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Directadmin Feedback Thread! Feedback wanted to help improve the product!

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  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @DA_Mark said:

    @Ponury_Typ said:
    @DA_Mark welcome on LET. Quick question. If I order now normal DA lifetime license via an account that was created way before the announcement of license pricing changes will this license be on new terms or on old ones (90 days of support with lifetime updates)?

    Depends on the account. The ability to order legacy licenses isn't based on when the account was created, it is more based on consistent and/or recent activity.

    There are hosts who truly rely on these licenses in terms of being part of their business model. They need fair notice to adjust their plans/pricing/websites as a result of this product no longer being available to them.

    An account coming out of dormancy doesn't "need" any particular license in this sense, so it would likely be throttled to 0 by our system, and only new products would be available.

    Hope that makes sense. Some are angry that we never made a public "last chance to stock up" announcement, but that would create the very thing we are trying to avoid.

    Since this is LET and I don't want to sound too formal, may I share our latest lawsuit threat? Some guy was pretty miffed when he contacted us to buy a bazillion lifetime licenses and I said no. He claimed to have bought hardware and a DC building and "intended" to offer DA. Either we pony up the licenses, or pay for all his hardware/building expenses, because our actions are directly responsible for ruining his business plans.

    So there you have it. The secret reason for our price changes. Gonna need some big bucks to compensate this fellow. :neutral:

    That's hilarious, hahahaha!!

    Poor you guys, having to reply to such threats... :P

    Thanked by 1DA_Mark
  • LeeLee Veteran

    DA_Mark said: Some guy was pretty miffed

    I stopped there, I knew it was an LET member with demands, losses, compensation and legal action.

    Thanked by 1Francisco
  • @DA_Mark said:

    @Ponury_Typ said:
    @DA_Mark welcome on LET. Quick question. If I order now normal DA lifetime license via an account that was created way before the announcement of license pricing changes will this license be on new terms or on old ones (90 days of support with lifetime updates)?

    Depends on the account. The ability to order legacy licenses isn't based on when the account was created, it is more based on consistent and/or recent activity.

    There are hosts who truly rely on these licenses in terms of being part of their business model. They need fair notice to adjust their plans/pricing/websites as a result of this product no longer being available to them.

    An account coming out of dormancy doesn't "need" any particular license in this sense, so it would likely be throttled to 0 by our system, and only new products would be available.

    Hope that makes sense. Some are angry that we never made a public "last chance to stock up" announcement, but that would create the very thing we are trying to avoid.

    Since this is LET and I don't want to sound too formal, may I share our latest lawsuit threat? Some guy was pretty miffed when he contacted us to buy a bazillion lifetime licenses and I said no. He claimed to have bought hardware and a DC building and "intended" to offer DA. Either we pony up the licenses, or pay for all his hardware/building expenses, because our actions are directly responsible for ruining his business plans.

    So there you have it. The secret reason for our price changes. Gonna need some big bucks to compensate this fellow. :neutral:

    Yeap that makes sense. I created this account some time ago with intent of buying one license but in the end, i went with internal from vps provider that i will be leaving now. I was going to buy a license directly from DA on Monday for my self to secure it before leaving current provider but then ... well Monday happened ;]

  • @DA_Mark Welcome to the crazy world of LET.

    I think the new pricing structure is fair to all customers and your business with the addition of $99 updates. I would be happy to pay that to help with the development of the panel.

    I only host personal and family stuff so when I started choose cPanel as everyone seemed to use it. I am currently using a DA licence from BuyVM and must say I like it. Been reading through the forums which are very helpful and like the ‘community spirit’ around DA.

    Like the idea of the lite licence would think a 30 account limit would be good but that depends on how cheap it actually is. If it as cheap as needing annual payment because of merchant fees maybe a scale 10, 20, 30 accounts with the cost increasing slightly.

    Thanked by 1DA_Mark
  • @LeonDynamic Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion.

    One thing I personally struggle with in terms of account tiers is that it defeats the purpose of a personal/LET style license. I can see a hobbyist having a few sites of his own, maybe manage some for friends & family too. But once you have 20-30+ users or sites, that sounds like commercial hosting territory to me.

