New Unraid OS License Pricing, Timeline, and FAQs

[ddube]

22 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

That's exactly what you can do with the new model, except the new versions are at a much lower price than the initial buy in. There is no requirement to pay until you want the next version.

Sadly no, the marketing could've been targeted at this but given the fact that unraid 6 is nearly a decade old. It is missing the point.

[JonathanM]

14 minutes ago, ddube said:

Sadly no, the marketing could've been targeted at this but given the fact that unraid 6 is nearly a decade old. It is missing the point.

I don't get what you are arguing here. The new pricing lets you run the version you bought forever, and you only need to pay when you want a new version. That is exactly what you said.

1 hour ago, ddube said:

I would have prefered to buy unraid v6, then unraid v7 and so on.

 

[Saulimedes]

I've always admired Unraid for its standout, ready-to-go experience as a NAS system. But with the new subscription pricing, it feels like a wrench thrown into what was a smooth operation. To me, subscriptions are like a cancer on software access and usability, eroding the simplicity and upfront value Unraid offered.

 

I'm already seeing folks scramble for keys, trying to dodge this incoming wave. It's a clear sign of unease among us, the loyal base, fearing what's to come might not include everyone. While I've leaned heavily on Unraid for its exceptional qualities, it's disheartening to acknowledge that alternatives like Proxmox and OpenMediaVault exist, standing by subscription-free, for anyone reconsidering their setup in light of these changes.

[ddube]

10 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

I don't get what you are arguing here. The new pricing lets you run the version you bought forever, and you only need to pay when you want a new version. That is exactly what you said.

 

No. You are entitled to get the patch version until this branch is EOL.

 

if you have 1 year update, you get 6.12.x until 6.12 is out of updates. You won’t be able to move to 6.13.x.

 

I don’t know why you are defending this. Do you have free copies ? Do work for unraid ? I clearly see that you want them to stay alive since you already have bought at least one key. Will you buy more under the new scheme ? It is expected that you will get at least an unleashed license key, since you are a supporter of this.

 

Like I said before. LT is unable to provide a roadmap. Why ?

[itimpi]

7 minutes ago, ddube said:

if you have 1 year update, you get 6.12.x until 6.12 is out of updates. You won’t be able to move to 6.13.x.

You WILL if 6.13.x comes out before your year of updates has expired.   Once you get the 6.13.x release you then get the 6.13.y type updates even though you have not taken out another years support.

 

I would expect most users to therefore get the current release plus the next major release without paying extra as long as there is less than a year between the major releases.

[Hoopster]

56 minutes ago, ddube said:

Like I said before. LT is unable to provide a roadmap. Why ?

I think it is just due to the nature of Unraid development and philosophy.  Limetech historically has taken a very long time to develop and test new releases (even minor ones).  There are a lot of variables in a product such as Unraid which tries to run on as many hardware platforms as possible.  They also thoroughly test to make sure no data loss will result from a new version of the software.  It all takes time.

 

The product also seems to be driven a lot by user requests/needs and priorities can change.  I think they would rather just "go with the flow" than publish roadmaps that may change a lot.  I do not speak for Limetech.

 

If they did provide roadmaps, we would all likely be complaining about versions/features not making published deadlines.  I was a software product manager for 25 years and was in charge of many roadmaps.  We rarely ever made the published timelines due to unforeseen engineering roadblocks and trying to control "feature creep."  It got to the point that I really has to pad the timelines and then customers complained about excessively-long development cycles.  Roadmaps are doubly difficult for small companies with limited resources.

Edited March 26 by Hoopster

[TheMantis]

To be honest, based on the level of self entitlement shown by many posters regarding the licence changes, I don't know why Lime Tech should even bother trying to make you happy. 

 

From my perspective, Lime Tech have bent over backwards in an attempt to be fair and reasonable to existing and new licence holders. Do people think that software development is free? The entire world is in the midst of massive inflation, the cost of developing and maintaining software is not immune to this. 

 

Compared to the cost of hardware, the increases to licence costs are tiny.

 

Some people need to grow up and get with the real world.

Edited March 26 by TheMantis

[IonelChila]

I'm concerned that they will create two user classes, eventually segregating them with different features and capabilities. I'm willing to bet that the older license holders will eventually be required to switch to subscriptions for additional features. I've experienced this before and don't want to go through it again.

