New cPanel Pricing Notification 2022

visualwebtechno · September 2021

New notification received

Here at cPanel, we are passionate about providing the most reliable and intuitive website and server management platform on the market. In our continued efforts to increase performance, scalability, support, usability, and UI modernization, we are contacting you today to notify you of a pricing adjustment that will take effect January 1, 2022. We understand technology modernization, as well as innovation, are of key interest to our customers. In 2021 we have delivered: Increased performance through NGINX® and the ability to isolate email servers with the Mail Nodes feature Broad Linux support through AlmaLinux OS Ease of management through DNS Zone Manager and live transfers Ease of use features including Exchange ActiveSync to synchronize email, calendar, and contacts. In 2022, you can look forward to our new modernized interface, Ubuntu® support, and much more. We are excited to share our upcoming roadmap with you very soon. For a comprehensive view of our plans and pricing, click here to download our 2022 Pricing Guide. Thank you for your continued business and trust. Please contact [email protected] with any questions.

https://cpanel.net/direct-store-customer-faq/?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pricing_2022

mikho · September 2021

well, well, well .....

Mason · September 2021

Milk that cow, baby

visualwebtechno · September 2021

DirectAdmin is best option for others

iVlad · September 2021

Ouch

MichaelCee · September 2021

Price changes more frequent than new iPhone releases at this rate

asaljeplak · September 2021

@Mason said:
Milk that cow, baby

Old McPanel have a cow...

vpsgeek3333 · September 2021

I use ApisCP on most of my servers & I am happy with it. DA is not bad either

bikegremlin · September 2021

Oh, c'mon now! What's 10% among friends?

Ympker · September 2021

@SGraf is running their Shared Hosting on ApisCP, and pretty stable at that :P Need to put my idling service with them to use for once

Lee · September 2021

Their pricing strategy was wrong and something was going to give eventually, just a matter of time. In this case, a VC saw how wrong they were doing it.

I mean I was paying the same amount in 2005 for licences I was being charged for in 2019. In fact, I am sure I was paying more at one point pre-2005 than in 2019. And they were letting so many providers use a $15 VPS licence to run on dedicated servers and so on. But they had the market pretty much cornered and were growing and therefore making money.

Had they even increased by inflation every other year the licences would be more expensive than they are today and nobody would be complaining.

My conclusion is that sales were dropping and the prices needed to go up to compensate, Nick went the VC route as he knew what was coming so easier to let them do it.

vyas · September 2021

Yay!

Another @hostmantis price hike. They will bump up DA rates too.

Lee · September 2021

@vyas said: Another @hostmantis price hike. They will bump up DA rates too.

Well, after the slient change to resources I am out of goodwill with HostMantis so will be migrating away. Yes, probably will change pricing again.

DataRecovery · September 2021

cPanel new partner pricing:

Also cPanel confirms the price increase is annual:
cPanel price increase annual

johnk · September 2021

Can anybody really look me in the eye and say this caught them off guard?

It's long due

deank · September 2021

I don't tend to complain about prices of which I have a control.

If you don't like it, use something else.

It's certainly entertaining trolling those who are reluctant to migrate though.

Lee · September 2021

@deank said: It's certainly entertaining trolling those who are reluctant to migrate though.

I don't see any need to migrate from cPanel, just from the providers that have little business acumen (most LE*) and price efficiently to manage the changes in panel pricing that are pretty obvious in their pattern of increases.

Sucks? sure, but no need to blow it out of proportion in terms of the true 'per user' cost increase to many providers.

Everyone gushes over DA but just as cPanel is not perfect, DA is further from it in my view. I read somewhere that they are planning an increase soon also. Someone mentioned their guarantee to protect against price increases but that is not really true either. On their site, they say that related to arbitrary price increases only, not inflation or other events as they see fit. Not much of a guarantee

deank · September 2021

I am seeing less and less of "I am gonna develop my own panel!" statements.

I guess they actually looked into how much it costs and to maintain.

Lee · September 2021

@deank said: I guess they actually looked into how much it costs and to maintain.

Indeed, not as easy as they all think. cPanel is evolving into what it should have been many, many years ago. A business, run like a proper business intent on increasing value and profit. The result of that is the licence paying customers have to follow that in their own operations, or change the panel or build their own.

The same goal that every small provider aims for but few can make it. Less so LE* providers where the client base they are chasing simply won't pay more than $1 and complain that businesses should not be run for profit and seize opportunities to grow that profit. Only because it would mean then paying more.

It's the funniest part of the industry, LES/LET that is. So many customers in this space just don't believe the provider should be able to make a living.