    But I could be wrong. This is the best place to ask. For your personal vps/servers, how many domains do you guys actually host?

    @LeonDynamic Regarding the community feel, that's why I couldn't resist joining the convo here. In the past few days we have been contacted by everyone from 1-man shows to industry giants. Some of the latter have been awesome people, even willing to give free guidance/advice, but some were aggressive and off-putting. Small-medium companies seem to have more compatible vibes and philosophies.

    And finally, due to the advice here, the name of our new retail 'lifetime' license is changed to Owned instead of lifetime. We were frenzied and not thinking very clearly. How can an old product be called $299 lifetime, and the new product be called $299 lifetime, and not expect confusion?

    And yeah, the expiry date might be lifetime, but we know product really isn't any more. At least in the sense everyone is used to. So that particular term was removed from the description as well.

  • donlidonli Member

    @DA_Mark will people with the Life-Time licenses need to pay $99 after the first year to get patches for security issues ?

  • @donli said:
    @DA_Mark will people with the Life-Time licenses need to pay $99 after the first year to get patches for security issues ?

    Now THAT is a good question. Development isn't free, and part of development time includes applying the latest patches, updates, bugfixes, etc. With the latest Exim security issue, I think we beat everyone else in terms of release time. Can't expect a development team to do that for free, for life.

    Honestly, putting "optional" next to the renewal fee is only to show that during purchase, a $99 subscription isn't automatically setup/forced upon you. Everybody is so nervous about being held hostage by their control panel, it is more of a marketing thing than a suggestion not to keep your sever updated. But I suppose some could interpret it as "If they say it's optional, I should be fine without it." Hmm.

    At any rate, our best practices philosophy hasn't changed. If we are talking some serious exploit in DA itself that has hackers scouring the net for DA servers, then of course the patch would be immediate and free. There's a big different between security development in the sense of maintenance, and an emergency.

    Sorry for the long answer to this one. If it was a generic inquiry, I would just tell the prospective customer that if they are concerned about security, they should maintain the updates. But I wanted to explain it a little better to you guys.

    Thanked by 3donli uptime poisson
  • donlidonli Member
    edited July 2019

    @DA_Mark said:

    @donli said:
    @DA_Mark will people with the Life-Time licenses need to pay $99 after the first year to get patches for security issues ?

    Now THAT is a good question. Development isn't free, and part of development time includes applying the latest patches, updates, bugfixes, etc. With the latest Exim security issue, I think we beat everyone else in terms of release time. Can't expect a development team to do that for free, for life.

    Honestly, putting "optional" next to the renewal fee is only to show that during purchase, a $99 subscription isn't automatically setup/forced upon you. Everybody is so nervous about being held hostage by their control panel, it is more of a marketing thing than a suggestion not to keep your sever updated. But I suppose some could interpret it as "If they say it's optional, I should be fine without it." Hmm.

    At any rate, our best practices philosophy hasn't changed. If we are talking some serious exploit in DA itself that has hackers scouring the net for DA servers, then of course the patch would be immediate and free. There's a big different between security development in the sense of maintenance, and an emergency.

    Sorry for the long answer to this one. If it was a generic inquiry, I would just tell the prospective customer that if they are concerned about security, they should maintain the updates. But I wanted to explain it a little better to you guys.

    Thanks. That was one question people had. Another question concerned the lifetime license. The monthly and yearly licenses have "protection against price increases" but there is no such statement with the $99/year on the lifetime license upgrade/update fee. If people buy the lifetime license can the upgrade/update fee they pay increase from the $99/year in the future ?

  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee Barred
    edited July 2019

    On the topic of update payments, it's definitely fair. Especially on a lifetime/owned license which is one time payment and intended for commercial use. Especially if it's for commercial use, you should pay the update fee for your clients alone.

    Welcome to let @DA_Mark :)

    Any possibility on a DA Twitter to follow?

