What is the future for Legacy DirectAdmin License holders?

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If i want to install mariadb 10.11 i should be able to, even if it would break my control panel.
Beside everything, this is a very very valid and important point and argument.
It's OUR server and even if we want to destroy the panel or the server, I very much doubt that there is -any- legal ground, even in the license agreement, that would allow blocking of manual installation of whatever we want.

So I'm very much interested if somebody from DA and/or somebody with a bit more legal knowledge than me can confirm this.
Because I also doubt blocking is allowed in any way for open source software at least, like Mariadb is.
 
In what way is MariaDB 10.11 being blocked exactly? Does DA prevent you from compiling? Or is DA not working if it detects a MariaDB 10.11 installation?

Anyway I wonder what we are supposed to do when the older MariaDB version is EOL and considered a security threat. Can we use MySQL instead? Or no other option than to change the DA license?
 
@Arieh DA stop working if you manually edit options conf and build 10.11 or if you build it even manually from sources. Looks like DA checks version when connects to mysql for database management.
 
Well, then it doesn't sound like its stepping out of its boundaries, from this perspective software can check whether the environment is meeting its requirements. But that's apart from the fact that it seems DA will not continue to offer a basic working LAMP stack for its legacy licenses.
 
Can we use MySQL instead?
Momentarily yes. It's not known yet if a MySQL 9 (if released) will be supported or not. However, changing from MariaDB to MySQL 8 might be more difficult because there is so much difference now.

If it wouldn't be meeting requirements, it wouldn't have worked before. ;)
 
Well, then it doesn't sound like its stepping out of its boundaries, from this perspective software can check whether the environment is meeting its requirements. But that's apart from the fact that it seems DA will not continue to offer a basic working LAMP stack for its legacy licenses.
https://www.directadmin.com/agreement.php

Software can check off course but that should not mean to stop the license. And what if you want to run 2 database instances (not something I would advise). And why is all other "not compatible/supported" software allowed. I always liked directadmin because you could do installs outside of the custom build. And also your own software what you wanted.

@Richard G yes I wonder about MySQL9. Maybe Apache 2.5/2.6 also not. No newer Litespeed :P who knows :D
 
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Hi,

I wanted to start DA today, and even running mariadb 10.6.16 I got this message:

legacy code-base does not support this MySQL version, downgrade MySQL or upgrade DirectAdmin license

Does DA also prevent the use of mariadb 10.6 on legacy licenses? ?
 
No, that must be some issue on DA's side like recently.
On all of our servers:
Code:
mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.6.16-MariaDB
so it's running fine on legacy.

You can send in a ticket for this, it should not happen.
 
I think its fair if legacy license holders are on the oldest LTS version of any required or additional software in custombuild. For MariaDB to support till last few months of 10.6 then move to 10.11 for legacy license holders.

I contacted my vps provider but they will not upgrade their internal dc license, sad.
 
The legacy lifetime was last sold in 2019 so I don't really think it's fair to now already change things like they did. Because it was sold as lifetime free and free updates.
Now I understand they have an issue and seems DA is not generating enough income, but that is mostly because of the few thousend internal licenses out there. And a lot of which are sold illegale.
And now both internal and external license holders are going to pay the price for that. I would be more fair if they would say that we had to pay for example 100/year for upgrades and support of for I care for every license in use.

I understand your vps provider won't upgrade the internal license. Probably none of them will, and they even had the licenses for 89 dollar or some even for free, so they don't care anyway, they made enough money with it over the years. And customers will have to pay for themselves for using either a normal DA license or a bit more expensive Plesk (I don't like that one) or a lot more expensive cPanel. Last one is great, but way too expensive.
So I guess everybody will loose and people will start looking around for great free panels.
 
They continued selling personal licenses (legacy code base) until August 2023. One month later, they..
Don't complaint about those, because they are extremely cheap and only valid for 1 year, unless you pay for another year.
So you can use extremely cheap the same as us legacy owners until 2026 when 10.6 will become eol.
Then you can switch to normal personal which is still very cheap at a monthly pay.
So you in fact don't loose anything. No reason to complaint.
For a full license this way different.
 