I can name many providers that existed in the cheap-mid reseller range 15-20 years ago, today most couldn't afford their services. They found their niche or a particular focus and went for that market area dropping the 'budget' clients. 15 years ago their average service was $5 per month, today it is $100 per month and they are more successful now, didn't Deadpool as some would have had you believe and wanted to see just to satisfy their own jealously.

cPanel is going to be fine, sure they will have fewer customers today but I am 99.9% certain their revenue/profits are significantly higher. For the customers they really want, none of them is going to use DA or any other panel.

tomazu · September 2021

There is a certain latency to adjusting, don't think cPanel and WHMCS will not pay the price for such short-term VC price hikes in the long-term. At least for me their reputation took a dent and I am spending more time with bugs and disabling unwanted features in WHMCS now than 5 years ago.

visualwebtechno · September 2021

@Lee said:

@deank said: I guess they actually looked into how much it costs and to maintain.

Indeed, not as easy as they all think. cPanel is evolving into what it should have been many, many years ago. A business, run like a proper business intent on increasing value and profit. The result of that is the licence paying customers have to follow that in their own operations, or change the panel or build their own.

The same goal that every small provider aims for but few can make it. Less so LE* providers where the client base they are chasing simply won't pay more than $1 and complain that businesses should not be run for profit and seize opportunities to grow that profit. Only because it would mean then paying more.

It's the funniest part of the industry, LES/LET that is. So many customers in this space just don't believe the provider should be able to make a living.

I can name many providers that existed in the cheap-mid reseller range 15-20 years ago, today most couldn't afford their services. They found their niche or a particular focus and went for that market area dropping the 'budget' clients. 15 years ago their average service was $5 per month, today it is $100 per month and they are more successful now, didn't Deadpool as some would have had you believe and wanted to see just to satisfy their own jealously.

cPanel is going to be fine, sure they will have fewer customers today but I am 99.9% certain their revenue/profits are significantly higher. For the customers they really want, none of them is going to use DA or any other panel.

I agree mostly effect for those sell $1 plan providers

bikegremlin · September 2021

@tomazu said:
There is a certain latency to adjusting, don't think cPanel and WHMCS will not pay the price for such short-term VC price hikes in the long-term.

The customers are paying the price.
Owners will have their capital multiplied and need not necessarily care what happens with the product (nor its customers) afterwards.

asaljeplak · September 2021

While I personally don't see the need to move from cPanel (and no need to bump the price for my customers), i must admit it's hard for me to understand the need to raise it annually, but well after reading arguments from both sides (on LES or from LET), i could understand the reasoning better, still it's a hard thing to accept tho

tomazu · September 2021

@bikegremlin said:

@tomazu said:
There is a certain latency to adjusting, don't think cPanel and WHMCS will not pay the price for such short-term VC price hikes in the long-term.

The customers are paying the price.
Owners will have their capital multiplied and need not necessarily care what happens with the product (nor its customers) afterwards.

not true - as described there is a certain latency:

the price hike goes into effect at a specific date and is for monthly billing, while hosters have contractual terms and billing periods that range from monthly to 3 year (maybe some even 5 years!) cycles;
even if you are able to raise the price from a billing cycle/contract term point of view, it is not given that the market and your specific customers will accept a proportional price hike.

In the past 20 years we had some "external" shocks coming from energy price hikes (especially in Germany with the introduction of EEG) and other events and there was not one single time we were able to immediately compensate that with higher pricing for end-customers, we always had to buffer or absorb the additional costs, at least for some time.

There is more: the quality of WHMCS in particular has gone down, I am investing more time trying to fix bugs and disable features now. Also some of the new features cPanel is offering are of very little value to us, but generally I am still happy with the quality of cPanel.

Last but not least the explanation for those price hikes is simply a fairy tale story and marketing blah blah blah. Why 10% and why every year? Don't we pay the licence cost every month for the software to get better? Why not just an inflation adjustment?

bikegremlin · September 2021

@tomazu said:

@bikegremlin said:

@tomazu said:
There is a certain latency to adjusting, don't think cPanel and WHMCS will not pay the price for such short-term VC price hikes in the long-term.

The customers are paying the price.
Owners will have their capital multiplied and need not necessarily care what happens with the product (nor its customers) afterwards.

not true - as described there is a certain latency:

the price hike goes into effect at a specific date and is for monthly billing, while hosters have contractual terms and billing periods that range from monthly to 3 year (maybe some even 5 years!) cycles;

even if you are able to raise the price from a billing cycle/contract term point of view, it is not given that the market and your specific customers will accept a proportional price hike.

In the past 20 years we had some "external" shocks coming from energy price hikes (especially in Germany with the introduction of EEG) and other events and there was not one single time we were able to immediately compensate that with higher pricing for end-customers, we always had to buffer or absorb the additional costs, at least for some time.

