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.
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.