Update: 1st October 2020
cPanel and Plesk announce a new round of prince adjustment as being captured on their website. On average there’s a 10% price increase across the board and bulk pricing is about 75% increase.
Let’s take a look on how much would it cost for both of this 2 famous control panel in terms of their pricing.
cPanel Overview
cPanel is one of the control panel largely adopted by hosting companies in offering their hosting services for their clients. The friendly GUI control panel offer some of the basic functions just as managing of email accounts, databases, FTP accounts, 1-click installation of famous CMS such as WordPress, built-in web statistics..etc
For users running their online presence on a Cloud VM / VPS or Dedicated Server environment which are not so techie, they can easily manage some of the basic sysadmin configuration from the GUI of cPanel – namely WHM (Web Host Manager).
How much does cPanel Cost?
Let’s take a look on the original cPanel retail pricing prior to the price increase adjustment on year 2019.
The original retail cPanel price support unlimited domains with just one single pricing. This pricing structure works pretty well for most web hosters and users as with just single pricing, you can host unlimited domains/customers on the same server.
If you are an official cPanel NOC partner, and committed with certain volumes of cPanel license subscription, you will enjoy a better discounted partner rate for your cPanel pricing – further bring down your cPanel licensing cost.
However, back to around June 2019, cPanel made an official announcement to completely change the licensing model. Instead of base on one single license with unlimited domains, the new pricing structure will be based on per cPanel accounts you host on your server.
The announcement made a huge impact especially to the web hosting community. There are even petition being setup to gather around the community support to stand against the pricing changes but nothing has stop the change.
The new pricing structure kick start on early of September 2019 and some of the partners only see the impact beginning on Jan 2020.
So what’s the new cPanel pricing structure looks like?
New cPanel Retail Pricing
Changes reflect the new pricing after the new pricing for Jan 2021. (The last pricing is being marked with strike-through)
| cPanel Retail | Retail Pricing (USD) | Accounts Hosted | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| cPanel Solo VPS | 15 | 1 | 15 |
| cPanel Solo VPS Admin | 5 | ||
| cPanel Solo VPS Pro | 30 | ||
| cPanel VPS Premier | 100 |
New cPanel Partner Pricing
| cPanel Partner Pricing | Retail Pricing (USD) | Accounts Hosted | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| cPanel Solo VPS | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| cPanel Solo VPS Admin | 12.5 | 5 | 2.5 |
| cPanel Solo VPS Pro | 17.5 | 30 | 0.5833333333 |
| cPanel VPS Premier | 32.5 | 100 | 0.325 |
If you are cPanel NOC partner, you get certain level of discount but the pricing are still on the high side.
cPanel Pricing New vs Old Modeling Comparison
| Accounts Hosted | Pricing (USD) | Cost Per Account (USD) | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 32.5 | 0.325 | New Pricing. 62.5% increase vs old price |
| 100 | 20 | 0.2 | Old Pricing |
| 300 | 52.5 | 0.175 | New Pricing with each account after 100 is billed at |
| 300 | 20 | 0.0667 | Old Pricing |
As we can see, the new pricing model (base on the cPanel NOC partner price) still made a huge impact with the % of price increase hitting direct to the web hosting industry.
Plesk Overview
Plesk, is also one of the control panel famously used by the hosting companies. There’s been some perception that Plesk is a “Windows control panel” as it offer the stability and features which some other Windows control panel cannot provide.
Throughout the years since the launch of Plesk v12, follow by Plesk Onyx (v17) and with the latest edition Plesk Obsidian (v18), Plesk has made a huge transform on how it position itself.
Plesk extensions (integrated 3rd party modules), WordPress Toolkit (a powerful tools to simplify your management of your WordPress websites), NGINX and multi PHP environments, GIT, Dockers as well as a complete revamp on its user interface for better user experience, Plesk has started to regain the attention from the market as one of the preferred choice of control panel.
How Does Plesk Pricing Looks Like?
Here’s how Plesk price before the price increase change adjustment on year 2017.
This is the new pricing model since year 2017 as of this post is written (26/9/2020).
During the price adjustment on year 2017, Plesk also taken the steps to phase out some of the old licensing model such as Plesk 100 & 300 domains. Customers who is on this licensing model can continue to use and they will be charge base on the Plesk Web Host licenses with the exception of not able to enjoy the new features if they remain on the old SKU.
