Writer: Jordan Sprogis
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
Key Takeaways
“Pricing update that will take effect on…” For many hosting providers, that’s all they need to read. They already know that the rest of the message is just confirmation of yet another cPanel price hike.
At this point, it’s nothing new. Since cPanel switched to account-based pricing in 2019, licensing costs have risen by more than 300% in some cases.
Blame Oakley Capital. Blame supply and demand. Whatever’s at fault doesn’t change the fact that many times hosts have threatened to leave cPanel. And after this year’s price hike, some finally are.
But who are they going to instead? Turns out, they’re landing all over the place.
OK, So Where’s Everyone Looking?
If you spend enough time in hosting forums, one name keeps coming up: DirectAdmin. It’s the closest drop-in replacement with some estimating its share in the high single digits, making it one of the largest alternatives in the market.
Most hosts are just looking to lower costs without disrupting customer experience. A provider managing hundreds of websites doesn’t necessarily want a completely different hosting model, but maybe something that’s familiar enough. This is where DirectAdmin shines.
Where Hosts Are Looking Beyond cPanel
Illustrative comparison of relative visibility in hosting discussions. Values are not market share estimates.
But not everyone wants a cPanel carbon copy.
Take CloudPanel for example, another popular alternative. Built with cloud infrastructure in mind (go figure), CloudPanel’s main appeal is that it’s not nearly as feature packed as cPanel. That’s because it’s not trying to be an all-in-one platform for hosts but focuses on the tools devs actually use, not the hosting-specific features they’ll probably never touch.
Other Rising Escape Routes
Then there’s Enhance, which keeps coming up for an entirely different reason. It’s not trying to be cPanel at all. Instead of focusing on a single server, Enhance uses multi-server environments, meaning web, database, email, and DNS services can be distributed across several different machines at once.
Remember, cPanel basically emerged when hosting lived on a single server. Enhance is a futuristic version — an accurate one at that too, because hosts are spreading workloads across multiple systems more than ever just to keep up with scalability and redundancy demands.
Of course, not every host wants to replace one licensing bill with another. And that’s exactly what’s helped fuel interest in open-source alternatives such as HestiaCP, CyberPanel, Webmin, and Virtualmin. You won’t get a polished, fully managed experience here, but open-source users happily taking on more of the configuration, maintenance, and troubleshooting themselves.
Some Are Building Their Own
- ScalaHosting: Built SPanel in 2018 as a response to rising cPanel costs
- SiteGround: Created its own hosting management stack and custom site tools in 2019
- WP Engine: Built proprietary management tools tailored to managed WordPress hosting
- Kinsta: Built its custom MyKinsta dashboard
- Flywheel: Developed its own customer management experience for WordPress
- Cloudways: Uses a proprietary management layer
- Rocket.net: Built its own hosting platform and management interface around managed WordPress
ScalaHosting reported to us that 10% of its existing cPanel users move to SPanel each month.
“Reseller hosting has become increasingly unviable, and licensing costs have multiplied by ten in some cases. That’s why we decided to take full control of our stack,” Hristo Rusev, the company’s CEO, previously told HostingAdvice.
That’s huge. And perhaps even also indicative of what’s to come. Maybe one day agencies, resellers, developers won’t have to choose between what’s on the market — they’ll just go with an already trusted name in the space.
Why Are Some Hosts Staying with cPanel?
One word: Migration.
A host with 2,000 customer accounts is moving 2,000 websites and tens of thousands of email accounts, databases, SSL certificates, DNSes, custom server configurations. Oh, and yes: They’re expected to keep business going as usual.
The statistics around this are almost unrecognizably shocking, but they’re reflective of a reality that many who have migrated can attest to. Gartner says 80% of data migration projects run into major problems like missing deadlines, exceeding budgets, or falling short of goals.
on the first try
On the other hand, some hosts don’t even care about the price hikes — as long as customers are happy and websites keep running, many hosts will keep paying cPanel’s higher prices instead of taking on the migration risk.
Alas, there is no mass exodus. cPanel remains on top and probably will stay there for a long time. Even so, there is a chance that the next time that pricing email arrives in thousands of providers' inboxes, they'll have more options on the table than they did a couple of years ago. And maybe even more confidence to take action, too.
