Hosting Providers React to cPanel Price Change

Web hosting control panel vendor cPanel recently announced a significant change in their pricing model, which raises the price considerably for many of their customers. We wanted to find out if this change will cause cPanel customers to switch to a new hosting control panel, so we conducted a survey.

Following their acquisition in August 2018 by the WebPros BV group, cPanel announced in June significant changes to their software licensing terms. The new terms bring higher costs to hosting providers who pack large numbers of customers onto a single hardware instance. In a newly released “Store Licensing Guide,” cPanel defends the price change, arguing that “Adjusting our prices will ensure that we can continue to invest in product development, thrive in an increasingly hostile security landscape, grow our customer ecosystem, and remain a leader in hosting automation.”

Question 1: Do you plan to switch to a new control panel following cPanel’s price change?

About three-quarters (75%) of the customers who responded to our survey say that they use cPanel currently. Of this group, 45% said they were “evaluating other options.” A further 26% said they are planning to move away from cPanel soon. And 21% said they are in the process of moving to a new panel now. Only 8% of current cPanel users indicated that they plan to stick with cPanel following the price change.

Question 2: Which panel are you planning to move to?

Of the respondents who said they are moving away from cPanel, the majority (55.8%) indicated they are moving to DirectAdmin. The distant runner up is Plesk at 11.6%, followed by Interworx at 7%. Webmin, ISPConfig, ZPanel, Sentora, and a home-made control panel are among the other options indicated by providers.