Edited March 26 by IonelChila

[ddube]

52 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

If they did provide roadmaps, we would all likely be complaining about versions/features not making published deadlines.

They could tell what is coming and be honest. It needs to happen if they want to switch to that yearly model. Otherwise, why should I pay. There is no reason.

 

49 minutes ago, TheMantis said:

To be honest, based on the level of self entitlement shown by many posters regarding the licence changes, I don't know why Lime Tech should even bother trying to make you happy.

It doesn't matter to me. I already have my license and can use the software without worrying. If I need to move, I'll just drop unraid althogether and call it a day. In the end, who cares ?

 

Why I'm agains't that change ? Well it's simple. It already was a problem to get user with a lifetime license at 59$, why would it changes if it cost 49$ but you have to pay 36$ each year to get updates ? Pro version ? 129.99 vs 249.99.

 

I'm pretty sure it would have been more profitable if it was on github, early build on patreon and extra unraid connect at a small price monthly. Ah and a real way to support like donation. I would have donated.

 

43 minutes ago, IonelChila said:

I'm concerned that they will create two user classes, eventually segregating them with different features and capabilities. I'm willing to bet that the older license holders will eventually be required to switch to subscriptions for additional features. I've experienced this before and don't want to go through it again.

It will happen someday and new people will always feel like they were missing the legacy license, which impact loyalty negatively.

Edit : fix $

Edited March 26 by ddube

[Hoopster]

5 hours ago, IonelChila said:

I'm willing to bet that the older license holders will eventually be required to switch to subscriptions for additional features.

This is not without precedent.  When fiber optic Internet came to my neighborhood 20+ years ago, we were all promised free installation ($2700 actual cost) and speed increases as they became available with just a monthly ISP payment. I was among the first to sign up.

 

For 15 years they kept their promise.  About 7 years ago we "legacy" users were told that our speed would be capped at 100 Mbps.  If we wanted more, we had to renounce our legacy status and pay $30 a month to the fiber optic provider (a consortium formed by 15 cities) + the ISP fee or pay $2700 for the "installation" and skip the $30 a month fee.

 

I have no crystal ball and have no idea what will happen in the future with legacy Unraid licences, but, given their transparancy up to this point, I don't think they will start penalizing legacy users unless they pay up.

Edited March 26 by Hoopster

[SpencerJ]

8 minutes ago, ddube said:

They could tell what is coming and be honest.

 

 

Here's what's to come in the near term^^^

 

 

59 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

If they did provide roadmaps, we would all likely be complaining about versions/features not making published deadlines.  I was a software product manager for 25 years and was in charge of many roadmaps.  We rarely ever made the published timelines due to unforeseen engineering roadblocks and trying to control "feature creep."  It got to the point that I really has to pad the timelines and then customers complained about excessively-long development cycles.  Roadmaps are doubly difficult for small companies with limited resources.

 

Thank you for eloquently explaining this. With the new licenses, we will be forced to be more closely aligned to our users feature requests and desires.

[MrCrispy]

2 hours ago, Saulimedes said:

it's disheartening to acknowledge that alternatives like Proxmox and OpenMediaVault exist

just a small quibblle - I honestly don't understand the love for Proxmox. It doesn't even have docker support, you are supposed to run a Linux vm instance for those. All it does is vm's, zfs/storage pools etc. Is running multiple vm's that popular? isn't that exactly what docker does, much more efficiently, for most cases where you needed a vm before. And if you do need vm's, whats wrong with qemu+kvm. Proxmox just adds a hypervisor for added complexity that IMO is completely pointless for home users.

 

Also like I said before none of these do disk pooling with native data format. I think people don't realize unaware most people are, they look at competing RAID solutions and think its the same thing.

[MrCrispy]

2 hours ago, IonelChila said:

I'm concerned that they will create two user classes, eventually segregating them with different features and capabilities. I'm willing to bet that the older license holders will eventually be required to switch to subscriptions for additional features. I've experienced this before and don't want to go through it again.

 

this is precisely what I am concerned about. Hence why I suggested that existing Pro users should be upgraded to Lifetime and not further distinctions made. If an old legacy basic/plus upgrades later to Pro, they should also be converted to Lifetime.

 

The reasons given for not doing this are for accounting/metrics, that may be true but it doesn't sit well with me. 

