Why People HATE iLok

Miami debunks the main issues people have with iLok and shows you a few easy ways to alleviate the hassle. Have any thoughts or questions about iLok? Drop us a comment below!

Tags:iLok,audio software,mixing tutorials
#iLok #audiosoftware #mixingtutorials

[dannywallin]

Set up an ilk account copy paste the code you get for your plugins into your account when you register them then you're good to go, what's so annoying about that ?? plus JST and drumforge plugins you don't even need the dongle just copy paste the activation code and you're good. I don't get the hate

[JD-vjgo]

God I hate ilok. It doesn't even stop someone from pirating whatever they want. It just annoys legit users.

[MyFeltMusic]

iLok isn’t worth the hassle. It doesn’t even stop pirating...one can argue that it encourages pirating.

[revivalworship]

7 years ago when my ilok dongle failed, my studio went down in the middle of a project. I called their toll-free number. They didn't answer the phone and wouldn't return my call. When they finally responded by email, they made me send back the defective dongle and pay a discounted price for a new one, a two-week process. Soon after that fiasco, I quit using PT's, Autotune and all software requiring Ilok. No regrets! It boggles the mind that elite industry players "protect" their products with such an inept 3rd party.

[graphenemusic]

ilock should be long gone, i m amazed that it s still around in 2021

[hansjansu]

I hate ilok. All of my ilok licenses were in my hard drive. Yesterday I bought a new cooler for my cpu. So I pulled the cpu off and cleaned it then attached new cooler and re-plug it into the socket. And every iLok license is missing. Same cpu, same mother board, but iLok says it's different machine. I can do Neither deactivate or activate them. I have to contact the every single company. This really sucks. I'm never gonna buy a vst using iLok license.

[wellbi]

I am reinstalling my studio PC at the moment and right now I am installing cracked versions of my iLok "protected" plugins. A couple of years back my flat was robbed and all my computers were stolen and I ended up with no ability to deactivate my licenses. After waiting for the iLok support response "Contact the manufacturers of the plugins to solve the issue." for over a week, I simply paid for a monthly premium on one filesharing page and googled warez versions of these plugins, created a backup of working releases, make a mental note to avoid any iLok protected purchase in the future and never looked back. And I highly recommend doing the same to anyone who can. I don't give a damn if it's against ToS. I simply want to use the products I legally purchased. I just revisit iLok once in a blue moon through Google and YouTube to see if it's still the same shit as I've always been.

[marcusOreallyUs]

It is a bit insane when companies expect loyal customers to buy their products and then pay endless fees (or deal with endless hassles) in order to protect THEIR profits. Companies should pay for the cost of their anti-piracy solutions, not the law-abiding customer. Imagine a grocery store that sold you a stick of butter and then charged you a fee everytime you needed to open the fridge to put some on your toast. It's this kind of rapacious corporate greed that makes hackers look like choirboys in comparison

[benburnett]

Ilok does such a bad job marketing their own services that JST has to do it for them. JST: GET RID OF ILOK AND YOU'LL SELL MORE PRODUCT. WORKS FOR ALMOST EVERYONE OF YOUR COMPETITORS AS THEY SELL PRODUCT WITHOUT ILOK. AND THEY DON'T HAVE THE ISSUES OF

[PolarTrance]

Pay for the drm to work? The zero downtime thing, you can't easily top that in terms of ridiculousness.
I will dislike Ilok as long as it's not benefiting me, it's just pointless extra for me as the paying customer. Same goes for any other license software, downloaders, library or whatever they get called.
Just send me an activation code and let me be. If Ilok was just an account, install nothing, no dongle ever, works offline just fine, then it would be fine.

I get the fear of pirates, but most of the time you're not making them in to paying customers even if you manage to prevent their pirating ways (which is a big IF). If they didn't have the money that's not going to change if they can't pirate (most pirates are just poor people). If they can't pirate your stuff, they are either just going to deal without it or find something else. A pirate choosing to buy your stuff when blocked from pirating is imo even less likely than a pirate growing out of pirating and undoing their past sins by buying the pirated stuff.

[vincentallen]

My issue is they're selling a glorified usb stick for $60

[JHWH]

I'm sorry but this is not the reason people like me who do begrudgingly use the iLok, because I think paying for my software is the right thing to do, dislike it so much. It's because it makes it more conventient to use a hacked copy. Why should paying customers be punished for piracy by a method which barely seems to work? And then you suggest paying an extra 30 dollars to be safe... come one now...