  • muffinmuffin Member
    edited July 2019

    Sorry for making you answer more questions : p
    @DA_Mark Do you plan on making a lifetime/owned license of the upcoming “ Lite “ plan? I always prefer to pay a one-time fee than a recurring one as they are always more worth it in the long run and I won’t have to worry about anything. The normal owned license is $299 + $99/year which, for a small hobbyist and a student like me, is something I need to have a serious thought about before purchasing,

  • eva2000eva2000 Veteran

    DA_Mark said: One thing I personally struggle with in terms of account tiers is that it defeats the purpose of a personal/LET style license. I can see a hobbyist having a few sites of his own, maybe manage some for friends & family too. But once you have 20-30+ users or sites, that sounds like commercial hosting territory to me.

    Don't forget hobby sites/personal site owners can also have staging sites/copies for development too which can 2-3x times the number as well. If a web site doesn't want to give live access to web developers for their live site, they can setup a staging site copy on a subdomain etc. If they're planning major site upgrades, they can also setup a test staging site copy too etc. I'd say 25-30 domains minimum for lite license would be ok and would just cut into what cPanel VPS license use to be if you had a similar price point and attract those fence sitters (ex-cPanel VPS license users) over :)

  • @muffin said:
    Sorry for making you answer more questions : p
    @DA_Mark Do you plan on making a lifetime/owned license of the upcoming “ Lite “ plan? I always prefer to pay a one-time fee than a recurring one as they are always more worth it in the long run and I won’t have to worry about anything. The normal owned license is $299 + $99/year which, for a small hobbyist and a student like me, is something I need to have a serious thought about before purchasing,

    @DA_Mark just my 5c. Maybe instead of creating a plan that is called "little" do something else. Create two licenses, "lifetime" (with rules\perks like the old) and "business owned (with rules\perks on new lifetime license)". Rules would be simple. Lifetime license is only allowed one per account. If You need more than one then You have to buy "business owned".

    Most of us (hobbyist) don't need to have more than one license of DA and we don't need support. If we run on issues we gonna just google them, check kb's or look on forums. While business always gonna needs support from DA.

    Thanked by 1kkrajk
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Ponury_Typ said: Most of us (hobbyist) don't need to have more than one license of DA and we don't need support. If we run on issues we gonna just google them, check kb's or look on forums. While business always gonna needs support from DA.

    I think for the @MikePT approved licenses they should just be community support only.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 2MikePT lazyt
  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee Barred
    edited July 2019

    Ponury_Typ said: @DA_Mark just my 5c. Maybe instead of creating a plan that is called "little" do something else. Create two licenses, "lifetime" (with rules\perks like the old) and "business owned (with rules\perks on new lifetime license)". Rules would be simple. Lifetime license is only allowed one per account. If You need more than one then You have to buy "business owned".

    I like the out of the box method here but I think it's a question of scale. Especially with more people researching DA recently and purchasing, 1 per account could end up still being a huge loss leader with hundreds and thousands of them.

  • edufeduf Member

    @eva2000 thanks for the cenminmod, I love it :smile:
    @Francisco has a developer, I'm gonna to pay if I can have inexpensive single owner unlimited domains (no reseller, no support) but updated php versions, updated linux security, more like centmin mod with a GUI.

  • emghemgh Member
    edited July 2019

    @DA_Mark said:
    Hello LET -- Mark from DirectAdmin here.

    We have been overwhelmed by inquiries to the point that we cannot keep up, which has made it very difficult to participate in discussions like this. I'm not here to drum up business or apologize for ceasing sales of licenses that were unrealistic and unsustainable. The end was nigh, and we had to take action.

    At the same time, I couldn't ignore this thread any more. We have a strong community-based following and such a setting is where we feel at home. It didn't feel right to remain absent/silent.

    Would love to hear a hello in return :smile:

    I think I speak for the crowd when I say: I'm happy that lifetime was removed. Sustainability is key of course and you need money to keep developing the panel into something that can compete with cPanel and hopefully gain some market share, but please don't use this oppurtunity to do a cPanel because there's not a lot of other competitors out there suitable for this kind of usage.

    Edit: Not that my opinion matter that much, I just think that'd be very sad if that were to happen.

    Thanked by 1ITLabs
  • LeeLee Veteran

    emgh said: Not that my opinion matter that much

    Your opinion matters :)

    lol, just kidding.