Again, the issue is the lack of clear communication of what will be possibel and what will not. In all cases it will be a breach of what as promised / intended when changing the model.

Now if there was a reasonably priced option to switch from Legacy to Supported I guess there would be more conversion but at the moment, cheapest option is 174$/year, when coming from a product that was 89$ lifetime, it cannot fly.

At the moment the option we have are :
-Keep the actual lifetime licence until the next silent feature removal from DA.
-Switch to a free panel like ispconfig
-Switch to the supported model at 174$/year but that's A LOT and how long will it last ?
-Order supported licence and put 1000 accounts per server, that will cover the costs.
-Switch to anothe panel, Plesk VPS Web Host is cheaper than 174$/year from our license broker and Plesk has a better UI and reputation among customers.

Also I am getting concerned about the finacial stability of DirectAdmin.
The "fair" move was to stop lifetime licences, keep the installed legitimate base running and make money out of the sale of new licences.
(and that was somehow what was communicated then, they even allowed for "one last big order of lifetime licences" at that time)
From what we see, the sale of licences is so bad that they have to chase / push LLH to convert to the recurrent paid model.
Don't they generate enough revenue from the sale of recurring licences ?

Are there any numbers available on the amount of Licences being sold ? Is the company doing well or are they sinking because of their new cost structure and bad commercial choices ?

As stated before, there would be a *reasonable* price for LLH to convert to normal licence with a price warranty of 10 years, I am certain there would be more conversions. We have ~150 lifetime licences, there would be an option around 49$/year, I am quite sure we could convert 80 - 90% of our customers to this new model. In the meantime we have no solution, we are bitter and DA loses 5K$ on us every year.
 
when coming from a product that was 89$ lifetime, it cannot fly.
Yeah internal licenses for datacenters. We paid $ 299 for external licenses. Datacenters made money of those licenses anyway with that kind of cheap price.

Plesk VPS Web Host is cheaper than 174$/year
Hahaha you can't compare that one mate. Because Plesk VPS web hosting is maxed to 10 domains. So compared to the relative DA license the DA license is cheaper. I don't agree about the Plesk UI and reputation either. Plesk is bah.

The "fair" move was to stop lifetime licences, keep the installed legitimate base running and make money out of the sale of new licences.
Agreed to that and to the lack of communication. Seems the biggest issue for DA is the illegal use of licenses, which prevents income.

As stated before, there would be a *reasonable* price for LLH to convert to normal licence
They think the 15/month are reasonable compared to the normal price. I also stated this is not comparable, because one compares from a free LLH to 15/month, which is 180 a year. Before this happened the support license was 100/year. So in fact for LLH it's a raise from 0 to 100/year to now even 180/year and without pause option if license is not used.
That is the correct way of comparing against LLH's imho and not by comparing to normal monthley prices. Because we are not coming from a monthley fee but from a 1 time fee which is totally different.

But what would you call a reasonable price then? Those $49/year? That isn't a reasonable price, that's half of the yearly support price there was before.
Ofcourse for 49 or 50/year most likely much more customers would use the upgrade option, but I doubt DA will do that at this price. Especially because several already made use of the 15/month offer.

You're price idea is nice, but I don't think that will happen.

and DA loses 5K$ on us every year.
How is that happening then? LLH's are not paid for anymore, that was a 1 time payment, so DA does not lose 5K a year on you. They don't make profit on you and they don't lose on you either because you (just like external licenses) don't generate income for DA either at the moment.
So where is the 5K$ loss coming from?
 