With the new pricing announced by Plesk back on October 2020, the new pricing increase by 10% and the it goes live on Jan 2021.
Plesk Retail Pricing (Before Price Increase at year 2017)
| Plesk Retail (before change on 2017) | Retail Pricing (USD) | Accounts Hosted | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plesk Web Admin VPS | 5 | 10 | 0.5 |
| Plesk Web Pro VPS | 10 | 30 | 0.33 |
| Plesk Web Host VPS | 15 | Unlimited | NA |
Plesk Retail Pricing (After Price year 2017 Price Increase)
| Plesk Retail (after change on 2017) | Retail Pricing (USD) | Accounts Hosted | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plesk Web Admin VPS | 10 | 10 | 1 |
| Plesk Web Pro VPS | 15 | 30 | 0.5 |
| Plesk Web Host VPS | 25 | Unlimited | NA |
Plesk Retail Pricing (After Price year 2021 Price Increase)
| Plesk Retail (after change on 2017) | Retail Pricing (USD) | Accounts Hosted | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plesk Web Admin VPS | 11 | 10 | 1.10 |
| Plesk Web Pro VPS | 16.50 | 30 | 0.55 |
| Plesk Web Host VPS | 27.50 | Unlimited | NA |
Plesk New Pricing Modeling
How much does the impact after the announcement of Plesk price increase on year 2017 (strike-through) and year 2021?
| Plesk Retail | Retail Pricing (USD) | Cost Per Account (USD) | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plesk Web Admin VPS – 10 domains (year 2015) | 5 | 0.5 | Old Pricing |
| Plesk Web Admin VPS – 10 domains | New Pricing with a 100% increase on year 2015 vs 2017 and 10% increase on 2021. | ||
| Plesk Web Host VPS – 300 domains (year 2015) | 15 | 0.05 | Old Pricing with assumption of 300 domains. |
| Plesk Web Host VPS – 300 domains | New pricing 2017 with a 66% increase vs 2015 pricing and 10% increase on 2021. |
The new pricing increase also result in significant % price hit to the end users.
For Plesk partners, depending on the level of commitment you have with Plesk, the discount tier will be different.
As we can see from the cPanel pricing modeling above, even with discounted % on your partnership, any Plesk partner will also taste the hit of the price adjustment.
cPanel vs Plesk New Pricing Modeling
So how does the new cPanel vs Plesk pricing comparison. Which will you give a better lower cost per account?
| cPanel vs Plesk (New Pricing) | Retail Pricing (USD) | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| cPanel Plesk VPS Pro – 30 Domains | ||
| Plesk VPS Pro – 30 Domains | ||
| cPanel VPS Premier 300 Domains | ||
| Plesk Web Host 300 Domains |
We can see it very obvious that with a 300 accounts running on a cPanel VPS Premier retail model, the cost is about 350% higher than Plesk Web Host edition.
How Can You Make More Cost Savings Per Account
With the new pricing structure for cPanel, in order for most of the hosting companies to remain and keep up with their margin – especially on the shared hosting business. They would be looking into hosting more accounts per server to lower down the cost per accounts.
However, this kind of arrangement will result back in stability and performance issues which will impact your websites.
Alternative to cPanel, there are other control panel options such as DirectAdmin, Centos Web Panel..etc.
For the purpose of this comparison, we use Plesk as the comparison target with cPanel.
You can make a greater savings on your Plesk License through the official Plesk Partner Store like CPLicense.Net.
Here’s a quick overview ..
| cPanel vs Plesk (New Pricing) | Retail Pricing (USD) | Cost Per Account (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| cPanel Plesk VPS Pro – 30 Domains | ||
| Plesk VPS Pro – 30 Domains | ||
| cPanel VPS Premier 300 Domains | ||
| Plesk Web Host 300 Domains | ||
| CPLicense.Net Plesk VPS Web Host 300 Domains |
With the same Plesk Web Host License, you will be able to enjoy a savings of up to 37% of your Plesk license vs the Plesk retail pricing. When you go with yearly subscription for the Plesk Web Host License, your savings will reach up to 40% off Plesk retail for your monthly Plesk license.
Plesk offer services to migrate from cPanel to Plesk. If you would like to do it yourself, there’s a Plesk Migrator Extensions that help you to do that as well.
Work out your own due diligence among the 2 control panel and understand what would be your customer requirements. While web hosting is a commodity business, each hosting companies runs and operate a different backend infrastructure and offerings. You know your business than your competitors.