Expired license emails are not working

[Kotsolis]

I have been using Cpanel in a dedicated server for around 5 years. My license was always expiring and I could normally read my emails.

But in November my Cpanel license expired and I couldn't receive emails to any account. In all our email accounts Thunderbird was saying: "Please provide the correct username and password". So I renewed my Cpanel license and the problem was solved after closing and restarting Thunderbird 2-3 times.

In the meantime, when I received my emails, I saw tons of emails that were in the mail server (in the hours while Cpanel was not purchased) and those were showing the following errors:

[server.mysite.com] FAILED : exim (IP here)
The service “exim” appears to be down.
The system failed to connect to this service’s TCP/IP port.

< 220-server.mysite.com ESMTP Exim 4.91 #1 Wed, 05 Dec 2018 00:28:21 +0000
<< 220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
<< 220 and/or bulk e-mail.

So your Community Managers/Devs in other forum told me:
"This was changed in cPanel 76.0.11, released on 2018-11-29"

Today's version that I have in Cpanel is 78.0 (build 13)
3 weeks ago I had to pay to renew my Cpanel license AGAIN, because all my colleagues could not send or receive emails!

Now my Cpanel license is ending and I got the first email with invoice today. What is going to happen? I am paying for nothing 3 months now. Your job as Cpanel is to provide a user interface over SSH and NOT TO BLOCK our mail server so that it's not used from Mozilla Thunderbird.

So far I am very nice to you. Normally, I should ask a refund for those 3 months. You didn't solve the issue and I am sure that when my cpanel license expires in a few days I wont have access to my emails again. Let me get this straight. If you don't solve this crap, your developers are going to either solve it with no active Cpanel license or I am going to post this in every forum that I know. I am not going to lose any more emails due to Cpanel. The only reason I pay for Cpanel license is when I want to open a new email account and that's it.

So did you solve your bug after 3 months or not?

 

[rpvw]

Here's a novel thought; stop trying to use commercial software for free (its called stealing !) and pay your licence fee !!!

cPanel & Webhost Manager End User License Agreement - Legal Agreements

5.6 Effect of Termination. Upon the expiration or termination of this Agreement for any reason, (a) You must destroy all copies of the Software, including any back-up copy; (b) You must uninstall or delete the Software from the Licensed Server; and (c) cPanel may without notice and in its sole discretion terminate, suspend or disable access to the Software by You or any Third Party User.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @Kotsolis,

Here's a copy of the response I just sent on the WebHostingTalk thread you referenced:

Mail server authentication attempts (e.g. logging in to an email account to send or receive email) will fail as of cPanel & WHM version 76 if your license is expired. This is by-design and consistent with the expectation that a valid cPanel license is required if you want to utilize the features and services included with cPanel & WHM.

The two cases listed below (and referenced earlier in this thread) were published to ensure incoming emails were accepted and processed for delivery (as opposed to bouncing them to the sender), and to ensure Chkservd (the service monitoring driver) could properly detect if the mail server process was running:

Fixed case CPANEL-24022: Ensure email delivery works when the cPanel license is invalid.
Fixed case CPANEL-24359: Ensure service authentication via dovecot is always available.

While email delivery works when the license is expired, email authentication does not. I apologize for not doing a better job of clarifying this in my previous response.

I recommend reaching out to our Customer Service Department ([email protected]) if you have additional questions or feedback about the license rules and terms of use.

Thank you.