I’m trying to understand what “multiple users” means in context of EE 7 licensing. I’ve been running a personal site on EE since v2. At some point I allowed member registration purely for commenting. I moved comments to Disqus so disabled member login. A while ago, due to people’s dislike of Disqus, I moved back to EE comments module (poor as it is), but still without member login.
So, I still have a population of members on my DB, but they’re not active. If I upgrade to EE7, does this mean I need to pay the license fee?
As I understand it, technically, all that will happen without a license is that each time you login to your control panel you will get a prompt to buy a one. Your question raises an interesting case though as I have a similar scenario… a few logins on a personal site that are no longer used. I would assume that just removing the unused accounts would make the prompt go away… It would be better though if those could be identified as “inactive” so as not to jepordize any data continuity.
~R
Hmm.. well that could get irritating fast 😊.
I can understand that multiple users and the back-end / content management should be subject to license, but just paying $200/yr to enable registration for commenters, in itself a security mechanism, seems a distinct signal to “personal site creators” that they are no longer wanted.
Note, I’d have no objection to paying a reasonable price for a single-user license which include restricted use of the member module. I don’t expect to get good stuff for free. I was happy to pay for EE 2 back in the day.
LOL… yeah… Actually, I get it on a local site build right now & it really isn’t too bad…
There is a lot of discussion about this on Slack… I get the need for a license (I don’t mind paying either & all they have really done is to re-instate the Ellis Labs Licensing model) but the problem is they went to FREE for a time. It is hard to walk-back on Free. Hoping they can figure out something a little more flexible
I would like ro Suggest having Unlimited user registration BUT…..
if EE is of Free Version then: Users are Disabled on having activities on the website such as commenting, making profiles, authoring a blog, etc… These Users are just recievers of Newsletters from SuperAdmin.
if EE is of Paid Version then: Users are Enabled on having all Activities on the website depending upon the users’ permissions set forth by the SuperAdmin.
I think this is Way Better Idea.
People probably read users and think they can’t build a website anymore without buying a license. You can read more here: https://expressionengine.com/blog/expressionengine-7-updated-pricing
Originally we released ExpressionEngine 7 with all of the new features as well as all the features that were previously only available with a Pro license for Free when a site only needs 1 registered user. If you needed more users (with Control Panel access or without), you needed to purchase a Pro license. We’ve updated this to now allow unlimited non-control panel users in the Core version for free. This allows for more freedom on sites that only need 1 user with Control Panel access, but still want to allow users to register to leave comments, create e-commerce accounts, update content via Channel Forms, or other member functions. If you need more than one user with Control Panel access, a Pro license will still be required.
So basically it goes like this:
If you are not a developer or don’t know how to build stuff you probably want PRO and need PRO if you need to quickly enable people to log in and edit content. The same goes if you need moderators, administrators, etc. All of them require PRO because they now log into the Expression Engine control panel as a user. This means companies or people that need staff to log in and edit content (the whole purpose of a CMS) need PRO.
If you are completely building your login pages from scratch, and they log in and comment on your site and templates & code you created, and never log in to the control panel, they are not counted as users. And makes sense because you built the whole thing from scratch (or had it designed and coded) and are not actually using any of the EE control panel features except for your main administrator (owner). Now of course this second option is probably more expensive than paying PRO for most people if they need to hire someone or build it custom pages.
Now, if you need to allow other moderators to check and reviews those comments from the EE control panel, then you need PRO since the free license only allows 1 user, basically the owner or main administrator. Any other user, that is someone that need to post articles, update news, content from channels, or do anything inside the control panel, then you need pro.
But for example a blog, users only register to comment, they don’t actually log into the EE control panel. Why would they? Since you comment on the page, not from the control panel and there is no need for them to actually log into the control panel for any reasons.
This makes sense, otherwise not a single person would use EE anymore for any website, since I can’t seem to know one single site today that does not have some sort of user interactivity, even WordPress, most people just log in for one purpose, commenting, but they don’t actually log into the WP Admin side at all, they are just redirected back to the page for commenting.
This model is very complicated and messy if you ask me. Ellis Lab model was better for people to understand. Core was free but did not have this and that feature. The PRO had commercial support and came with extra modules like Wiki, Forum, etc.
Charging for the control panel makes sense. Charging for users on your website, does not at all. The problem is that people are going to confuse both quickly.
Thank you vw000 for the explanation. I was very confused and that helped me a lot. I also agree, it is a bit hard to understand at first here: Pricing
Though it would be preferable if those soccer random could be marked as “inactive” to ensure the safety of ongoing data transfers.
Regarding upgrading from an older version of ExpressionEngine to EE7 and requiring a license fee, this depends on many factors, retro bowl including how you installed and used your original license.
I also use this version and I find that it doesn’t have many new features and crashes often. mapquest directions
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