JetBackup 5 license tiers: Lite vs Full for hosting fleets

JetApps ships JetBackup 5 in two editions — Lite (free, bundled with JetApps Cloud as the only destination) and Full (paid, per server, all destinations and all restore types). The names are simple but the cliff between them is steep: Lite is essentially a marketing on-ramp, and almost every feature an operator cares about — multiple destinations, account-level self-service restores, JetEngine incremental snapshots, encryption at rest, and immutable backups — sits behind the Full licence.

This article covers what each edition actually does, the per-panel split between cPanel and DirectAdmin, the per-server pricing model, and the decision rules for when Lite is genuinely enough versus when Full pays for itself in the first 11pm restore ticket.

The two editions at a glance

The list above is the practical short version. Lite gives you a daily account dump to JetApps's own object store. Full gives you everything else.

What Lite is genuinely good for

There is a real Lite use case — it just isn't shared hosting.

• Single-tenant VPS where backups are insurance against the host disappearing, not a product feature you sell to customers.
• Internal dev or staging boxes where overnight churn is low and the JetApps Cloud default destination is acceptable for a few weeks of retention.
• Evaluation servers where you want to see the JetBackup UI inside WHM before committing to the paid SKU.

That's the entire list. If you have paying customers who can open tickets, Lite is the wrong choice — you will hit the wall the first time someone deletes their wp-content/ uploads directory and wants the single folder restored without a full account rollback.

What Full unlocks that matters

The features below are the ones that close support tickets and protect against ransomware — in roughly that order of operational importance.

• Self-service restores inside cPanel. End users can roll back a single file, a single email message, one database, or one DNS zone from their own cPanel UI without raising a ticket. This is JetBackup's headline value proposition and the single biggest reason shared-hosting operators run it.
• JetEngine incremental snapshots. Backups are stored as hard-linked deltas plus a block-level dedupe layer. Thirty daily snapshots typically consume 1.2-1.5× the live account size rather than 30× — see JetBackup vs cPanel built-in backups for the disk-math comparison.
• Multiple destinations. S3-compatible, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, SFTP, and more in parallel. Configuring destinations is a one-time setup per provider.
• Immutable / object-lock backups. The ransomware insurance policy — even with stolen credentials, an attacker cannot delete backups inside the lock window. See JetBackup 5 immutable backups with object lock for the per-destination configuration.
• Custom retention per job. Different retention windows for different account groups — reseller customers on a 30-day window, your own internal sites on 90 days, one VIP on daily for a year.
• Encryption at rest, per destination. A destination-level key, not a global one.

cPanel vs DirectAdmin: separate SKUs

JetApps sells a separate JetBackup 5 SKU per panel. JetBackup 5 for cPanel and JetBackup 5 for DirectAdmin are not interchangeable — the licence key is bound to the panel agent it activates against. Mixed fleets need both SKUs in the right quantities.

Two practical wrinkles:

• DirectAdmin Premium bundles JetBackup at no extra cost. If you bought DirectAdmin's top tier you may already have JetBackup Full entitlement on those boxes — confirm before double-buying. The bundled JetBackup activates against your DirectAdmin licence ID, not a standalone JetApps key.
• JetBackup 5 for cPanel runs alongside cPanel's own backup, so you can disable cPanel's native backup cleanly. Disabling cPanel backups when JetBackup is active is a five-minute job once the JetBackup schedule is verified.

Per-server licensing model — what it includes

JetBackup is licensed per server, not per account, per gigabyte, or per destination. One server licence covers:

• Unlimited cPanel or DirectAdmin accounts on that box.
• Unlimited backup jobs and unlimited concurrent destinations.
• Unlimited restores, both admin and end-user.

What the licence does not cover is the destination storage cost. A 500 GB monthly bill to Backblaze B2 or Wasabi is separate from the JetApps licence. Realistic per-server storage budget for a shared box: 1.5-3× the live disk footprint at the destination, plus egress on restore (S3 charges; Wasabi and B2 do not for typical volumes).

When Lite is enough — and when it isn't

Stay on Lite when all of these are true:

• Single tenant or single client on the box.
• You are willing to use JetApps Cloud as the only destination.
• No customer-tier logins; restores are always handled by the administrator.
• Daily granularity is acceptable; no need for hourly snapshots or custom retention.

Move to Full as soon as any one of these becomes true:

• You sell hosting to customers who can open tickets.
• The box runs mail, and you want single-message restores rather than full account rollbacks.
• You need offsite storage at a provider you control (compliance, sovereignty, cost).
• You have more than one site whose backup schedule should differ from the default.

Worked example: 40-account shared node

A reseller runs a 40-account cPanel node with average 4 GB per account (160 GB live data), weekly churn around 8%, and 30-day retention. With JetBackup 5 Full:

• One server licence covers all 40 accounts and both destinations (local + Wasabi).
• JetEngine dedupe puts 30 daily snapshots at roughly 200-240 GB on disk locally.
• Customers self-restore single files via cPanel — eliminates the most common ticket type.
• Wasabi storage at the per-TB monthly rate runs $5-7/month for the offsite copy.

For volume buyers running more than five JetBackup servers, contact us about partner rates — the discounts kick in meaningfully above the listed per-server price. For single-server pricing in your region, see the JetBackup licence page or the pricing overview.

Next steps

• Pick the edition and activate a JetBackup 5 licence, or read the side-by-side feature comparison in JetBackup vs cPanel built-in backups.
• New to JetBackup 5? Start with configuring destinations on cPanel, then turn on object-lock immutable backups before you go live.
• Already on Full and tuning storage costs? See retention policies that fit a real hosting budget.