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Payment Options ​

How can I pay for my DirectAdmin license? ​

A license can be activated and renewed with either a Subscription or a Balance Payment

  • Standard Subscription

    For most people with only 1 or 2 licenses, a standard subscription for each license is the simplest way to go.

    All funds are paid for in USD, and subscriptions can be started with either:

    • Stripe (Credit Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay)
    • PayPal

    A payment is made when the subscription starts, and will charge your card for each license renewal.

    Should you cancel a subscription, the license will "coast" until the end of it's current expiry. For Stripe, you have up until the end of your current subscription period to undo a cancellation, in case you change your mind at the last minute and wish to continue the subscription.

    To start a standard subscription, view the license on the License page, and at the bottom, click "Make a Payment for this License".

  • Balance Payment

    The balance method will draw from your current account balance to pay for a renewal. This will only apply to license that are set to use payment method balance. To change a license from a subscription to use balance, first cancel the subscription, refresh the license page, and the "Payment Method" should appear near the bottom of the License page.

    To start a balance subscription, view the license on the License page, and at the bottom, click "Make a Balance Payment for this License".

    Note: You prevent automatic renwal of a balance license during the balance payment, by setting Auto-Renew to No, which will automatically set the payment method to mail after payment and renewal. It would be the same as simply changing the payment method to mail aftewards.

Adding Credit to your Account Balance ​

For those with balance licenses, you'll need to ensure your account balance has sufficient funds to pay for these licenses. You have a few options to ensure the renewals will proceed successfully.

  • Account Credit

    Manually adding Account Credit is a simple way to add funds to your account when you'd like to do so. You can use either Stripe or PayPal. Note that this area does allow for EUR currency to be used, with SEPA and iDEAL, but will end up in the account as USD. If EUR is used, please be sure to have made one payment in USD first to ensure stripe account currency consistecy.

  • Automatic Credit

    Similiar to Account Credit, Automatic Credit will trigger a payment attempt to Stripe anytime the account balance goes below a given threshold. This tool is useful to ensure your balance does not get too low. It will always charge the amount that you specify, and will not trigger more than once per day. Triggers are either the moment the balance drops, but there is also a nightly cron to check daily in case the amount previously added was insufficient to bring the balance above the threshold.

  • Monthly Balance Statements - Automatic Charge

    When you have Monthly Balance Statements (MBS) enabled, enabling the Automatic Charge option will pay the amount on that monthly statement. It does require the card to be tested before the option can be enabled (done on that MBS page), as not all cards support this type of arbitrary payment. (A $1 charge will occurr to validate the card, and immediately refunded). Approved accounts are granted a negegative balance allowance (credit), such that they can borrow funds for their 'balance' type licenses from the account balance, causing their account balance to go negative, where those balance license payments will appear on the MBS, and the monthly payment for this MBS will bring that borrowed amount back up to $0. This method can still be used for non-approved accounts, but the balance must start above $0 such that there are sufficient funds for all renewals during the month.

    For approved accounts, we recommend having a negative balance allowance greater than the monthly amount of your licenses, with extra space in case there are billing issues. Negative balance allowance must be approved by our sales department, at their discretion, and requires an account in good standing. We recommend enabling the Low Balance Warning to a value just past your monthly usage to catch any billing issues before the credit limit is hit, so renewals are not affeted. Example: If you have $100/month of balance license payments, setup a warning threshold at $-150.00, assuming a negative balance allowance of $-200.00. Contact the Sales deparment for more information or to request approval for negative balance.

Monthly Balance Statements ​

For those using balance payments on their licenses, the Monthly Balance Statement (MBS) will show you a summary of all balance payments made during the month under your Invoices tab. The generated invoice will show as product type "Balance Licenses Statement" on that Invoices page. These are typically for license renewals of "balance" type licenses. We would recommend any account will 5+ licenses use this system to reduce the number of generated invoices.

Cancelling a Subscription ​

A license must be renewew before it's expiry to ensure continued access to DirectAdmin on your server. A license subscription can be cancelled to prevent being charged for renewal. Cancelling a subscription does not immediately stop the license from working, and will simply prevent the charge for the upcoming renewal. After a subscription cancellation, the license will then "coast" until it stops working when it expires. Stripe subscription cancellations can be undone up until the original renewal time, in case you change your mind at the last minute. PayPal subscription cancellations cannot be undone, but if you change your mind after, just start a new subscription or make a balance payment to renew the license.

See the relevant methods below to prevent renewals for either Stripe and PayPal Licenses licenses or Balance Licenses:

  • Stripe and PayPal

    To cancel a per-license subscription for either of these methods, go to:

    • My Licenses
    • Click a given LID to bring your to that license page.
    • There is a row called Subscription. To the right of it will be an Info link, click it.
    • From there, you can cancel your Stripe or PayPal subscription.

  • Balance Licenses

    Licenses using the balance method can have their renewal turned on and off by simply switching the payment method to mail instead of balance. This can be done when viewing your License. Tge setting is called "Payment Method" and will appear near the bottom of the page.

Low Balance Warnings ​

You can setup an E-Mail notification on your Acccount page. Look for the "Low Balance Warning E-Mail" option. The number can be postive, or negative if you're approved for a negative balance. This will simply send you an email if your balance drops below a given threshold.

License Discounts ​

By default, all accounts are elegible for bulk discount pricing on external/retail "balance" type licenses. Stripe/PayPal per-license subscriptions cannot be discounted, but are included in your bracket total. However, you can use any of the Add Credit Methods to add credit to pay for your balance licenses. The first discount bracket appears at $116 worth of monthly licenses (eg: 4x $29/m, or equivalent value), where the discount applies after that dollar amount is actively recurring in your account, granting you a 15% discount on upcoming balance payments/renewals. You must be in a given bracket first, before the discount appears. It does not apply on a new license that brings you into that bracket, but all qualified licenses will then get the discount on their next payment. The discount only applies to external/retail licenses, listed here, and the backet is determined by the sum of your active external/retail products. Legacy internal/bulk products are not elgible, as they're already discounted.

Payment Methods ​

For both Subscriptions and Account Credit, you must have a payment method on file. A new license subscription or Account Credit will be able to add a new payment method or use an existing one, if saved, however the Automatic Credit and Monthly Balance Statement payments will need the payment method to be added to the Payment Setup prior to use. You can add multiple cards, as some features allow extra cards to be used as a backup if the first fails.

Changing a Payment Method ​

When you add additional cards to your Payment Setup page, you can decide which card will be set as the default. The default card will be the main card for use. Stripe subscriptions can be changed to either use a new card that you define, or you can click "Use Default" to have it always use the default card, which can be defined later in your Payments Setup page. Forcing a subscription to "Use Default" is very handy if you have many stripe subscriptions and need to change a card, as it lets you simply define a new default, and all license subscriptions set to "use default" will automatically switch over.