What a lapsed licence switches off, and what it never touches

Until now a lapsed MailDock licence did one thing: after 30 days it stopped you creating new domains and mailboxes. Everything else carried on, indefinitely. That was generous, and it had a flaw. A licence that only blocks growth is one a small installation never feels, so it was never really a licence at all.

From 0.13.0 the schedule has stages. The promise underneath it has not moved: your incoming mail never stops. A lapsed licence switches off extras in stages, and never touches the mail you receive.

The schedule

Days 0–30: everything works. The admin panel shows a countdown, and the server emails its owners when the grace period starts and again when a week is left. The 30 days run from the end of the subscription, or from the server’s last check-in with our licence server if it cannot reach us.

From day 30: no growth, no extras. New domains and mailboxes, AI features, new migrations and new sending tokens are refused. Mail flows exactly as before, and every webmail user sees a notice, so a lapse is never a surprise to the people who depend on the server.

From day 60: the admin panel is read-only. Settings, domains and mailboxes cannot be changed. What stays open is what you need in an emergency or to leave: suspending a mailbox, resetting a password, unblocking a sender, the licence page, exports and backups.

From day 90, and only if the subscription itself lapsed: no mail to outside addresses. Mail clients, the webmail and the messages API can no longer send to anyone outside the server. Receiving mail, reading it and delivery between your own mailboxes carry on. So do forwards and auto-replies, because passing on mail the server received is receiving. Password-reset links still go out, so nobody is locked out of the console they would renew from.

Renewing restores everything as soon as the renewed key reaches the server: at once if you install it, otherwise at its next daily check-in. No restart, no support ticket.

What it never does

It never stops the mail you receive. Delivery, IMAP, POP3 and webmail reads work at every stage, on every licence, whether it lapsed a day ago or a year ago.

It never stops a paying customer’s outgoing mail over something that is our fault or nobody’s. A server that cannot reach our licence server (a firewall change, our outage) or that holds a key bound to another machine stops at the read-only admin panel. Sending to the outside is refused only when the licence period itself has ended without renewal, or on a server that was never licensed, 90 days after its setup.

Cancelling never revokes a licence: it expires at the end of the period you paid for, and the schedule starts from there.

Why stages

Every step is announced before it happens: by the countdown, by the notice every user sees, and by email to the owners at each stage. Ninety days is a long time to notice an expired card. And each stage takes away something that costs us money to keep giving away (support, new capacity, the administration that keeps a server growing) before it touches anything a business runs on.

Servers that upgrade to 0.13.0 with a licence that lapsed months ago are not dropped straight to the last stage. The schedule counts from the first time the new release assessed the server, so everyone gets the whole of it, announced.

The full rules are in the licensing documentation.