    Thanked by 2DA_Mark emgh
  • DA_MarkDA_Mark Member
    edited July 2019

    @donli said:

    Thanks. That was one question people had. Another question concerned the lifetime license. The monthly and yearly licenses have "protection against price increases" but there is no such statement with the $99/year on the lifetime license upgrade/update fee. If people buy the lifetime license can the upgrade/update fee they pay increase from the $99/year in the future ?

    That's correct, the $99 is not a guaranteed thing, so in terms of warm fuzzy feelings of being safe, a yearly license might be the best choice. Or, order multiple years of updates to lock in that price? We actually haven't built it into our system yet, we figured we had a year before anyone would even need to pay it. So maybe not the best public suggestion. :disappointed: But who knows, could go down too, like for a promo or something.

    @eva2000 said:

    Don't forget hobby sites/personal site owners can also have staging sites/copies for development too which can 2-3x times the number as well. If a web site doesn't want to give live access to web developers for their live site, they can setup a staging site copy on a subdomain etc. If they're planning major site upgrades, they can also setup a test staging site copy too etc. I'd say 25-30 domains minimum for lite license would be ok and would just cut into what cPanel VPS license use to be if you had a similar price point and attract those fence sitters (ex-cPanel VPS license users) over :)

    I am not denying the truth of that but that sounds like a lot of development for a hobbyist. My brain is hearing "Don't forget that personal servers are used for commercial development" Or do you mean you just have that many personal/hobby projects on the side that you have 30 domains???

    I need the suggestions to keep coming in with the idea that it still needs to be inconvenient enough to dissuade much commercial use. Let's say as a group the consensus is a higher amount of domains (in my head originally I was thinking 15 at the most, but let's see). Maybe just one user? Or two, like a co pilot. If there is only one login for a dev with 30 sites, then I can wrap my head around that. It's one guy. Personal license. But if he says, 30 sites and I need at least 20 users. Hmm. I'm not feeling a personal vibe any more.

    @emgh said:

    Edit: Not that my opinion matter that much, I just think that'd be very sad if that were to happen.

    It's only been a few days since the announcement, I don't think our 1% market share or whatever it is, really gives us enough clout to do anything...We need years of development and growth before the seeds of greed germinate.

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • LeeLee Veteran

    @DA_Mark do you have a list somewhere of the improvements you are working on?

  • @Lee said:
    @DA_Mark do you have a list somewhere of the improvements you are working on?

    We have a list and on it is, to make a list. No doubt we need to do that, also makes us a bit more accountable too. It's why we set a date for Lite license even though, as you guys can tell, we are still figuring out. It also requires a massive overhaul to our licensing system and updates but it will allow us to do things much easier in the future like pop out that free DNS only license.

    I'll be honest though, almost everything for the moment is about cPanel refugees and making sure technically speaking migration is as painless as possible.

    Behind the scenes there is plugin developers begging for support and coding solutions, as they want to pump out DA releases quick too.

    At any rate, we are putting in work, and that means improvement even though it's not mega-features at this moment.

    Thanked by 1Lee
  • LeeLee Veteran
    edited July 2019

    Fair & Nice:

    DA_Mark said: pop out that free DNS only license.

    Thanked by 1AlwaysSkint
  • For those providers that are offering free DA licenses to their customers if you have a VPS with them - what will happen to these licenses? If you add a "lite" licence then it would be cheaper for small hobbyists to go to BuyVM (or one of the other providers who currently offer this) and get a full licence without any restrictions on account numbers etc. than buy a lite license from DA directly.

    Does this mean the free licenses will be retracted in future?

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran
    edited July 2019

    @rzlosty said:
    For those providers that are offering free DA licenses to their customers if you have a VPS with them - what will happen to these licenses? If you add a "lite" licence then it would be cheaper for small hobbyists to go to BuyVM (or one of the other providers who currently offer this) and get a full licence without any restrictions on account numbers etc. than buy a lite license from DA directly.

    Does this mean the free licenses will be retracted in future?

    Short of something happening to my workings with directadmin, we will continue offering licenses no matter what.

    We have something else about to come out free.

    Francisco

  • emghemgh Member

    DA_Mark said: our 1% market share or whatever it is, really gives us enough clout to do anything...We need years of development and growth before the seeds of greed germinate.