Hahaha you can't compare that one mate. Because Plesk VPS web hosting is maxed to 10 domains. So compared to the relative DA license the DA license is cheaper. I don't agree about the Plesk UI and reputation either. Plesk is bah.
I double checked at our reseller, "Web Host Edition VPS", is not limited and I can get it for less than 174$/year, event with the 2024 price. (you are having it over the web admin edition)
As for the UI well, I don't think it is the point discusisng it here :).
Agreed to that and to the lack of communication. Seems the biggest issue for DA is the illegal use of licenses, which prevents income.
Also something that I don't get, are there really so many people running nulled DirectAdmin licences ? Who is really using these ?
Doesn't the new licencing system that caused so many hassle to legit users solves this issue ?
They think the 15/month are reasonable compared to the normal price. I also stated this is not comparable, because one compares from a free LLH to 15/month, which is 180 a year. Before this happened the support license was 100/year. So in fact for LLH it's a raise from 0 to 100/year to now even 180/year and without pause option if license is not used.
That is the correct way of comparing against LLH's imho and not by comparing to normal monthley prices. Because we are not coming from a monthley fee but from a 1 time fee which is totally different.

But what would you call a reasonable price then? Those $49/year? That isn't a reasonable price, that's half of the yearly support price there was before.
Ofcourse for 49 or 50/year most likely much more customers would use the upgrade option, but I doubt DA will do that at this price. Especially because several already made use of the 15/month offer.
I think that 49$/year is reasonable if it gets poeple that have ten's of licences to convert to the paid model.
You have to look at the whole hisotry of things. Directadmin was the cheap and competitive option, now it is the high price luxury prices product.

DA created a legacy LLH base, those did not bring recurring revenues (thaugh they helped establish the product and helped the development when they paid their one time fee), if you want to switch them to a recurring model it has to be possible for them.
And sorry but pushing a 15€ / month licence to a budget dedicted server customer is difficult, 5€ / month is more in a "possible things" realm.

So where is the 5K$ loss coming from?
Today I don't bring much business to DA anymore, I direct customers with low budget towards Ispconfig OR I keep them on the legacy LL OR I give them the choice between DirectAdmin and Plesk but they almost everytime go Plesk.
IF there was a REASONABLE pricing FOR LEGACY LLH, (like 49$/year) I would really be incline to swith all my legacy LL to this new model and would instantly bring 5K$/year to DA.
As long as there is no reasonable option, I don't and they don't make any money, so they currently pass on making a certain 5K$/year hoping to one day make 15K$/year on me which will likely never happen because it is simply not possible given the current competition and alternatives. It is the perfect example of a loose/loose situation in business.

Now the 174$/year option is a step in the right direction but it is still "a lot".
Also, they would have automatically added a heavy discount of ~50% to LLH, without commitment/prepayment or anything, they would have likely sold more licences. Internal pricing for lifetime licences was maybe wrong but it attracted poeple and made the product affordable.

At our side we did some server consolidations to avoid ordering a licence in the new model, had we had a direct no hassle really competitive pricing it would have helped swallow the pill and we would likely aldready have ~10 licences in the scheme. The max advertised discount on the site is 25% which leaves the new standart licence at 22$/month.. More expensive than the Plesk VPS counterpart from a reseller.
So event taking aside the LLH issue, if we had no grudge about this legacy thing, I am not sure we would still buy new licences because of the pricing.

And meanwile, some providers are still able to bundle it for free with every 2$ vps they sell, which also raises some concerns about equity between providers but that's anothe story.
 
I double checked at our reseller, "Web Host Edition VPS", is not limited
I'm sorry, you're completely correct. Plesk is the only professional panel which has a VPS only license and I looked at the wrong place. I looked by accident at the Web Admin Edition. The VPS editions are cheaper than those from DA.
As for the GUI and users, it's indeed better to agree to disagree, we probably have different experiences with this. :)

are there really so many people running nulled DirectAdmin licences ?
No as far as I've understood it's mostly the illegal reselling of internal licenses.

now it is the high price luxury prices product.
Not really, it's still cheaper than the other 2, except for the seperate VPS edition of Plesk. For LLH's yes it's now becoming very expensive, that is true.

