Absurd cPanel license price increase

airborne said:
Lovely capitalism, many investment funds are like sharks hunting for prey, I have seen this same story over and over, across many industries.

It's a common tactic, amongst many others of dubious nature, to find a company with a captive market that they believe can take being price gouged, buy them out and then radically hike the prices. Everyone up in arms but nothing you can do but cough up and take it without lube, sorry folks but Oaktree has got you over a barrel.

Unfortunately it's become a prevalent way of doing business, focus on short term profit taking, long term repercussions of price gouging the customer will be someone else's problem/who cares the company has been milked already.

They must have seen a goldmine when they discovered how widespread and deeply embedded cPanel was, for interest sake have they given any motivation for the increases?
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Here is the mail

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airborne said:
for interest sake have they given any motivation for the increases?
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Here's their response to a query we submitted to them



We understand that your used to paying yearly and we plan to fulfill your current license through it's ending expiration date. Once that expiration date ends we will look to convert that license to the license tier that matches the number of accounts you have active on your server billed on a monthly plan.

The account-based license tiers bring us the ability to offer you a licensing structure where you only pay for what you use, based on the license tiers offered.

As with any change, we understand there are frustrations and we truly appreciate your patience and understanding. If there is anything I can do to assist you regarding the transition to the new account-based license please feel free to let me know.
 
"Pay only for what you use". Right, but at a much more expensive rate.
 
Jade @ ZA Domains said:
Here's their response to a query we submitted to them

We understand that your used to paying yearly and we plan to fulfill your current license through it's ending expiration date. Once that expiration date ends we will look to convert that license to the license tier that matches the number of accounts you have active on your server billed on a monthly plan.

The account-based license tiers bring us the ability to offer you a licensing structure where you only pay for what you use, based on the license tiers offered.

As with any change, we understand there are frustrations and we truly appreciate your patience and understanding. If there is anything I can do to assist you regarding the transition to the new account-based license please feel free to let me know.
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Yeah it's an absolute joke, I do love how they assume that you're patient and understanding about this.
 
Swa said:
"Pay only for what you use". Right, but at a much more expensive rate.
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Exactly, we were paying for what we used and it was affordable to all.

I think my biggest gripe with this increase is the lack of communication and their deliberate dump on the market knowing very well that they dominate this sector.

I understand that increases are needed as businesses evolve, hell even inflation takes its toll on first world countries - but there were 100 other ways that they could have handled this other than the route they took.

Even if we decide to carry on using cpanel at the request of our clients, I do not feel comfortable doing business with a bunch of unethicals.

I'd much rather invest the money with their competitors and provide more for less to our clients.
 
For those following this thread, there have been some exciting developments over the last day or so.
DirectAdmin has released new pricing models and must be smiling at the intake of new customers.
Most of the conversation on LET and WHT points to a mass migration to DA vs Interworx

Some handy migration scripts that have been resurrected and improved
How-to: cPanel to DA migration - https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=58059
How-to: restore cPanel backup in DirectAdmin https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=58069

https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=52792&p=280613#post280613
 
Jade @ ZA Domains said:
For those following this thread, there have been some exciting developments over the last day or so.
DirectAdmin has released new pricing models and must be smiling at the intake of new customers.
Most of the conversation on LET and WHT points to a mass migration to DA vs Interworx

Some handy migration scripts that have been resurrected and improved
How-to: cPanel to DA migration - https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=58059
How-to: restore cPanel backup in DirectAdmin https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=58069

https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=52792&p=280613#post280613
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Thank you Sir. Still waiting to see what my pricing will change to and then I will look at these options.
 
There is a section within the cpanel licensing portal that allows you to confirm the amount you will be billed, don’t have details here and am on mobile so can’t find now, but you should be able to find it.
 
I own a web hosting company and this news sucks, but I honestly believe cPanel is creating the perfect atmosphere for their own demise. They're basically leaving the gas on full blast, and at some point someone's going to light a cigarette. I know it may seem like a long shot now but they are potentially one open source project away from extreme disruption. Unlike much more complex software, cPanel is relatively easy to copy, especially since most of the heavy lifting is done by other open source software (like Apache, Dovecot, Exim, MariaDB, PHP, etc., etc.).

Even if the open source community doesn't unseat them in time, they have done something that there's no coming back from: they have opened the eyes of the hosting world to the fact that one company currently has the ability to ruin a lot of us. That's created a tension that is not likely to go away or be forgotten anytime soon. They've also opened our hearts to their competitors. I would never have considered DirectAdmin or InterWorx, but now those are suddenly options I am seriously considering for majority of my client base.

I'm not against a company setting their prices, but this is more like a hostage situation than fair business practice in my opinion.
 
The only way cPanel will learn is if resellers and hosting providers vote with their wallets and make the move.

We've signed up for new licenses with DirectAdmin and will start migrating our existing clients to DirectAdmin towards the end of our cpanel license expiry which is +- 11 months away. So we do have some time until we and our clients affected by this.
 
anthor said:
I'm not against a company setting their prices, but this is more like a hostage situation than fair business practice in my opinion.
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The issue I have with this is that it's not the prices that they set and they'd never have gotten the dominance they have with these prices. That's why I see it more as abuse of their customer base after getting where they are.
 
Jade @ ZA Domains said:
The only way cPanel will learn is if resellers and hosting providers vote with their wallets and make the move.

We've signed up for new licenses with DirectAdmin and will start migrating our existing clients to DirectAdmin towards the end of our cpanel license expiry which is +- 11 months away. So we do have some time until we and our clients affected by this.
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I agree that we should vote with our wallets, and I think it would be great for the industry if one or two other panels become serious alternatives to cPanel.

Swa said:
The issue I have with this is that it's not the prices that they set and they'd never have gotten the dominance they have with these prices. That's why I see it more as abuse of their customer base after getting where they are.
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Yeah, people have invested in cPanel and there's an expectation that we would have some pricing stability and be treated fairly. I personally think that cPanel has broken that trust and they will pay for the long run.
 
You're 100% on the money with your lack of trust with cpanel, and whats to stop them from applying additional increases within the next year or two?
 
We too are considering our options. DirectAdmin seems like the way to go, even with their current price update due to the cPanel issue. We've been reading their DA's forum on their pricing change and they seem to be handling a price change a lot better than cPanel.

In Summary, they removed their lifetime licenses to new customers but still offer it to existing customers up to 1st Sept 2019. Then it's monthly or yearly I believe.
They are also introducing a new Lite package in August sometime.
 
Apparently cPanel are making an announcement on Friday (tomorrow)
Lets see what comes of it, I suspect that they may try take a step back after all the backlash
 
ld13 said:
Personally... the trust has been broken.
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Maybe so, but I think this all was part of their plan. Announce a huge price increase, forcing everyone to look at alternatives and then thinking about the work involved in moving your clients. Now they are still going to announce a huge price increase, but just enough to make us think that it's not worth it to switch to a new control panel and rather take the hit...
 
I might be showing my ignorance here, but is there not some kind of open-source thing that does what cpanel does?

If someone wants to write one I'd be happy to muck in and help.
 
newby_investor said:
I might be showing my ignorance here, but is there not some kind of open-source thing that does what cpanel does?

If someone wants to write one I'd be happy to muck in and help.
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I don't know, but when I looked into it for a VPS a few years ago, the answer seemed to be that the open-source equivalents didn't come close as far as ease of use, etc..

I'd be interested to know why no one has ever written a decent open source competitor.
 
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