[Spec7re]

On 3/26/2024 at 5:03 PM, MrCrispy said:

just a small quibblle - I honestly don't understand the love for Proxmox. It doesn't even have docker support, you are supposed to run a Linux vm instance for those. All it does is vm's, zfs/storage pools etc. Is running multiple vm's that popular? isn't that exactly what docker does, much more efficiently, for most cases where you needed a vm before. And if you do need vm's, whats wrong with qemu+kvm. Proxmox just adds a hypervisor for added complexity that IMO is completely pointless for home users.

 

Also like I said before none of these do disk pooling with native data format. I think people don't realize unaware most people are, they look at competing RAID solutions and think its the same thing.

I think it's two fold.

 

One, there is a group of individuals that do this for a living and want to play around it to learn it for their job, or as a way to see if it's something they should deploy at their workplace. Secondly, I think others do it because of the "cool" factor. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a mighty fine solution (I've played around with it myself), but it takes a lot more configuration/know-how to get it working. Like you said, it doesn't have docker by default, so you either have to create a VM and/or LXC, install docker and go from there.  Personally I've played around with Jellyfin on Proxmox...I did it in a VM, I did it with docker in a VM, as well as an LXC and while it was fun, it wasn't no where near as simple as Unraid, where it's click install, change a few parameters and go.

 

I also see a lot of discussion around the "free" options out there. No offence, but these "free" options aren't new. They've been around just as long, if not longer than Unraid and guess what, people still chose Unraid. Why?, because it fits it target market...."home users." Easy to upgrade storage, similar easy to follow implementations for VMs and docker, a helpful/friendly community, plenty of good resources to help you along (ie: Spaceinvader One),etc... There's more to Unraid then just the software and it's why people chose Unraid over the others. People will pay for convenience, it's not always about getting stuff for free. Does Unraid have every feature that the other solutions have...no, but it doesn't need to and IMHO most of them don't really matter in a home environment anyways.

 

Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of entitled individuals. I feel bad for software developers, because people want their stuff, they want them to make changes, add new features, etc... and oh btw, please do it for free, or charge someone else for it, thank you... I've seen a lot of arm chair business people here offering suggestions to just do what the others do; go make a business version, go sell hardware, etc... No offence, but those things sound way simpler than what it actually takes. Not to mention there's no guarantee that it will pay off in the long run and has the potential to put you in a worse situation compared to where you were before. For example, lets say they do offer a business solution and price it accordingly. Since they (business/enterprise customers) will essentially be the one's funding Unraid's development in this case, they will be the ones driving the decisions when it comes to new features, support, etc....it won't be us home users using it for free. I want Lime Tech to focus on Unraid. I don't want them to focus of other avenues that can potentially make things worse in the long run because they have too much going on. Just focus on what they do best and that's Unraid.

We can go back an forth all day long. At the end of the day, if you are that unhappy then please just move on (not you MrCrispy, just speaking generally hehe). While I can understand the reasoning behind the dissatisfaction, but to be honest, none of the naysayers have given Lime Tech a chance to prove themselves with this change. Sure we can talk about what "other" companies have done in the past, but in all honesty I don't care about "other" companies, all I care about is what Lime Tech does. Just because others have done terrible things, that doesn't mean every company will. It's ok to be skeptical, but you can be open minded as well. Give them a chance, don't just wish for them to shutdown and close up shop. I mean they've already listened and are offering a solution to those who want security updates/fixes for a period of time after the fact. Furthermore they've also upped the starter from 4 to 6 devices, so they are listening....yet people are still unhappy. Which leads me to believe there will be a group of entitled individuals who will never be happy no matter what they do.

Edited April 1 by Spec7re

[xokia]

7 hours ago, ijuarez said:

I will not be affected by the new price tiers, but all this about subscriptions and the down fall of unraid and no they will not survive this., Blah blah.

I find it funny because some of the same people that are complaining have netflix, hulu and Disney. Pay it gladly every month.  I have other  subscriptions primary my house payment, my car payment, health insurance etc.

 

Your examples are providing new content every month. Patches while important do not rise to that level JMO. A patch is a fix to a hole that never should have existed. Unraid feature wise that is something an individual user would need to decide. If new features have come out I am unaware of them. I think the last major feature was ZFS support which I do not use.