There is more: the quality of WHMCS in particular has gone down, I am investing more time trying to fix bugs and disable features now. Also some of the new features cPanel is offering are of very little value to us, but generally I am still happy with the quality of cPanel.

Last but not least the explanation for those price hikes is simply a fairy tale story and marketing blah blah blah. Why 10% and why every year? Don't we pay the licence cost every month for the software to get better? Why not just an inflation adjustment?

That's all true and correct.

Most of the sales boil down to marketing. Psychology and all. Bullshit if you like - that is a good term for it.

Bigger companies usually make more money (depending on the niche, they often pay tons of dollars to celebrities for advertising) - but no one is crazy to put that up-front with the customer, like:
"Out of the 100 dollars you pay, 20 go to the CEO's bonuses, 50 goes for those sponsorships and marketing, 20 is the material costs, and 10 is for the workers' wages."

Some are more, some are less upfront, but even if you wanted to be 100% upfront, no one would really care (especially if your prices are higher than "average").

How much you can charge depends on your brand, and your market position.

Digression:
In my city, practically no bike shop will service indexed gear hubs. I don't know why. It's sensitive, takes patience, but it's not rocket science. How much do you think I can charge for it? Even if you buy a new indexed gear hub, you still need to pay for the wheel building. I fix bikes as a hobby, but I got offers from bike shops to come and work for the 5X the normal rate, just for the "exotic" stuff.
That's brand + market position (and bragging, sorry, but I couldn't think of a better real-life example).

Right now, from a customer point of view, cPanel is still head and shoulders above the competition.
Maybe DA (and other alternatives) isn't too bad in and of itself, but I'm yet to try a DA hosting that just works.
And I've been using DA for years now, getting ready in case it does take a really significant market share.

It just seems like reseller hosting providers using DA are still learning the ropes - having moved to it out of necessity (to avoid cPanel extorsion, understandable), without enough knowledge and experience.
It's been two years since the cPanel price hike and everyone saying they'll move to DA, or make their own control panel (some did, with not very exciting results).

There will be customers looking for the lowest possible price, and there will be customers looking for a solution that just works. And many more (most?) in between the two extremes.

I'd love the DA control panel, and its hosting provider implementations/offers to mature and become top-class. It is improving, but still not there. Once it gets there, no one can guarantee that the DA owners won't get "an offer they can't refuse" from a big investment fund, and then it's the full circle - cPanel 2. That is a realistic scenario IMO.

My preferred option, even at the same price, would be for my hosting provider to make more money, not cPanel - because it's the provider who's really earned it. Also, I'd be delighted to pay less for similar quality. It's just that cPanel alternatives still have some way to go - in my opinion, and experience.

I am expecting things to get tougher, prices to go up - more than the wages. Not just in the hosting industry. Hoping to be wrong.

3 to 5 year deals with prices fixed just give you the time to work on your marketing and market position and prepare for the inevitable price hikes (or bankruptcy). With a note that, by the time a 5-year period expires, you might see more than one more price hike in-between - "waiting" for you at the time of renewal.

It's tough, it's competitive - it's capitalism. If you raise prices, you're taking from your customers (who are always free to leave and choose). If you "eat the costs," you are taking away from your employees, your kids, and your company's future profitability (within limits, of course, and there are trade-offs for every decision). Both the companies and the customers are free to choose for and by themselves what the best option is for them.

Edit:
Not statistically valid data, since it is from only one person, but for what it's worth, I still create more support tickets per year with DirectAdmin hosting. That's tech. support time = money. You save some $ on the cPanel costs, but this extra cost needs to be considered. On that note - there are tons of great cPanel tutorials, but DirectAdmin falls short on that (according to my Googling abilities).

vyas · September 2021

Out of the 100 dollars you pay, 20 go to the CEO's bonuses,

I want to be ceo.

Wait, I already am. Don’t make 20 dollars in bonus . Damn

Jord · September 2021

Next one will be WHMCS 10% increase

nickelodeon · October 2021

few world's top providers haven't increased their cpanel-vps, or shared pricing during 2019's cpanel price increase. some even sell up to 400 cpanel a/c inside WHM in with old pricing. but this number is quite limited to topmost players. It seems they must have got 'special' pricing at account-level.

Also like Verisign will be increasing .COM domain pricing by 7% may be every alternate year, same might happen with cPanel every 2-3 years.

But this can also give rise to those illegal so-called shared cpanel licenses? Recently seeing sites popping up on Google Ads selling such stuff, and even people opening threads on forums regarding the same!

New cPanel Pricing Notification 2022

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