5€ / month is more in a "possible things" realm.
Agreed to that, however lots of datacenters already asked 5/month for customers to get DA on their vps or server. But this still is 60/year, not 49. Peanuts indeed. It would indeed be a lot more fair especially to multiple licenses holders as there is no pause option anymore in this case.
The reason of the cheaper internal license system is to get datacenters to spread them, make users known with DA so users would buy/lease DA themselves too. However, that was a bit of a wrong assumption probably.
Because why should users buy a license for more money, when they can have a server in a datacenter for 5/month or even for free?
Lifetime licenses are nice to begin with, but as a company one should not sell too many and stop in due time, or at least clearly state that a lifetime license can be declared end of life (like vBulletin did for example).

For us this new model is also way too expensive, but that is mostly (not completely) due to the fact that there is no pause option.
We have 7 external licenses, mostly 3 are used, sometimes 4. But you have to keep paying for all of them to keep the offer.
This would mean 3 not used licences at 180/year = 540/year down the drain. Add up the 4 used at the moment is 720/year.
Total prise raise in fact is then from 0 to 1260/year. We smaller company's can't afford that.

I understand that it's more for big company's with internal licenses.

I think most of us are prepared to pay some amount of money, but this is way to much. And this raise for us from in this example 0-1260/year is the reason that a comparison to current normal monthley prices is just not fair, at least not without pause option like we have now.
Even with pause option it's a raise per license in use from 0-180/year which is still a lot. 100/year would be a lot better and then with pause option.

some providers are still able to bundle it for free with every 2$ vps they sell
I've seen VPS systems for those prices, but none with DA or with enough resources to use DA. I've seen cheap VPS systems but as far as I could see all DA licenses sold or given out with them, are internal lifetimes, no modern licenses.
If they would be modern licenses, then they are most likely nulled questions as DA won't deliver them that cheap to anybody.

I hope DA will look into your argument because now they don't loose money, but with low prices on conversion/upgrades, they have the option to earn a lot of money. You are surely correct with that fact, the lower the price, the more chance people will use an upgrade option.
 
May I ask when you say something to truthful and direct your comment gets deleted by administrator (FLN) a honest post that should be said for others to see i think?

This place use to be welcome to most comments about DA and now you cant talk at all.

Is it because truth hurts?

Truth is DA users are getting slowly removed from their unlimited licence because fund from that has ran out.

My snapshot showed updates to 2034 and well now I guess i'm on the back burner like the rest.

You know I almost wish I never was a beta tester from 2008 until now.

Well I guess enough bug testing was done by me and many others we are not needed anymore.

In reality this is sad what this greedy world has came too. Not to mention using the free cost linux distros to get their.

I honestly tried real hard to stay away from DA main competitor and we all know who that is but looks like may as well joining them now as its same price almost and less bug testing new installs after broken updated machine.
Looking into next one and its almost as good and free just works. take donations so id help them due to their motto of business.
CWP PRO and there's a tool that will move 1000s away from da to cwp looks like its called wisecp. This was my next worry all the customer's to move.
 
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As a lifetime license holder (over 20 licenses), and after I've read some of the replies here (being honest I don't have time to read it all).
I'm summarizing my opinion about that "legacy license" move:

1. I can't understand why DA trying to prevent us from using non DA software (MariaDB for example)
2. I don't care about new features like the Pro pack (for example WP management), which I might say is pretty lame compared to competitors (Plesk for example).
3. I don't want to pay again / extra for software support. I already paid for lifetime license. That was DA business model, they should stay behind it and provide what they (and us) signed for and paid for.
4. DA should offer an option to migrate into pro-pack for a one-time fee.

If we won't receive any software update, I will probably migrate to other panel (open-source this time).
You just broke the trust of your clients in you.
 
I must also add to every other previous statements that I too absolutely do not care about most of the new features of the pro-pack.
I also wonder who is deciding that these are the features DA should invest time and money on and based on which facts / customer survey.
 
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