 

I do not know how much unraid is used in the commercial environment. To me it doesnt seem like it is feature rich enough to be popular in the commercial market. Seems more of a consumer grade product but maybe I am wrong.

 

I do not see people complaining. Just folks that are current customers expressing if they would be a customer under the new pricing scheme.  Whether the new pricing scheme is successful or not only time will tell. I wish the unraid team nothing but success.

[IonelChila]

But then I hate to be the Karen for this licensing drama. 5 years from now, give or take, we will have DNA storage capabilities in order of petabytes so who in the heck will need to deal with NAS, UnRaid and all this mumbo jumbo. Shoot, I may be dead in 5 years LOL 

Edited March 27 by IonelChila

[Yoitan]

Before the Unraid pricing policy changed, I upgraded my main server to a Pro license and also purchased a Basic license for my backup server, which is still in the planning stages.

I'm not completely sure if this was a wise decision. The Plus license I previously held was still sufficient, and the backup server is only a plan for now. In fact, after hearing about the changes in how pricing would be structured, I can't help but think that maybe I rushed into my decisions a bit too quickly.

 

I hope my choices prove to be beneficial in the long run.

[Spec7re]

11 hours ago, xokia said:

I do not know how much unraid is used in the commercial environment. To me it doesnt seem like it is feature rich enough to be popular in the commercial market. Seems more of a consumer grade product but maybe I am wrong.

 

I don't think Unraid is widely used in the commercial space. From it's inception, it has been designed and built to target the home market.

 

Unraid first and foremost is a NAS. Business/enterprise customers looking for a NAS want very fast, robust, tried and true solutions and unfortunately, Unraid doesn't meet that criteria currently.

 

Unraid's default storage scheme is good for ease of expansion, that still provides redundancy, but it's no speed demon. They've added caching to help with writes to the array, but when it comes to reads it's still slow. That being said, by adding ZFS Unraid is closing the gap. Whether or not that's enough to make it an option for businesses, remains to be seen. The other big factor in all of this is that a lot of business/enterprise customer's typically want support contracts and to be honest, I don't know if Lime Tech really wants to go down that path atm. Maybe if they grow enough to support it, but business/enterprise customers are different animals entirely compared to home users. The needs, wants and expectations from businesses are very different than home users. So I'd say for now, Unraid will still remain largely a solution targeted at home users, but who knows, that could change down the road.

 

11 hours ago, xokia said:

I do not see people complaining. Just folks that are current customers expressing if they would be a customer under the new pricing scheme.  Whether the new pricing scheme is successful or not only time will tell. I wish the unraid team nothing but success.

Yes and no,

 

As I've said in my post above, I do understand the frustrations and skepticism, however, Lime Tech did in fact take some of that feedback and implemented some changes before the actual licensing terms changed (ie: increasing starter from 4 to 6 devices, and offering support updates to those who do not wish to renew the update licensing each year). Yet there wasn't even an acknowledgement of any kind from some of these people to at least say "ok Lime Tech is taking feedback into consideration and trying to alleviate customer concerns." I fully understand and I do not blame them one bit if they still feel skeptical and unsure, but to constantly be overly negative no matter what Lime Tech does to help alleviate concerns is just complaining plain and simple.

 

Edited to make points a little clearer.

Edited March 27 by Spec7re

[MrCrispy]

7 hours ago, Spec7re said:

I don't think Unraid is widely used in the commercial space. First and foremost it has been designed and built to target the home market from it's inception.

 

Unraid first and foremost is a NAS and for business/enterprise customers, they want very fast, robust, tried and true solutions.

 

you just made 2 completely contradictory statements. So do you think its designed for home or for business users? I think your 2nd sentence, you meant home?

 

The speed issue is a real problem, I don't know how much of that is due to FUSE or due to Unraid's implementation. Looking at other FUSE implementations and tests, it seems to be the latter. I have asked about it, but no technical responses. A cache pool is just mitigating, not looking at the source of the problem.

 

Maybe some small mom and pop shops use Unraid. A business wouldn't. They don't need the additional features for vm's, dockers, CA etc. The primary use case is as a file server. For this the main benefit Unraid has is mix and match existing disks, which is not a concern for them.

 

[enJOyIT]

1 hour ago, MrCrispy said:

 

you just made 2 completely contradictory statements. So do you think its designed for home or for business users? I think your 2nd sentence, you meant home?

