We have been a long time cPanel partner and have always been proud to offer cPanel to our customers because it is an industry leading web hosting control panel that helps customers manage websites, email, databases, and DNS among other things. In fact, cPanel software powers the vast majority of our hosting infrastructure from shared hosting servers to Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Cloud Servers and Dedicated (bare metal) servers.

On June 27th along with all other cPanel partners we received notice by email of a drastic change on how cPanel intends on pricing their product. In the past cPanel always used a simple pricing structure with a flat rate for a VPS license and a flat rate for a Dedicated Server license. This flat rate was applicable regardless of the number of accounts hosted on a server.

This has now all changed as the new pricing model is based on the number of accounts running on each server. This means that the license cost for some servers will increase dramatically because of the number of websites that are hosted on a server not to mention the flat rate base prices for the license have increased nearly 300%. This pricing change will not only affect us as a company but the entire web hosting industry as nearly every hosting company utilizes the cPanel software.

We have reached out to our cPanel account representative and voiced our displeasure with this new pricing model but unfortunately the new pricing will take effect on September 1st of 2019 for both us and in turn our customers.

While we are currently exploring alternate control panel software, because of the short notice given to us about the pricing changes, there is not nearly enough time to change to another platform before the changes take effect.

What does this mean for our customers? The answer will likely vary based on the type of hosting you have with us.

If you have a single hosting account with us on our shared hosting platform, there will be a small increase in the pricing. Because our shared hosting plans are very inexpensive the impact on your cost should be negligible.

For our reseller hosting customers, there will be adjustments to our plans and pricing. Due to the fact cPanel will now charge us for each cPanel account a reseller creates it is going to cause a drastic change in our costs to operate reseller servers. How this will change the pricing and offerings of our reseller plans is still being determined. We will most likely have to place limits on the number of cPanel accounts that can be created under each plan or charge a per domain fee above a certain number of accounts. As we work through these details, we will work with our resellers to find the most cost-effective solution.

VPS/Dedicated Server Clients – VPS and Dedicated Server clients will feel the impact of this price increase the most. For clients with a small number of sites on their server, the impact should be modest. For clients hosting a large number of sites, the impact will be more drastic. We will be contacting clients on an individual basis over the next 30 days to outline what the new cPanel license cost will be going forward and work with them to minimize the impact on their accounts.

As mentioned earlier, we are evaluating other control panels and will move customers to those platforms if it meets their needs both from a functionality and cost standpoint.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please feel free to contact us.



Wednesday, July 31, 2019

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