Am i the last user with the owned license? If not what are you doing for security ?

[lulzkiller]

Hey folks,

As the title says — is anyone else still using the old WHMCS owned license that WHMCS so kindly killed off?

I just got their recent email about important security updates, but since we’re on the legacy license, we don’t get those updates. I already talked to WHMCS directly, and they’ve made it clear: no updates for us.

Thing is, even if I wanted to update, it’s almost impossible. My WHMCS install is so heavily customized and integrated with other systems that upgrading would take 2-3 months and at least two devs full-time just to bring every custom plugin and integration up to date. It’s not feasible financially, and honestly, it’s just a shitty situation.

So — is anyone in the same boat? And more importantly: have you found any workarounds or mitigations for the lack of security updates? Would love to hear how others are handling this.

Thanks in advance!

[bear]

Still on 8.1.3 which is covered for this patch release, but honestly, the potential for bad results (and no chance of reviewing changes due to encryption, so it's an untested crap shoot) has us strongly hesitant. If something does go wrong, I'd have no support from them, since I'm not willing to subscribe. Price is just too high, along with the loss of control should we cancel the subscription.
If there was a viable alternative, we'd move. Eventually (soon now, I think) we may be forced to. 

[lulzkiller]

13 minutes ago, bear said:

Still on 8.1.3 which is covered for this patch release, but honestly, the potential for bad results (and no chance of reviewing changes due to encryption, so it's an untested crap shoot) has us strongly hesitant. If something does go wrong, I'd have no support from them, since I'm not willing to subscribe. Price is just too high, along with the loss of control should we cancel the subscription.
If there was a viable alternative, we'd move. Eventually (soon now, I think) we may be forced to. 

I am on 8.2.1, so im not covered, but yeah, same conclusion here. Looked into Ble*** too — it’s probably the least bad option, but still a far cry from what I’d consider a real replacement. Between the lack of feature parity and the amount of rewrites needed to fit our setup, it’d honestly be less painful long-term to just build our own system from scratch.

Which is insane, but here we are.

I just wish WHMCS would let us pay a one-time fee for security patches only, no new features, no updates — just basic patch support for those of us who actually bought the damn thing outright on a promise that they choose to screw

Edited June 4 by lulzkiller

[bear]

Ah, 8.1.3 is not covered, 8.13 is. Fun naming convention, no confusion there. 

[WHMCS John]

Hi there,

Please contact Customer Service for details of a trade-in discount for your old Owned license: https://www.whmcs.com/submit-a-ticket/ 

[Tony Johnson]

I’m also still on an owned license and taking extra steps to lock things down. Curious to see what others are doing for security in this situation.

[lulzkiller]

On 8/9/2025 at 10:58 AM, Tony Johnson said:

I’m also still on an owned license and taking extra steps to lock things down. Curious to see what others are doing for security in this situation.

I locked down everything as much as possible, and then we have started building our own solution instead. I really dont like being forced to do anything, and as most WHMCS users know, they dont care about actually providing a decent service and build what we need, they spent all their focus on trying to upsell more of their *. 

So yeah, thats what we are doing 

[RadWebHosting]

7 hours ago, lulzkiller said:

I really dont like being forced to do anything

Yeah, release lifecycle is getting shorter and shorter. Mostly to encourage some update which  includes some addon business scheme (new installed on client-side  by default "feature") and setting up some mandatory telemetry beacons to understand and improve their products (NEW: minutely data-synchronization to webpros corporate hq) for FASTER observation and improvements). 

Sorry, big off-track rant🔁

[bear]

On 6/4/2025 at 1:54 PM, WHMCS John said:

Hi there,

Please contact Customer Service for details of a trade-in discount for your old Owned license: https://www.whmcs.com/submit-a-ticket/ 

Would that be the first (already onerous) offer we received, or the one in the "apology" email that's even higher?

3 hours ago, RadWebHosting said:

Sorry, big off-track rant🔁

Doesn't make you wrong. 😉