misunderstanding.
Most users will understand that DA is still a good product for a reasonable price (except the ones that were using it in a way that was at least shady) and that DA needs money to improve the software.
I believe I've read somewhere that the codebase of the legacy version is not the same as the new version (that includes everything of the former power pack). And that it would be the reason that the old version becomes incompatible with newer parts/software/updates etc. This should however be communicated in a clear way because nobody saw that coming (at least this soon).
As there is no DA "Lite" version anymore, it seems impossible to keep offering such a version only based on licenses. Unless they can enable/disable functionality based on the license. In that case a cheaper version could be offered without support and with a limited number of accounts.
I'm wondering how other users are using their lifetime license. How many servers, how many accounts per server? Do they manage these servers themselves or do their clients do that? I'm running 1 dedicated server with 132 user accounts at the moment. This information might give DA some insight of the user base.
I know I have to buy my own Standard license now (soon) and I don't mind paying for that, but I agree with the people before me, that at least the communication should have been better and even now it would be good to pick it up including an apology about all the misunderstanding.
Most users will understand that DA is still a good product for a reasonable price (except the ones that were using it in a way that was at least shady) and that DA needs money to improve the software.
I believe I've read somewhere that the codebase of the legacy version is not the same as the new version (that includes everything of the former power pack). And that it would be the reason that the old version becomes incompatible with newer parts/software/updates etc. This should however be communicated in a clear way because nobody saw that coming (at least this soon).
As there is no DA "Lite" version anymore, it seems impossible to keep offering such a version only based on licenses. Unless they can enable/disable functionality based on the license. In that case a cheaper version could be offered without support and with a limited number of accounts.
I'm wondering how other users are using their lifetime license. How many servers, how many accounts per server? Do they manage these servers themselves or do their clients do that? I'm running 1 dedicated server with 132 user accounts at the moment. This information might give DA some insight of the user base.
raqdedicados
Verified User
I speak with DA support, and they offer me a 15 usd option like subscription mensual for updating the license. I stil lthink is expensive. We ve 30 licences to upgrade . We do not need the support and extras but yes we will eventually need the updated versions o mariadb
Richard G
Verified User
What you got offerend is the current conversion option which is already a longer time available. The lifetime license will be converted to a normal license for half the price so indeed 15 dollar. Compared to the normal prices this is not expensive and you have all options like other licenses.
Compared to the current lifetime license it might sound expensive indeed at the moment, but we all know that free is never lifetime.
It's also an option to wait and see what will be happening and if they come with some other suggestion for the license holders.
Compared to the current lifetime license it might sound expensive indeed at the moment, but we all know that free is never lifetime.
It's also an option to wait and see what will be happening and if they come with some other suggestion for the license holders.
Harry Tang
Verified User
I'm open to switching from a lifetime license to a regular monthly one, but I'd prefer a more affordable rate, like $12 per month. Additionally, I'd like to keep this rate steady (inherited `lifetime` feature), or at least allowing occasional payment issues.
We discussed via DA support ticket, volume discount does not apply to this type of license. 
ref.: https://www.directadmin.com/pricing.php
ref.: https://www.directadmin.com/pricing.php
Richard G
Verified User
Which license do you mean? Every license on the pricing link has volume discount.volume discount does not apply to this type of license.
Volume discount does not apply to licenses from lifetime legacy codebase licenses "upgraded" to standard one.
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