Softaculous License

It follows the machine you install it on. The VPS Server licence is ฿600/year and covers a virtual server; the Dedicated Server licence is ฿1,000/year and covers a physical one. Both are one licence per server, and both include the full 380+ application catalogue, auto-updates and WordPress Manager.

You do not need it, but it is what turns "create a database, download WordPress, upload it, configure it" into a single click. DirectAdmin manages the server; Softaculous installs and updates the applications that run on it. It also works with cPanel and Plesk if your server uses one of those instead.

The list covers the mainstream CMS and web applications — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, Laravel, phpBB, Moodle and many more — across blogs, shops, forums, wikis, e-learning and frameworks. In practice most people use it for WordPress and one or two others.

It lists every WordPress install on the server in one place, so you can update core, themes and plugins, clone a site to a staging copy, and enable automatic updates without logging into each site separately. That is where the licence pays for itself if you look after several sites.

They keep applications patched, which closes the single most common way a site gets compromised — an outdated plugin or CMS. Take the usual precaution of keeping backups, since an automatic update can occasionally conflict with a customised theme or plugin. Your hosting plan already runs automated backups every 3 days.