You could see a major rise in the web hosting price really soon, as cPanel decides to change its pricing model based on a pay per account system.
Back in Summer 2019, cPanel, the world’s most popular web hosting control panel, announced a major change in its pricing structure. It informed about its move of shifting from the standard pay per server for unlimited cPanel accounts to account-based pricing and license structuring. The change will go into effect on January 1, 2021. The announcement has shaken the entire web hosting industry, as it will cause a major rise in web hosting prices.
The shift will create a massively negative impact. cPanel’s new pricing will cost $32 for 100 accounts and $0.1 each for 900 accounts. If you have a single account on a single server, you will not see a significant rise. But if you own or resell a server with hundreds of accounts, you will see a drastic increase. As a cPanel partner, if you were paying $11 per cPanel license for running one thousand websites, the new pricing structure will force you to pay $122, which is a massive 1000% increase in pricing.
The reason behind the issue is really simple. Earlier, the license covered all the users of an entire server. So, a user could have created 100 or 1000 accounts with only one license key. There was no extra cost. But starting in 2021, the new pricing structure will force you to pay a monthly subscription fee to purchase those accounts. It will result in a drastic price increase. cPanel said that the strategy had been aimed at simplifying the process of adding new servers.
cPanel Price Increase Infuriating the Users
Users around the world are infuriated with the new pricing structure. Since 2019, they have been reacting with emotions ranging from mild annoyance to outrage.
Hey @cPanel Way to completely crush many of your partner hosts who manage a lot of shared hosting today. A cursory examination of how your pricing changes affects our org shows our licensing costs have nearly doubled. This is BS.
— Michael Dudas (@mgd81) June 27, 2024
The situation doesn’t change in 2020. Earlier this month, they took to the cPanel Forum to express their anger and frustration over another price hike that forces the users with 500 accounts to pay 30% more money.
Another user was totally outraged, claiming that there is no justification for the move:
How cPanel Price Increase Affects Web Hosting Prices
cPanel is the most popular web hosting control panel in the world. Around 40% of all the hosting servers are utilizing it.
cPanel has the ability to simplify website and server management efficiently. It helps the users to perform a wide range of tasks, including checking account usage and viewing website statistics, comfortably. Also, you can integrate it with Softaculous, LiteSpeed, and PHP Selector easily. It has transformed cPanel into a faster, reliable, and feature-rich solution. That’s why a huge number of providers offer it as the standard control panel to stand out in the highly competitive web hosting industry.
Find the Best cPanel Hosting Services
However, with the cPanel price increase taking into effect on January 1, 2021, the web hosts will be forced to increase their plan prices for the customers. As a result, you will have to pay a higher amount of money. Also, there will be no support for annual billing. So, you will have to face the hassle of monthly invoices. For these reasons, cPanel is facing a major backlash from the web hosting community. No one is happy with the price increase. However, there is no sign of cPanel reverting to the previous pricing options.
It will be really interesting to see how the competitors, like DirectAdmin and Virtualmin, utilize the situation as an advantage. They can drive away the users from cPanel by offering better pricing options and features.
