New cPanel Licensing and Pricing Structure - thoughts?

unused

Introducing Account Based Pricing

The hosting industry has changed a lot in the last 20 years, and has long out-grown the licensing and pricing structure that we have used at cPanel. Effective immediately, cPanel's license structure and the way we price our products is changing. Our pricing and licensing structure will now be standardized for all of our customers and include multiple Tiers. This new structure defines the price of each license based on the number of Accounts hosted on the server, reflecting the value received by the owner; now, customers pay for only what they use. On September 1st, 2019, we will introduce Auto-Scaling Packages, Fixed Packages, and transition all existing monthly licenses to the new account based pricing and licensing structure.

Which prices are changing?
We are adjusting the prices of all cPanel licenses sold to our Partners, Distributors, and cPanel Store Customers.

FAQ: https://forums.cpanel.net/pages/partners/

Partners preview your new pricing on Manage2: https://manage2.cpanel.net/invoice.cgi

WHT thread - only linked because cPanel has responded to some there, proceed with caution.

georgedatacenter

Is that a message from cpanel?

AnthonySmith

unused said: Effective immediately,

Nice....

unused said: reflecting the value received by the owner

wow....

They are charging a minimum of $0.20c per month per account by the look of it and that includes your resellers accounts.

bye bye cPanel, it was good while it lasted.

Host4Geeks

2 Sentences.

I am not surprised, expect more of these coming from Plesk, SolusVM and WHMCS since they are all under the umbrella.

Shameful of the way they implemented it.

The email said, " We aim to simplify the process of adding new servers, make it easier to become a cPanel customer, and provide value to a broader group of users."

Simple, my a**!

vovler

Bulk Account pricing starts at the 101st cPanel Account at the cPanel Store price of twenty cents per additional cPanel Account

smallbibi

Oh boy... What's going to happen to all the cheap shared/reseller plans? They are charging $45 monthly for the first 100 cpanel accounts, and $0.20 for each additional account.

AnthonySmith

smallbibi said: Oh boy... What's going to happen to all the cheap shared/reseller plans? They are charging $45 monthly for the first 100 cpanel accounts, and $0.20 for each additional account.

They are going to stop using cPanel.

Think of the $2 p/month reseller plans you see, if those resellers have more than 10 accounts it is going to start COSTING the host money to have them as cpanel plan to count resellers customers accounts too.

the 0 notice is the most insane part.

deank

This is anything but simple.

And who gives zero grace period? I petition to rename common sense to rare sense.

BlaZe

ggwp cPanel

SmallWeb

Either just killed the majority of their market or they've gone full Apple and this will be the life now. I have been fucking with Direct Admin recently though, might kick it up a notch.

AnthonySmith

Mic-hael said: Either just killed the majority of their market or they've gone full Apple and this will be the life now.

People will just switch to plesk.... oh wait!

This way of introducing it is a complete joke.

deank

Real men use no control panel.

AlwaysSkint

This is not good for lowend, lowcost hosting providers such as myself, unless per cPanel Accounts are extremely cheap. Think in the order of 12 customers per server.
I saw the 20c starting price but read that was for bulk scale Accounts of 200+?
Did anyone else notice the published date at the bottom of the announcement and how few had read it, until this thread?

HostEONS

Hope some good alternative comes out or we need to stop offering cheap cPanel hosting or may be just switch to some other panel like Direct Admin

AnthonySmith

AlwaysSkint said: This is not good for lowend, lowcost hosting providers such as myself, unless per cPanel Accounts are extremely cheap. Think in the order of 12 customers per server.

Hosting generally has gotten really cheap, I guess direct admin are having a party right now.

Lampard

I think that its time to look for alternatives.

SmallWeb

@AnthonySmith said:

Mic-hael said: Either just killed the majority of their market or they've gone full Apple and this will be the life now.

People will just switch to plesk.... oh wait!

This way of introducing it is a complete joke.

