How many class-action lawsuits will WHMCS get this year?

[ptoone 5]

I expect this could be costly for WHMCS: https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/subscriptions/971878-siriusxm-to-pay-96m-to-end-lifetime-subscription-class-action/

[steven99 98]

The difference though is the owned / lifetime license still works but you just can't get updates.   In this case, you would have to show they took something away that was in the owned license or that was expected (by industry standards, reasonable person tests) to be in the license. 

Edited April 7 by steven99

[wsa 70]

also maybe check they terms also 

[zomex 53]

I can't see them being at any risk legally but time will tell.

[DennisHermannsen 71]

There's not being done anything illegal. You're still able to use your owned license. If you aren't going to convert your license, you're going to be stuck with the owned license - just like you would if WHMCS ceased existing.

 

[chrisb2012 25]

Leave a review here: https://trustpilot.com/review/whmcs.com they actively encourage reviews so I say give them as many customer opinions as possible! At least explaining the situation will new potential customers to get a clear picture! 

[yggdrasil 109]

15 hours ago, DennisHermannsen said:

There's not being done anything illegal. You're still able to use your owned license. If you aren't going to convert your license, you're going to be stuck with the owned license - just like you would if WHMCS ceased existing.

 

That is very misleading because you don't get the ioncube to unlock the software. Your owned license is now worth $0. Wait until a new PHP version comes out, and it's not support by your operating system anymore. Wait until a security hole is discovered, and you cannot patch or close it because...YOU HAVE no access to the code.

They sold a lifetime owned software which is now obsolete. It's very misleading to say you can continue to use it when the software code is obfuscated, and they will refuse access. They sold one thing and they decided to change their initial purchase agreement.

Would people here had purchased the software if they knew this in advance? The question is no for tons of people. They paid thinking it was a long term investment. They did not receive that value because let's remember we still paid the yearly updates, but what happen to the initial price which was much higher than paying per month? Its now gone.

Edited April 8 by yggdrasil

[DennisHermannsen 71]

1 minute ago, yggdrasil said:

That is very misleading because you don't get the ioncube to unlock the software. Your owned license is now worth $0. Wait until a new PHP version comes out, and it's not support by your operating system anymore. Wait until a security hole is discovered, and you cannot patch or close it because...YOU HAVE no access to the code.

They sold a lifetime owned software which is now obsolete. Its very misleading to say you can continue to use it when the software code is obfuscated, and they will refuse access.

As far as I know, they don't state "Lifetime" anywhere, but that's besides the point. You still have every right to use the version of WHMCS that your license covers, you just can't upgrade it. I don't see why it's misleading - but it sucks.

[yggdrasil 109]

4 minutes ago, DennisHermannsen said:

As far as I know, they don't state "Lifetime" anywhere, but that's besides the point. You still have every right to use the version of WHMCS that your license covers, you just can't upgrade it. I don't see why it's misleading - but it sucks.

You sell one thing and then change the initial purchase agreement afterwards and is not misleading? They also said before they would HONOR existing owned licenses. They now are also breaking that promise.

[steven99 98]

7 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

They did not receive that value because let's remember we still paid the yearly updates, but what happen to the initial price which was much higher than paying per month? Its now gone.

So lets go off your screenshot, btw can you date that?    If you bought the one time payment unbranded license at $324 and lets say that was 5 years ago and yearly renewals was $60, that is a total of $624 to date.  Now lets say the monthly was $19 for majority of those years, you would have paid $1140 or more over those 5 years just for the monthly license.  So the one time is actually quite cheaper. 

7 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

You sell one thing and then change the initial purchase agreement afterwards and is not misleading? They also said before they would HONOR existing owned licenses. They now are also breaking that promise.

Right but if you see in the above, owned license only includes the first year and after that you need to renew the update subscription.  They just did away with that part and not the whole license.   Sure you can no longer update, but I have read that security patches would still be available.   I have not yet seen anywhere that updates were for life also. 

Honestly this whole thing has turned me off of owned / lifetime / one time payment licenses as they aren't that way.  Though I have not used owned licenses before.

 

[yggdrasil 109]

Of course, it's cheaper to pay monthly. You don't actually believe people that purchased owned licenses are stupid right? 😄

The reason a company sells one time payments for a higher price and people are willing to pay, is because you see it as an investment, not an expense or monthly subscription. This is also why you can book it in accounting, as digital assets vs expenses.

What has the date of the screenshot anything to do with this? If you purchased one-time before, you expect that purchase promise to be honored as long they are in business. Not new sales but previous sales? Every company honors them, unless they expect to never have new customers again which would be concerning for any company. And before you claim this is not sustainable plenty of companies do this as a reward to initial customers that made them who they are, at least with software that does not cost them anything as opposed to leased services. Affinity is one example. I truly have paid one time for both of their software and have received free updates for years now. Paul from Blesta said the same thing in a community recently, that they see it as a way to reward those that initially believe in his product and company. Its not as you will have one time sales forever, new purchases are a different story, you just honor those that actually made you as a brand and company and to finalize, it's not as they are not making any money from them anymore. I always have renewed support and updates and I also purchased all their extra add-ons and modules that are officially developed by WHMCS.

