For over 15 years, DirectAdmin has offered lifetime licenses for just € 40,- once. This included lifetime updates. This was a bargain, since a regular license is € 5,- monthly. Due to the recent price increase of cPanel, DirectAdmin was forced to drop the lifetime license in order to secure the quality of the support expected from the company.
Why is not having a lifetime license better?
Consider that you might use a license at least 20 years. This means that DirectAdmin earns € 2,- annually. For that amount, they have to keep their infrastructure with updates online, they need to develop changes for new Operating Systems, need to update the software packages, etc..
So far, they have managed to do this for over 15 years now. However, the lifetime license is not exactly a reliable business model since you depend on the sales of new lifetime licenses. On the already sold ones, you will loose money. So there is barely money to innovate and increase development speed, something we expect to improve due to the price change.
What will happen to existing DirectAdmin lifetime licenses?
When you have bought one, it will remain valid without further cost. The only change is that you can’t buy new lifetime licenses.
What is your opinion about this?
Although a price increase is never fun (in the end, it is more expensive), we do feel that DirectAdmin made the right choice. Paying monthly for the monthly updates is more fair and is a far better business model. To us, this tells there is a more secure and reliable future for DirectAdmin business wise and we feel more comfortable with that.
To compare, DirectAdmin is far cheaper than cPanel. It is only € 5,- monthly with unlimited accounts while cPanel can go up to €100,- + depending on the number of accounts you have.
Are lifetime licenses gone forever?
If you really want to, you can buy a lifetime license for $299 one-time. However, updates will stop after one year. Starting from then, you will have to pay $99 annually. In comparison, the monthly license with us is just € 5,-.
All prices are excluding VAT.