CPanel price rise is something that can put hosting providers in a tight spot!

The new cPanel per account pricing model even make the cost of license higher than the server.

Things screw up further, especially when you are already providing hosting accounts at competitive prices.

We at Bobcares, always assist customers in delivering 100% cost effective solutions as part of our Server Migration Services.

Today, we’ll see the impact of cPanel price rise and the top 3 workarounds suggested by our Migration Engineers to reduce cost.

The real impact of License price rise

We’ll first see how the price rise affect the server owners.

In the new pricing model, cPanel bring restrictions to the number of accounts hosted on a server. Unfortunately, even the lowest price comes to a monthly cost of $20 for just 5 accounts. The other monthly plans include $30 for 30 accounts and $45 for 100 accounts. There is an additional cost of $0.20 each on the extra accounts. Moreover, the cheaper plans are supported only on Cloud servers.

Till now, hosting companies were making use of cPanel license that came with unlimited accounts support on a server. Unfortunately, the case many not be the same any further.

From our expertise in managing hosting servers, we see that most hosting providers usually accommodate an average of 700 to 800 accounts on a single server. Obviously, this new price structure would raise the license cost drastically.

For example, if you are having around 700 accounts, the monthly cost would come to $165 per server. The rough calculation would be $45 for the first 100 accounts and an additional cost of $120 for extra 600 accounts.

Again, when you are offering cheap hosting plans for just few $, there will be just marginal profit considering the server monthly cost, running expenses and license charges.

How to reduce costs for your cPanel server?

Now that you know about the real time implications, focus shifts on how to reduce the costs of running a hosting server.

Being in the hosting industry for more than a decade, our Migration Consultants suggest 3 major approaches to overcome the price rise. We’ll check each of them in detail.

1. Migrate to another control panel

One of the solutions in controlling the costs would be to migrate to another control panel that still offers unlimited accounts per server license.

But, this again depends on various criteria like:

1. Type of applications running on server
2. Nature and size of accounts
3. Control panel features
4. Billing solution support
5. Type of users on the server

That raises the question “Which control panel to choose?”

The top popular control panel options include DirectAdmin, Plesk, Interworx, ISPConfig, etc. Let’s have a quick look on the pros and cons of these panels.

DirectAdmin

DirectAdmin offers competitive license prices where you can host unlimited accounts. Again, they offer monthly and subsidized yearly pricing too. DirectAdmin offers a light weight control panel that can easily take care of basic account management easily.

But, if you server has built-in clustering support for DNS or any other services, DirectAdmin may not work.

Similarly, if you have Windows hosting or need one click third party applications like WordPress, Joomla, etc. DirectAdmin may not be your best bet. Again, third party addons are missing in the DA panel. This can affect customers who prefer to install programs easily.

Plesk

Plesk works very well on both Windows and Linux hosting. Thus, if you provide hosting accounts on both platforms, migrating to Plesk will be an ideal option. Plesk has Application Vault that can easily install and maintain third party applications.

Thus, if you have too many customers looking for one click installation of 3rd party apps, or have customers that would like to use NodeJS on their websites, the best option would be Plesk. Moreover, Plesk also provide clustering support which will be useful in maintaining same settings on the new server too.

However, Plesk and Cpanel being powered by the same parent organization, it’s worth to watch the licensing policy changes for Plesk panel too.

Interworx Panel

Another option for cPanel alternative would be Interworx. It has a rich control panel that provides a smooth and simple platform for basic as well as advanced users. Just like cPanel and WHM interface, Interworx has 2 interfaces, Nodeworx like WHM and Siteworx like cPanel. As a result, users can easily relate to the cPanle-WHM model.

Luckily, Interworx also works with all of the major billing platforms like WHMCS, HostBill, Ubersmith, etc. This comes really handy in reducing the billing account hassles during migration.

ISPConfig as an option

Similarly, ISPConfig come as a reliable free control panel for Linux hosting too. There are different versions of this panel. ISPConfig 2 is a single server control panel while ISPConfig 3 works as a multi server control panel for virtual users.

2. Consolidating your hosting accounts

For a vast majority of customers, working with cPanel has become a default method. They are pretty much easy and comfortable with the options in the cPanel. Thus, they may find it difficult to adapt to a new control panel, new directory structure and so on.

In such cases, hosting providers will have to maintain cPanel as their control panel.

But, is there still a way to reduce the costs keeping cPanel license?

Fortunately, Yes. All you have to do is to optimize the account allocation on each cPanel. Thus, if you have 10 servers with few accounts, it is possible to reduce costs significantly by consolidating accounts on to a single server with $45, 100 accounts license.

Additionally, it becomes an option to put all customers who are choosy about cPanel into a single server. In all these use cases, care should be taken in having a proper migration plan. And, our Migration Engineers always follow proper migration checklists to avoid web site down time.

3. Migrate to a cPanel Partner NOC

Last, and not the least, purchasing license from a cPanel partner NOC can drastically reduce costs.

CPanel price rise has hit badly for customers who purchase license directly from cPanel. CPanel give licenses for their partners at a much better pricing. And, when you have too many servers using cPanel, it’s worth choosing a partner and get the license from them.

Finally, the decision depends on the business policies and requirements of every hosting provider.

[Need help in migrating cPanel accounts to a new server? Our Migration Specialists can help you.]

Conclusion

CPanel price rise is a real shock for hosting providers. Today, we saw the various cPanel alternatives and the top 3 ways to reduce license costs.