 

The speed issue is a real problem, I don't know how much of that is due to FUSE or due to Unraid's implementation. Looking at other FUSE implementations and tests, it seems to be the latter. I have asked about it, but no technical responses. A cache pool is just mitigating, not looking at the source of the problem.

 

Maybe some small mom and pop shops use Unraid. A business wouldn't. They don't need the additional features for vm's, dockers, CA etc. The primary use case is as a file server. For this the main benefit Unraid has is mix and match existing disks, which is not a concern for them.

 

 

If all your array drives where nvme/ssd drives you would have a lot more writing speed because the slow down are coming from the HDD read heads. And they are moving all around to get the bits for calculating the new parity bits. But it's highly not recommended because of missing trim support.

 

So the answer is: It's a physical problem which limetech never can fix for HDD drives.

Edited March 27 by enJOyIT

[ChatNoir]

2 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

you just made 2 completely contradictory statements. So do you think its designed for home or for business users? I think your 2nd sentence, you meant home?

Had to read it twice to understand, I think it should read something like this : "Unraid first and foremost is a home NAS and while for business/enterprise customers, they want a very fast, robust, tried and true solutions."

[Spec7re]

2 hours ago, MrCrispy said:

 

you just made 2 completely contradictory statements. So do you think its designed for home or for business users? I think your 2nd sentence, you meant home?

 

The speed issue is a real problem, I don't know how much of that is due to FUSE or due to Unraid's implementation. Looking at other FUSE implementations and tests, it seems to be the latter. I have asked about it, but no technical responses. A cache pool is just mitigating, not looking at the source of the problem.

 

Maybe some small mom and pop shops use Unraid. A business wouldn't. They don't need the additional features for vm's, dockers, CA etc. The primary use case is as a file server. For this the main benefit Unraid has is mix and match existing disks, which is not a concern for them.

 

Sorry that's my bad, it was getting late and my words were starting to jumble together hehe.

 

What I was trying to say, is that despite all of the other features of Unraid, it's main purpose is to be a NAS. When business/enterprise customers choose a NAS, they prioritize speed, robust/tried and true solutions (in the business space), high-availability, support contracts, etc.... Currently Unraid does not meet those criteria, so it's not a solution they would even consider. With the addition of ZFS (once it is fully implemented) that may change, as ZFS in itself addresses a lot of the needs for business users. However, if they already have a solution they are happy with, I highly doubt they will change to another solution entirely.

 

Also, the fact that Unraid boots of a USB stick, is another reason why it won't be considered in businesses. While I understand the reasoning behind Unraid's ability to boot off a USB stick, it's simply not going to fly in the business/enterprise side of things. If Unraid had the ability to let users choose if they wan to boot of a USB, or dedicated drives (ie: SSDs), then maybe it could be considered.

 

As to Unraid's speed, I honestly don't know... Again Unriad's main focus has always been home users, primarily ones that want to store and watch/enjoy their media collection. Something that doesn't really require a ton of speed to begin with IMHO.

Edited March 27 by Spec7re

[HardwareHarry]

OK under the new System I would not have chosen Unraid as Lifetime would be to much for me as a private person in many cases and I'd rather buy an additional HDD and use e.g. OMV . Any Licenses I would have to update regularely, I just personally don't ike that.....OK user can strech it for some time but this is all a little sketchy.  Business users...i somehow doubt there are many for Unraid who don't really care about 250 bucks.

 

Basically I doubt this is a sustainable model,.....however time will tell.

 

My suspicion would be that this leads to the rise of OMV and Truenas and Unraid might beginn to struggle in 2-4 years but who am I to say

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ddube]

Well the fact that unraid is using the root user and you can reset the password if you have access to the usb stick is just a sign that security is not that much a concern and therefore they exclude business de facto.

[MrCrispy]

3 hours ago, enJOyIT said:

 

If all your array drives where nvme/ssd drives you would have a lot more writing speed because the slow down are coming from the HDD read heads. And they are moving all around to get the bits for calculating the new parity bits. But it's highly not recommended because of missing trim support.

 

So the answer is: It's a physical problem which limetech never can fix for HDD drives.

 

but this is not true. even standard SATA has much higher write speeds. There are posts here where people have done plenty of tests and the conclusion was the smb and FUSE in unraid was to blame, without that they got much higher speeds, without using any cache.