The most used and most popular web hosting control panel, cPanel Inc. shocked the web hosting industry on 27th June 2019. The shock came in form of the hike in their license fees. The change was not limited just to the license fee, but the entire business model had undergone a change. And people still are very much confused about these changes and the cPanel price hike. Let us know more about both the old pricing model and the new so that you will be clearly able to understand all the changes that have taken place and what is the impact on you.
cPanel Old Pricing v/s cPanel New Pricing
This is how cPanel pricing used to look before the change in the pricing.
As you can see, before the increase in pricing, it was just cPanel VPS and cPanel dedicated. And once you get the license, there were no restrictions on the number of users or email accounts, etc.
One could buy the cPanel VPS or Dedicated license for $20 and $45 respectively, for unlimited accounts.
Many web hosting providers, especially the ones who offered reseller hosting usually used to have an unlimited number of accounts. But this has changed over the new pricing.
The following image describes the new pricing of the cPanel license. And you can see, under the name of every plan, there is a limit mentioned to the number of cPanel accounts under that plan. Once the server crosses that limit, every cPanel account created after crossing the mentioned limit is charged $0.02 per account.
If you buy the admin tier, you will have to pay $20 monthly and will be allowed to have 5 cPanel accounts in your server.
If you buy the admin plan, you will be able to have 30 cPanel accounts on your server and will have to pay $30 monthly.
If you buy the Premier plan, you will be able to have 100 cPanel accounts on your server and the monthly price is fixed at $45 for this package.
But, what if you have more than 100 accounts on your server? You will have to pay $0.2 for each added account after crossing the limit.
We did the math. And here is what we realized.
If you are having 150 accounts then you will have to pay $45 + $10 = $50 monthly. If you are having 200 accounts, you have got to pay $45 + $20 = $65 every month. And if you have 300 accounts, your monthly cPanel bill will cost you $45 + $40= $85.
And though even the small-scale hosts are also affected by this price hike, the impact on them will not be very serious. Imagine a reseller hosting provider has thrown thousands of cPanel accounts in a server. They will have to pay $0.2 monthly for every account after the limit of 100 accounts is crossed.
This has created a lot of thinking to do. Cpanel Web hosting providers in India will either have to change the pricing of the plans they offer or switch to an alternative of cPanel.
What are the alternatives of cPanel?
While there are many free and paid web hosting control panels, cPanel has been the king. The only control panel that can stand up a bit to cPanel is Plesk. And if you are not aware, both cPanel and Plesk are owned by the same company called Oakley. While Plesk has already seen a price hike, not it is cPanel, whose prices have increased.
Following are some of the alternatives of cPanel
- DirectAdmin
- InterWorx
- ISPConfig
- Webuzo
- VestaCP
- SPanel from ScalaHosting
What Is SPanel? Can It Be the Best Alternative to cPanel?
Update: Revised cPanel pricing (after a huge backlash from the web hosting community)
cPanel’s move to massively increase the pricing of its license was heavily criticized by the web hosting community, all over the world. This move was clearly seen as nothing but, greed. And many web hosting providers had already started dropping cPanel from their kitty. And the heat of the backlash has got the cPanel team rethinking the pricing.
And certainly, it was time for the competitors of cPanel to strike gold in this situation. But cPanel was quick to notice the fact that the increase in price is going to do more damage than profit. Hence they have come up with revised pricing for the cPanel license.
The following pricing is for Partners
And in case you cross the limit of 250 accounts, you will be charged an additional $5 of monthly license fees for each additional 50 accounts.
If you are not a partner and want to continue as a direct customer, you must know that the Solo licenses cannot be converted into admin plans.
You can join the partner program as they have made the process of becoming a Partner very easy and have also lowered the requirements of becoming a partner if you belong to a developing county.
While this seems just like a measure to sweep everything under the carpet, the web hosting community is still divided when it comes to accepting price revisions.
