unRaid is NOT switching to a subscription model
unRaid is NOT switching to a subscription model
Per the pricing plan, all licenses are forever licenses, but the lowest two tiers only offer 1 year of updates.
After that you can choose to renew, or continue with your current version.
If you do not like subscriptions, there still a lifetime plan, but at a higher pricepoint.
All existing plans are grandfathered in.
Full announcement form Lime: https://unraid.net/blog/pricing-change
Note: I have mixed emotions about this, but I'm seeing a lot of rage bait, and if we're going to rage we might as well have our facts straight.
If you haven't subbed already and are interested, check out the unraid community at !unraid@reddthat.com. We are already discussing it over there too.
I'm fine with this. The old model was great and unsustainable. They are switching with the explicit goal of not taking VC money, which is a good thing in any context.
This is where I'm conflicted. Software development is hard and it's expensive. I completely understand that the old model was unsustainable.
HOWEVER - I've seen this a dozen times before. They make a move that's not great but it is understandable with the community. It's the next move that I worry about, when all of a sudden there is a subscription, or those old "lifetime" plans suddenly aren't lifetime. I remember PlayOn TV suddenly saying "Well now it's PlayOn Home. That's a new product, so you did get the lifetime of the old PlayOn TV! So we didn't really reneg on our deal!" Immediately in the garbage.
So, I'll be staying on for now.... with a big "we'll fuckin' see" in the next few years.
I'll keep using it until they no longer let me, I guess. Pretty sure OMV and TrueNAS have matured enough to fall to if unRAID decides to go full subscription, at least.
My biggest problem is security updates.
The "x years of upgrades" model is okay when it's for an app, where you can just keep using it with the old feature set and no harm is done.
But Unraid isn't an app, it's a whole operating system.
With this new licensing model, over time we will see many people sticking with old versions because they dont want to pay to renew - and then what happens when critical security vulnerabilities are found?
The question was already asked on the Unraid forum thread, and the answer from them on whether they would provide security updates for non-latest versions was basically "we don't know" - due to how much effort they would need to spend to individually fix all those old versions, and the team size it would require.
It's going to be a nightmare.
Any user who cares about good security practice is effectively going to be forced to pay to renew, because the alternative will be to leave yourself potentially vulnerable.
At which point such an user might already be looking at TrueNAS/DIY setups TBH
There's all kinds of people being born every day, growing up and becoming self hosting unRAID users. Meanwhile current license holders are growing older and dying off.
How is continuing to charge for new people to get into unRAID unsustainable? If it's worked this long but isn't now then increase the prices, or watch your overhead.
I'm here until my pro license starts costing me again. If that happens, I'll likely jump just like I have done with other products I paid for that changed our original agreement.
Ah, yes, the Autodesk style "not a subscription."
Which lasts JUST long enough to get people to buy in on the lower levels before they pull the fucking rug.
Former sublime text user here. Eating popcorn and chuckling at "lifetime license"
Some of you guys are nahive.
The true and best open source stuff is not developed for profit. Once it is, its only a matter of time because, guess what, software development is never really profitable no matter how much you piss off your user base.
Don't get me wrong: nothing bad in seeking profit, I do it myself too, I don't live of thin air...
But true open source projects are not developed by seeking sustainability and profit out of it. I steer away from any such project because it's doomed sooner or later and history is full of those projects.
I was about to fly off my handle when I heard this, and was about to send them an email to give them a good piece of my kind. But I chose to read first (don't do this very often) and I found that this applies to new customers only. I think this is pretty fair. I've been using Unraid for 5 years now, and have absolutely no regrets. Anyone thinking on getting an unraid license, now is the time.
Yeah, there have been posts saying "They're going subscription!!" and that's why I made this one. They're not going subscription. It makes me hella nervous that they might go subscription, but for now they're not. I'm alarmed and watching, but my pitchfork is still in the shed. ...for now.
Haha me too! I only use 6 drives but bought a pro key just to support. However, if I had to then pay more I would have felt wronged and would have joined the ESXi boys jumpimg on the proxmox train. Might ride that train someday just to learn it.
Proxmox is great but if you are happy on unraid then it does make a lot of things simple that may or may not (depending on what we’re talking about) be as easy on PVE. For example, PVE is not a storage solution first; sure you can do lots of storage stuff but you should not host shares directly off it for example (set up a container or VM to host the shares passed through from the storage pool on the host box).
You get more control and customization (which is where I was very happy; I have a cluster and my network shares are a service I manage within that) but if you are looking for a NAS-first solution for a single server, give something like TrueNAS Scale a good look before you take the plunge.
The water is not that hot!
🐸
They've gotta make money somehow.
Having a bunch of intentionally out of date systems seems like a bad idea though.