What does this mean for those reseller plans you hinted at coming soon?

HostEONS said: may be just switch to some other panel like Direct Admin

The question comes up about the customer's experience though. If someone buys a service specifically for cPanel, why are they going to stay if they're force migrated to another panel?

jh

Remind me of when the UK Gov tried to sell the VAT hike from 17.5% to 20% on the basis it would make calculations simpler.. Hahaha

AlwaysSkint

If anyone finds the pricing model, do please share. Less than three months to switch panels, persuading clients or foot the bill regardless. :-/

georgedatacenter

https://cpanel.net/pricing/

Is this going to apply right now?

LeonDynamic

What will happen with legacy licences. Will they be moved to the new pricing structure?

HostEONS

@Mic-hael said:

HostEONS said: may be just switch to some other panel like Direct Admin

The question comes up about the customer's experience though. If someone buys a service specifically for cPanel, why are they going to stay if they're force migrated to another panel?

Either we need to increase the pricing or switch to another panel, they want us to pay $30 for upto 30 accounts per month i.e. $1 per account and if a provider is selling hosting for $1 per month or cheaper, then that business model is not sustainable anymore, hence time to change

https://cpanel.net/pricing/

Lets see what final price etc... comes out

AlwaysSkint

That's an outrageous amount!
My take: they lost the revenue stream from the ludicrously priced dedicated server market due to improved virtualisation and better density with VPS. Cheaper to run say proxmox on a dedi, then pay for cPanel VPS licenses.

dedicados

/crap

AnthonySmith

Mic-hael said: What does this mean for those reseller plans you hinted at coming soon?

They are not going to happen.

I think some lifetime licenses from back in 2012 still exist, they will become pretty valuable now

HostEONS

I think we will see something similar even with SolusVM soon iirc solusVM and cPanel are now owned by same parent company ?

May be time to even find a good SolusVM alternative

georgedatacenter

more info:

https://cpanel.net/wp-content/themes/cPbase/assets/downloads/cP_Store_Licensing_Guide.pdf

either hosting prices are increased or you switch to directadmin

AnthonySmith

HostEONS said: I think we will see something similar even with SolusVM soon iirc solusVM and cPanel are now owned by same parent company ?

May be time to even find a good SolusVM alternative

I dont think they would dare, virtualizor is to close to solusvm in terms of features and has an auto migration method already, if solusvm did this they would likely loose about 80% of their customers overnight.

If plesk buy virtualizor though..... then it might be time to worry.

Foul

georgedatacenter said: either hosting prices are increased or you switch to directadmin

Pretty much, but also what @AnthonySmith grabbed at is the Lifetime licenses.

They do still exist, and just shot up in value because of this.

Just going to say that this is a sudden move from cPanel with no notice.

Neoon

Well, every cheap CPanel hosting is now dead, neat.
Good job suckers.

deank

The end of many lowend hosts is nigh.

Hmm, on second thought, this might kill PSK hosting.

Lee

It is shit given no notice, but, if you are dependant on a 3rd party to provide a very key part of your business and have priced on the basis they will never do this, well...

I am surprised it took so long, but they clearly caught up with the number of providers running cPanel on a 'VPS' masquerading as a dedi as no doubt one aspect.

Oakley wanting better returns will be another of course

LeonDynamic

CPanel has been collecting data on the servers for the last 6 months at least and we’re defiantly collating server density etc. There was an option to turn it off I think it came in V76

emgh

@HostMantis How will this affect your business? Considering with the offerings the cheapest package costs around the same as a licence now.

deank

Well, they bought up all the competitors. This was coming.

KuJoe

Thank god DirectAdmin's new skin looks amazing even.

Lee

So, not read it thoroughly but.

$45 is the new base price, that covers 100 accounts.

How is an account defined?

So, if you have a reseller and they 'sell' 10 shared accounts, is that 10 accounts @ $0.20 per account over 100 or what? Bit confused.

