8.13 getting EOL'ed with ~1 month of notice

[RadWebHosting]

On 10/30/2026 at 8:19 AM, ffeingol said:

We may be 1% of WHMCS users, but we have year end closing processes etc. and my CFO would kill us if we updated WHMCS during that.  WHMCS has also not given us a clear path to stay on LTS.  They way the EOL page stands now we'd have to go to 9.0 (bad idea) and then that would be EOL in either 30 days or EOL at the exact same time as 8.13 goes EOL.

Can't really say it much better than this. Very business-unfriendly move of WHMCS to be fast-tracking the end of support without notice, which happens to coincide with historically busy BF/CM and end-of-year.

What other obstacles can we jump through by end of year?

[WHMCS Carlos]

Fair points on the LTS path, and thanks for being direct about it. We are putting a proper, published release cadence in place so you can plan ahead instead of finding out from the docs.

The next LTS will be 9.2, currently scheduled for GA in mid-December, ahead of 8.13 and 9.0 going EOL. 9.2 builds on 9.0 and 9.1 with refinements and improvements, with stability as the priority, as it should be for an LTS.

We also intend to ship smaller releases, more often. 9.1 introduced Unattended Automatic Updates, which apply maintenance releases on a schedule you set, so staying current takes less effort than it used to.

Where possible, I'd suggest moving to 9.1 now. It will make the transition to 9.2 much easier when it lands.
 

[Damo]

2 minutes ago, WHMCS Carlos said:

9.1 introduced Unattended Automatic Updates, which apply maintenance releases on a schedule you set

There is no way that we will use this feature. Leave that kind of stuff to clients that use your hosted offering. 

[DennisHermannsen]

23 minutes ago, Damo said:

There is no way that we will use this feature.

Oh, we will. Automatic security updates is much appreciated - as long as it doesn't ship with new features.
I know that an automatic update might break something but I'd rather have non-working software than exploitable software.

[Damo]

Maintenance releases include new features. If it was strictly security-related, then it would be referred to as such. 

[DennisHermannsen]

Maintenance doesn't imply new features to me. Sounds like bugfix or security fixes.

Maybe @WHMCS Carlos can elaborate on that.

[WHMCS Carlos]

@DennisHermannsen Unattended Automatic Updates only apply updates for the version you are on that we have marked as safe to apply automatically: security fixes, bug fixes and small improvements, with nothing that requires changes to your hooks, themes or customisations. Anything that needs manual steps is not applied automatically, and moving to a new version (9.1 to 9.2) is always a manual update.

Before each update, WHMCS backs up the files it is about to replace and restores them if the update fails.

@Damo fair enough, it's your call. You can keep automatic updates off, or set your own schedule, under Utilities > Update WHMCS > Configure Update Settings.