    You got me laughing, not too many does. I will try your panel. Thank you.

  • DA_MarkDA_Mark Member
    edited July 2019

    @rzlosty said:
    For those providers that are offering free DA licenses to their customers if you have a VPS with them - what will happen to these licenses? If you add a "lite" licence then it would be cheaper for small hobbyists to go to BuyVM (or one of the other providers who currently offer this) and get a full licence without any restrictions on account numbers etc. than buy a lite license from DA directly.

    Does this mean the free licenses will be retracted in future?

    Exactly why the Lite license needs to be crippled enough for a personal user to be happy, and everybody else grumpy. It's not meant to compete with other offerings.

    Besides, in BuyVM's case you still get a license with their cheapest slice, and an unlimited one too. With that kind of deal, even a Lite will seem like a rip-off. If you get a more powerful slice, you will probably need more than a Lite anyway. And guess what, free unlimited license. Still a better deal.

    It's why I am open to suggestions but of course everybody is going to suggest/hope for high limits for low dollars. Our vision of the Lite is something that is pretty darn restricted, but a person with a cheap VPS or low end box would love to order.

    If this same person saw a BuyVM offering, we would want that to seem more appealing than the Lite. Host that offers free DA > Lite

    Thanked by 2rzlosty poisson
  • @DA_Mark said:

    @cybertech said:
    time to put some good hours into DA

    ^ This. Aside from helping cPanel users feel more at home, first priority is fixing up all the clunky aspects. We got lazy over the past few years. Looking at @Sofia_K's big list above, and the other suggestions here... nobody is demanding anything too complex or unreasonable.

    Specifically from this community, would love to hear some ideas about our LET (Lite) license.We are thinking of reducing it to a handful of users/domains so it isn't viable for commercial purposes... more just a "personal" license and darn cheap too. So low that we might have to charge yearly, simply because merchant fees would eat up the tiny monthly payments. Could I get some feedback?

    Depends on how cheap it is. If we are talking about "personal" license for personal use, pretty sure most of us don't need any panel. We will just go cli all the way, using some github stack auto installer. There are a lot of them, and centminmod by @eva2000 is one the greatest and it comes for free.

    The main reason using panel is for commercial use. Because we need to offer something that's easy to the customer / client. So limiting the license from "personal" and "commercial" point of view simply isn't right. Why would I need a panel for my "personal" vps / project / website, if I can do everything from a cli ? it's not like I need to setup the website everyday.

    I propose limiting the amount of account under the lite license. That way, summerhost can buy directadmin license for cheap, and when it has a lot of client, it can upgrade to the standard unlimited license. 25 Users for $25 / year sounds about right IMHO

    Thanked by 3DA_Mark eva2000 Ympker
  • @yokowasis thanks for taking the time to explain that to me, in such a straightforward way. Definitely cheap, pretty much in the range you said.

    Who is summerhost? Is it a company or group of people? I am asking because I noticed when school gets out for the summer, there are a lot of inquiries about starting a new hosting companies and of course they are asking about control panels. I am really hoping to capitalize on this group. Sounds like the most reliable and trustworthy hosts possible.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @DA_Mark said:
    @yokowasis thanks for taking the time to explain that to me, in such a straightforward way. Definitely cheap, pretty much in the range you said.

    Who is summerhost? Is it a company or group of people? I am asking because I noticed when school gets out for the summer, there are a lot of inquiries about starting a new hosting companies and of course they are asking about control panels. I am really hoping to capitalize on this group. Sounds like the most reliable and trustworthy hosts possible.

    You could open a facility in West Edmonton Mall, right above the footlocker, and call it DirectCrossing.

    Francisco

  • CoffeeCoffee Member

    Dear @DA_Mark, something like Zuper Lite license; 1 account with reasonable limit of domain we (hobbyist) can host, that'd be nice.

    And built-in incremental backups feature.

    And $7 thanks.

  • @Francisco said:

    You could open a facility in West Edmonton Mall, right above the footlocker, and call it DirectCrossing.

    Francisco

    Already done. There's a Forever 21 next to us that is shutting down. Maybe BuyVM can fill that space. Think of the money you'd save on re-branding. You could be Forever OutOfStock.

    :wink:

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