I'm hoping security updates are always included, but new features could be gated by lifetime/subscription. But no word on that yet.
Yeah they don't mention it at all which is a bit concerning.
At least they are being honest and keeping their word on the lifetime promise to those who bought those. How many other companies keep their word like that?
I read the whole thread just waiting to see something that would make me go, "Oh, see, there it is - that's how it's a trick. That's why it's a double-speak betrayal."
And...I didn't see it. It honestly looks like they are doing a thing to help develop the product in a way that as a user, I want; and they are not throwing current users under the bus or bait-and-switching what we were promised when we committed to the platform.
New users may not have it quite as good, but it still seems reasonable, and honestly - getting involved early is something that should be rewarded in special ways. We accept it in all sorts of other contexts (just with more up-front information, but not in materially different outcomes).
Proxmox, OpenMediaVault VM, Docker, Portainer, SnapRaid.
I have similar setup but without PROXMOX. I tried it but never saw the benefit. Using ZFS for bitrot protection.
I've never used unraid. What's the appeal?
I like what u/mosiacmango said.
Also, as someone new to self hosting, Linux, containers, networking and assembling computers, Unraid has made the steep learning curve easier to climb.
From my perspective, staring at Unraid’s Black Friday pricing, it was a no brainer when the alternatives seem to be truenas and maybe Synology. Truenas would’ve had a steeper learning curve, and Synology provides a cookie cutter experience and learning little.
A different perspective:
I run a syno box and I have been learning quite a bit; driven recently by docker and ngix, basically. It removes the daunting 'everything in *nix is commands in a terminal' and gives me this nice UI and bumpers so I don't royally fuck myself (at least not without warnings and scary red icons telling me beforehand).
The hardware is meh and the upcharge is yikes but it's kept my data safe while I screw around "in prod"; and when I do actually mess up, the backup system is easy enough to use and recovery saves my skin in just a few minutes (snapshots too, super convenient). That's what I want - a touch of guidance (so those changes at 4am where I skim the docs and get a warning about a dangerous command making me double-check before execution), a simple UI for system things (backups, control panel, user account access...), but the ability to venture beyond their little garden. Training wheels to be fast, loose, a bit reckless - but still safe.
Funny enough, I was looking at unraid for a replacement/transition not even a week ago. But I figured that there wasn't a compelling reason to switch (the website is barren for actual feature information), and figured I'll upgrade to a new syno box in a couple years instead. This unraid news is concerning but at least I get to watch what happens from the outside looking in, see how it goes.
Simple to use NAS software. Has a unique raid model that allows adding as few or as many discs as you like of whatever size. You can start with 3 and add 1, 2 or more to the array, no issues. The parity model also lets you add as many parity discs as you like, as long as they are the same size as the largest disk.
Had early docker support as well, so it's easy to spin up and integrate docker apps on the same server.
Lastly, they used to sell an excellent 8 bay standalone case. Think its been some years since they did.
They provide a simple, out of the box ,turnkey solution with a common UI to configure and manage the whole thing. Out of the box it covers most situations someone might need for a basic home server.
Down voted to negative... No counter points given.. ok.
While it's a valid business decision, and while I can see that they're trying to open more storage options for lower tiers, it does feel like a bait-and-switch to me. I've had so many people pushing this to me and I've been interested, but unable to justify the money for a license, because I'm poor and have severe health problems in the USA, which means unfortunately my money is better spent elsewhere.
So when I'm finally getting close to feeling like I might maybe have a spare $90 I could put towards a Plus license, it just feels lame that if I don't come up with the money soon, I'll be left paying for updates each year.
On the current Buy Now page it reads "Buy Once, Use for Life. No subscription. No hidden fees."
This just feels like the first step of enshittification to me. While its great the low-level plans now have access to more storage devices, now it is a subscription if you want to keep security updates? So no subscription until they change their minds, essentially. I don't know, it definitely makes me feel less inclined to invest my money in it. I never saw myself needing more than 12 storage devices, and a lifetime of updates seemed like a great deal. This seems like an average deal. I don't even have close to 12 drives, so having "unlimited" storage devices seems... pointless to a casual user trying to set up a cheap NAS at home.
I don't use unraid as it is proprietary software
Good now I don’t have to plan a huge data migration for a good long while
Not gonna lie, I thought it already worked like this.
As long as the lifetime licenses continue to be a thing, it's great.I fully disagree with this move. When I bought the license it said "lifetime", and that's that. I would understand moving to a subscription model for newcomers, but turning a "lifetime" license into a subscription is as low a blow as everything Microsoft has done as well. So, nice, I have time to find an alternative to UnRaid. There is no way in hell I'm paying a subscription. It doesn't matter how long they took to do this, its still bait-and-switch.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters ESXi VMWare virtual machine hypervisor NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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