[erzebet]

Really? YES, my biggest worry IS losing a bunch of expensive plugins all at once if something happens to that single little stick. What on earth kind of irrelevant "argument" are you putting forth with that "It's actually amazing having everything in one place!" I AGREE it's convenient and have in fact come to really appreciate many of the iLok's other qualities, but that has literally nothing to do with the HUGE issue that remains - IF something happens to the dongle you've AT BEST got a really annoying and time-consuming hassle to look forward to, and if you're NOT so lucky you've just lost hundreds to thousands of dollars' worth of important software.

...UNLESS you willingly pay PACE's literal protection money and subscribe to make sure you're not toast if THEIR system that YOU ARE FORCED TO USE (assuming you want to use certain plugins) fails. It's disgusting and I'll never hear anyone defend that practise. If I BUY a plugin, that should be IT. If I buy it knowingly going into it that it requires a piece of hardware to run, okay, that's annoying but acceptable, especially given that it actually provides useful features too. But then I have to KEEP paying money to be totally safe in case something potentially out of my control happens? Are you kidding? You have to be, because you can't with a straigth face say that this is not exactly what people mean when they refer to "punishing legit customers".

As an "invested hobbyist" I've sunk a decent chunk of change into plugins over the years, and had to get an iLok dongle when certain companies made it a requirement. But I have to draw an absolute line somewhere, and I feel I've already been more than generous having PAID *MY* MONEY FOR *THEIR* ANTI-PIRACY MEASURES. I'm NOT going to subscribe on top of this and be slowly squeezed further in order to be kept safe AS A LEGIT, PAYING CUSTOMER.

The iLok business model is utterly broken and this subscription "feature" should NOT exist. ALL USERS (especially ones who've already paid for a dongle) should be completely safe and taken care of, full stop. If PACE really needs significant funds to make that happen on their end, they should adjust their one-time cost of entry (dongle and perhaps even account) OR have the plugin developers pay them (likely leading to higher plugin costs I assume but so be it) - it is after all THE DEVELOPERS who want and get use from anti-piracy implementations, not us legit users (at least not directly - so it's pretty brazen to then have us DIRECTLY fund it).

IF my dongle ever breaks (or somehow something else, less likely in my case, happens), I'll ask PACE about it one time and just hope they make it right the way they should, despite not having gone for the reverse gamble of staying indefinitely subscribed to the ZDT/TLC racket. If they can't or won't do anything, well, that's that. I'd be done with music, at least as far as buying anything else from PACE or anyone implementing iLok goes.

[TALKCalgary]

I stopped using dongles in the late 1980's Today I have no intention to pay for a dongle and subscribe to a service just so I can use software that I have paid for.

[XRaym]

Other activation system might worth discussing. Lots of plugins company ends having their own product manager software - ilock alternative - (like Native Instrument, IK MUltimedia, Izotope, product portal). It allows download as well which is handy. Only downside is that you end having lots of softwares.
Alternatively, some companies are even lighter on copy protection. Fab Filter, REAPER, Melda... no ilock. Simple copy paste of licence key. And this doesn't prevent them from making lots of sales.

[Dramatello]

I appreciate the try to protect the iLok experience... but NONE of this sounds like a good plan nor does it sounds like the FUTURE.
And if anything, why does iLok License Manager STILL looks like a software made in 1990?
At least make it a bit more intuative and more pleasable to the eyes... It's like they are not even trying to step up their game in any way, not in the technical\practicality world nor in the visual world. TOO BAD.

[alexxchavez]

All of my working tracks are lacking now that iLok won't recognize my PC. No workaround, no help from them. I've lost so much time/effort and energy trying to find a workaround. I will never use another iLok product, even if it'd cure me of cancer.

[SauceSolutions]

It's so annoying. I was in the middle of a session last night and it said my license wasn't valid for my Howard Benson vocals and it just muted my damn tracks because of it. Such a waste of time to stop the entire session because of it.

[spyware]

NO1 reason: It sometimes just doesn't work. Ilok activation software says service unreachable since about a month now. I tried everything i could from reconfiguring firewall to digging up every registry entry with regedit. Support says that their engineers doesn't have a clue, more and more people got this and the engineers have a hard time understanding it.
As a software engineer myself i've tried everything except reinstalling the whole OS on my PC.

[Kai_Imber]

Losing wifi connection blows... I didn't think it needed it to work. But Rex Brown proved me wrong.