Web hosting companies are talking about cPanel control panel a lot recently with good reason. Did you know cPanel are changing their pricing model? That’s right! It turns out cPanel is changing from their standard pay per server model for unlimited cPanel accounts to an account based pricing model where cPanel customers pay per account!
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What Is cPanel Control Panel?
Server management is a complicated task for beginners to website hosting. cPanel provides a control panel designed to make web hosting and server management a simple and easy process. A cPanel customer will have access to cPanel’s range of functions and features. These functions and features cover everything from: File, Domain, Security, Email, Database to Software management. Functions and features are organised into easy to navigate categories making cPanel a market leader for web hosting control panels.
Why Are cPanel Increasing Prices?
With over 20 years of experience no wonder cPanel has risen to a market leader when it comes to providing control panels for website and server hosting. Within the years cPanel has operated prices have remained the same. During the same time hardware and server infrastructure has improved drastically. In a blog posted cPanel explained the reasoning for adjusting prices as align themselves with growing technology.
“When cPanel defined its original pricing structure, some twenty plus years ago, servers were not as powerful as they are today. Thanks to constant innovation in the hardware sector and optimization in our software, we can now run hundreds of websites on a single processor system. With this change, we align ourselves with this growing technology.” – cPanel
Changing from a server based pricing model to an account based pricing model will increase cPanel’s profits. It is hoped with this increase in revenue cPanel can reinvest in improving their services for all cPanel users.
How Are Prices Changing?
The old pricing model allowed cPanel customers to purchase one license key for their server with the option to create unlimited cPanel accounts. Now cPanel users must purchase additional accounts when required.
With the old pricing model our cost for a cPanel VPS license was between £10 and £15 per month. Now for cPanel users a VPS license with 5 account costs $20 per month with 5 to 30 accounts priced at $30 per month. A dedicated cPanel license that covers 100 accounts used to cost us around £32 and £36 a month. Now for a cPanel customer a dedicated cPanel license costs $45 a month, if a client requires more than 100 accounts these can be purchased for $0.20 extra a month per account.
How Does This Price Change Impact Consumers?
cPanel clients that only have one cPanel account you will not be impacted by the price change. The price for one account has remained at $15. cPanel clients that have over 5 cPanel accounts will need to be aware of these price updates in order to budget their web hosting effectively to avoid unexpected bills. In short, cPanel’s price change only impacts clients with over 5 cPanel accounts and those looking to purchase more.
How Does This Price Change Impact Web Hosting Companies.
cPanel’s price change will impact web hosting companies in significant ways. Prices for services such as Shared Hosting may be impacted.
Shared hosting is a cost-effective web hosting option for clients on a budget. Clients share the same server therefore a hosting provider used to only require one cPanel key for the entire server. With this key every client was able to create a cPanel account at no extra cost. Now cPanel uses an account based pricing model hosting providers will need to pay per shared hosting account instead of just once. As a result, many hosting providers may increase prices or offer an alternative control panel.
What Happens To My Existing Multi-Year Licenses?
Many cPanel control panel clients have a multi-year license and maybe confused to hear that cPanel is changing to monthly only payments. As of June 27th 2019 Yearly Billing is no longer available with cPanel. So what happens to your license? As the expiry date for the subscription approaches cPanel users will have the option to either cancel the service or convert to a monthly billing plan. cPanel customers will have to select which package they require: Solo, Admin, Pro or Premier.
Should I Stay With cPanel?
Many of cPanel’s clients are debating if they should stay with cPanel. This depends on each individual users’ requirements. When making this decision take into consideration the following.
cPanel’s Years Of Experience
cPanel is a market leader when it comes to website hosting control panels with over 20 Years Of Experience. During the time in which cPanel has operated they have introduced many updates to improve their service. As a result, cPanel users have access to a fine-tuned control panel.
Easy To Navigate Layout
With experience cPanel have crafted a well designed user-friendly control panel that is easy for beginners and experts to use. A new control panel takes time to get used to, this can impact productivity negatively.
Data Loss
When switching control panels data has to be migrated or re-created. Many clients opt to migrate their data. Migrating data leaves it vulnerable to data loss or corruption. When migrating data ensure you create a backup.
Monthly Billing Only
A yearly billing plan allows businesses to pay upfront for the services they require without having to budget monthly payments throughout the year. cPanel has removed yearly billing as an option. Customers must budget in order to keep up with monthly payments.
So What Does This Mean?
At hosting.co.uk we like to strive and provide our clients with some of the most affordable web hosting packages in the United Kingdom. This is why we had to bring this issue to your attention. If you have a web hosting account that uses cPanel this article concerns, you.
As cPanel increases their prices not only is hosting.co.uk impacted but other web hosting companies across the market. As a result, we may have to increase our competitive prices to ensure we can provide the same quality of excellent service as we always do.