What happens to your MT5 EA if the seller disappears

An EA that asks its seller’s server for permission can stop when that server does, while a build that calls no server keeps running without its seller but gets no new versions.

• An Expert Advisor that asks a server for permission depends on that server staying up, and whether yours asks is something you can check before you pay.
• On the MQL5 Market, a withdrawn product stays installable for its buyers within their activations, on the computers they activated, with no fixes once the seller has gone.
• A build compiled for your account that calls no server keeps running without its seller. What it cannot get without one is a new version or a new account.

Sellers of trading software come and go: a website lapses, a domain goes up for sale, a marketplace listing is withdrawn. If you bought an Expert Advisor from one of them, the question is practical: does the file on your terminal still start tomorrow? That depends on what the software has to ask before it runs, and who it asks.

Three ways an Expert Advisor can depend on its seller

A licence server. You receive a key. At start-up, and often again on a timer, the Expert Advisor sends the key and your account number to the seller’s server and waits for a yes. Through MetaTrader’s own WebRequest function it can only do that once you add the seller’s address under Tools → Options → Expert Advisors → Allow WebRequest for listed URL (one that talks through a DLL needs Allow DLL imports instead). MetaTrader’s help describes the option: “To allow an MQL5 application to send such requests, enable this option and manually explicitly specify the URLs of trusted websites. For security reasons, the option is disabled by default” (MetaTrader 5 Help).

A dashboard activation. You register your account number in the seller’s client area, and the Expert Advisor checks that registration over the network: the same dependency behind a login page.

A compiled expiry. Some builds carry a date and refuse to start after it, whether or not anybody is still selling renewals. One buyer on the MQL5 forum describes the result: the vendor “shut down the business and the license expired” (MQL5 forum).

What a server-checked Expert Advisor does when nobody answers is written in its own code: some keep running for a grace period, some quit at the next check or restart. Only the seller can tell you which. And a lapsed domain can be registered again by somebody else, so the address in your allowed list then belongs to whoever holds it.

What the MQL5 Market lets you keep

The Market is the one place where the rules are written down. Its sellers “shall not integrate and apply any third-party sales, accounting, license control and update management systems (including the ones using WebRequest features)”, so a Market product never needs the seller’s own server (MQL5 Market rules). It depends on MetaQuotes instead.

When a product is withdrawn, the rules are explicit: “All Buyers of a removed Product can still download and install it in their MetaTrader platforms within the available number of activations.” There is no refund: “Products purchased through the Market service can not be returned.”

The activations are the limit worth understanding. MetaTrader’s help says a Market purchase “is bound to the user’s computer, which means that it can only be run on the same hardware and operating system”, that each product has at least five activations, and that “Activations are not reset or restored when the product is removed from the device” (MetaTrader 5 Help, Market). A new PC or a reinstalled system uses one. Once they are gone, a seller who has left cannot sell you more.

Two further rules matter once the seller has gone. “The latest version of the Product is always installed during new activations. Older versions cannot be installed.” And if MetaQuotes changes the MQL5 language, “the Seller shall make appropriate modifications in the Product to maintain its stated functionality” (MQL5 Market rules). A seller who has disappeared makes none.

What you lose when a seller’s website goes dark

Whatever the licence model, a seller who has gone takes some things with them: the download page, the order history, support, new versions, and any fix for a future change to MetaTrader 5. Keep your own copy of everything you were given: the package, the preset files, the setup instructions and the receipt. A download link is only as durable as the site that serves it, and ours expire too.

How to tell before you buy

• Does setup ask you to allow a URL? Then the Expert Advisor talks to a server. Ask what it sends and what happens when there is no reply.
• Is there a key, or an account to register on the seller’s site? Same question.
• Is there an expiry or a rental period? Ask what happens on the day after.
• Ask in writing: “If your servers were gone for a month, what would my copy do?”

A backtest will not settle this for you. MetaQuotes’ own documentation says “WebRequest() cannot be executed in the Strategy Tester” (MQL5 Reference), so a tester run cannot show you whether the live copy phones home. Our ten checks before you buy a gold EA cover the licence model as check 4 and the permissions as check 7.

What an offline, account-locked build changes

XauStack sells builds that are compiled for the MetaTrader 5 account numbers you give at checkout. The file checks the account it finds itself on and nothing else: no URL to allow, no key to enter, no server to reach. What an account-locked build is explains how.

So if xaustack.com went offline tomorrow, a build you already hold would keep starting on the accounts it was compiled for, because it never asks us. The licence is perpetual, and the order page states the expiry a build carries; for a perpetual licence it reads “No expiry”.

The flip side, stated plainly

The same design has costs, and they fall on you if we are the ones who disappear.

• The build is tied to the accounts you named. A different account is a new licence, compiled by us. With no seller, nobody compiles one.
• New versions need us. The licence “includes every later version of the Product, rebuilt for those same accounts at no extra cost, for as long as it is maintained”. That last clause is the honest limit: no maintenance, no new version and no fix for a future MetaTrader change.
• The download link expires. Keep the zip.

None of this says whether a strategy makes money. It decides only whether the software you paid for still starts.

Before you act on any of this

The free Backtest Edition on the download page runs only inside the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester and takes no key and no email address. Every figure XauStack publishes comes from the Strategy Tester, never from live trading, and no result is promised anywhere on this site. Trading gold on leverage carries a high risk of losing money rapidly: read the risk disclosure before you attach anything to a live account.