So if you have a server with 300 accounts that will cost $85 per month?

I am ok with that based on my current pricing but seems odd that there has been little communication on it, but I guess that is the strategy. If they told people in advance it would have been a shit storm anyway and they would still have done it.

Not going to lie, an opportunity for me, it will slow the churn of people going to cheaper hosts.

KuJoe

@Lee said:
So, not read it thoroughly but.

$45 is the new base price, that covers 100 accounts.

How is an account defined?

So, if you have a reseller and they 'sell' 10 shared accounts, is that 10 accounts @ $0.20 per account over 100 or what? Bit confused.

So if you have a server with 300 accounts that will cost $85 per month?

An account is any cPanel user. Yes to all of your other questions.

AnthonySmith

Imagine the big boys that have 100+ cPanel servers and 100,000 accounts

They just went from paying $1500 p.month to AT LEAST $22,500 p/month in licensing,

I wonder what "value" (cPanels words) cPanel are adding to their business for that extra $21,000 p/month or rather near quarter million dollars over the year.

This is so unbelievably irresponsible.

deank

Fun times. It will be lovely to watch lowend hosts collapse.

HostEONS

For now removed cPanel from order forms for VPS and Dedi

Lee

AnthonySmith said: This is so unbelievably irresponsible.

Indeed, but what are they going to do, switch everyone to DirectAdmin? Nope. They will absorb some, increase pricing for the difference. The benefit for them is that nobody is immune to this at all.

The majority of end users are not going to want a different panel unless the price increases are so out of whack they are forced.

smallbibi

AnthonySmith said: Imagine the big boys that have 100+ cPanel servers and 100,000 accounts

They just went from paying $1500 p.month to AT LEAST $22,500 p/month in licensing,

Would really be closer to $10000/month. Reading closely, I noticed this:

"Partners, get a fifty percent discount, putting Bulk Account pricing at just ten cents per cPanel Account."

Still a crazy increase, no doubt.

Yura

lol at this whole thread.

Ympker

DA, ispConfig and Keyhelp (perheps even HestiaCP) will be getting an increase in user base soon

leapswitch

@smallbibi said:

AnthonySmith said: Imagine the big boys that have 100+ cPanel servers and 100,000 accounts

They just went from paying $1500 p.month to AT LEAST $22,500 p/month in licensing,

Would really be closer to $10000/month. Reading closely, I noticed this:

"Partners, get a fifty percent discount, putting Bulk Account pricing at just ten cents per cPanel Account."

Still a crazy increase, no doubt.

On top of that Partners get 5-38% discount based on volume.

limited

@smallbibi said:

AnthonySmith said: Imagine the big boys that have 100+ cPanel servers and 100,000 accounts

They just went from paying $1500 p.month to AT LEAST $22,500 p/month in licensing,

Would really be closer to $10000/month. Reading closely, I noticed this:

"Partners, get a fifty percent discount, putting Bulk Account pricing at just ten cents per cPanel Account."

Still a crazy increase, no doubt.

An increase of almost 600%, if not more. WOW

smallbibi

leapswitch said: On top of that Partners get 5-38% discount based on volume.

"Bulk Accounts are not eligible for any additional discounts."

HostEONS

Also this is going to be a huge nightmare for providers providing managed dedicated or vps with cPanel, now they need to even do audit for customers and help them remove inactive accounts etc....

leapswitch

@smallbibi said:

leapswitch said: On top of that Partners get 5-38% discount based on volume.

"Bulk Accounts are not eligible for any additional discounts."

Where do you see this ?

Lee

It's really not that bad (for me), just worked out my updated pricing, less than I initially thought, but still a ball ache because...

Fortunately, I have never allowed 'unlimited' resellers in terms of the number of accounts, there have always been hard limits on each reseller plan.

But I will need to factor in that not every current customer has used their max number of accounts so the actual cost could increase all of a sudden.