Don't even get me into that link that goes to their terms of service. You see their sales page, read one thing, and then they change it. This is a very gray area. To back pedal on your initial selling promise. I purchased ONE TIME because they promised me I could then later buy support and updates per year. Now they are telling me, sorry, your one time purchase is worthless, and we are not going to allow you to buy updates from us anymore in the future. Assuming it was cheaper for me to pay by month, then it was a deception trick. I paid a higher price expecting to receive something of value and instead I paid more for something that will be worthless soon.

How can you claim this is not deception? I paid for Unlimited Customers and Unlimited Staff and Unlimited products. Now WHMCS is forcing me to a limited customer model. This is not what I purchased initially. And they refuse to sell me further updates which is a way to force you out.

Just wait until WHMCS start to charge you extra for every staff account and wait until they charge extra per active product you have. All my predictions about WHMCS over the years have become true. I said this before, their customer license model is only the start. If you expect to run WHMCS in your existing plan then I have bad news for you.

Self-hosted licenses are completely going away. Even if they say the opposite today, they said the same thing about owned licenses in public. Trust me, self hosted WHMCS is dead. They will eventually start to push you out as they move to their SaaS whmcs hosted only. At that point, your database and customers are theirs, they can will probably move to a % model that charges you based on the amount of sales you make every month. Good luck if you don't believe me but that is what WHMCS is going for. They want to be sort of Apple that charges 30% cut to every developer and they force everyone to only be able to sell using Apple payments. WHMCS is going that way. I would not be surprised if in the future they completely ban modules like Stripe or Specific domain modules and force you to use their Reselling account and their merchant payment system. They want a cut of your business and they are not stopping here.

[bear 118]

46 minutes ago, steven99 said:

Sure you can no longer update, but I have read that security patches would still be available.

For a while. 
The most recent security issue proves it. They rolled out a patch, but went no further back than version 7.7. Anything earlier, go pound sand. 😉
It was only because of that I'd recently updated my support addons, or I'd be stuck in an insecure version.

[steven99 98]

10 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

Of course, it's cheaper to pay monthly. You don't actually believe people that purchased owned licenses are stupid right? 😄

Short term, month to month yes monthly is cheaper but I was looking at long term, years out --  look at my math again.  Over 5 years if paying $19, it is $1140  compared to $624 .    They lost over $500 in potential income for one owned license during that time.   And thus is why owned / lifetime / one time pay licenses mean jack cheese to me and have not used them and with this probably wont.  I'd rather pay them that $500 and perhaps then the company may not do stuff like this.  (but obviously each company is different)

13 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

How can you claim this is not deception? I paid for Unlimited Customers and Unlimited Staff and Unlimited products. Now WHMCS is forcing me to a limited customer model. This is not what I purchased initially. And they refuse to sell me further updates which is a way to force you out.

Not sure if that is directed at me, but I never claimed it was or wasn't deception.   I think stopping renewal of support / updates is a bad / wrong move -- unless they are discontinuing WHMCS it self. 

21 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

They will eventually start to push you out as they move to their SaaS whmcs hosted only. At that point, your database and customers are theirs, they can will probably move to a % model that charges you based on the amount of sales you make every month. Good luck if you don't believe me but that is what WHMCS is going for. They want to be sort of Apple that charges 30% cut to every developer and they force everyone to only be able to sell using Apple payments. WHMCS is going that way. I would not be surprised if in the future they completely ban modules like Stripe or Specific domain modules and force you to use their Reselling account and their merchant payment system. They want a cut of your business and they are not stopping here.

I do not disagree with you and I have posted on other threads here or WHT about SaaS WHMCS.  At that point, if I am still using WHMCS, I would be switching to Blesta or something else -- even if I have to spend money or time and build modules or even building the system I have been thinking about for a while.   Heck I can barely stand them having call homes as it is.  Even before this I had started building modules that could potentially be used within other systems with coding to their own ways of doing stuff.  For my use case, Blesta would only need 2 or 3 modules built to cover everything in use now and could probably get away with just 1 and figure something out for the other.

[steven99 98]

35 minutes ago, bear said:

For a while. 
The most recent security issue proves it. They rolled out a patch, but went no further back than version 7.7. Anything earlier, go pound sand. 😉
It was only because of that I'd recently updated my support addons, or I'd be stuck in an insecure version.

Indeed.  Honestly the only business / person you can trust not to screw you over is your self and at times that might not be the case. 😉