The good old days: cPanel before the acquisition
For years, cPanel was the standard in web hosting. It was affordable, it was reliable, and it had a simple pricing model that hosting providers could work with.
Before 2019, a cPanel license cost roughly $20/month for unlimited accounts. Whether you hosted 5 websites or 500, the price was the same. Hosting providers could plan their costs, set competitive prices, and build profitable businesses.
That all changed in June 2019.
The acquisition: Oakley Capital buys cPanel
In 2019, Oakley Capital, a London-based private equity firm, acquired cPanel through a holding company. Almost immediately, the pricing model was completely overhauled.
The pricing model switch
The most significant change was the move from flat-rate licensing to account-based pricing. Instead of one price for unlimited accounts, cPanel now charged based on how many cPanel accounts (users) you had on your server.
For hosting providers with hundreds of accounts per server, this meant their cPanel costs went from $20/month to hundreds of dollars per month - overnight.
The industry reaction
The hosting community was outraged. Forums, social media, and industry publications were flooded with complaints. Some hosting providers reported cost increases of 500% to 1,000% compared to their previous licensing fees.
But it got worse.
They bought the competition too
In 2020, the same private equity group acquired Plesk, cPanel’s biggest competitor. Both products were consolidated under a parent company called WebPros.
Think about that for a moment: the two dominant web hosting control panels - which for years competed against each other to keep prices fair and features improving - are now owned by the same company.
When your competitor is also your sibling company, there’s no incentive to compete on price. And the pricing since then reflects exactly that.
cPanel pricing in 2026
Here’s what cPanel licenses cost today:
| Plan | Price | Accounts | Available on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $29.99/month | 1 account | Cloud/VPS only |
| Admin | $35.99/month | Up to 5 accounts | Cloud/VPS only |
| Pro | $53.99/month | Up to 30 accounts | Cloud/VPS only |
| Premier | $69.99/month | Up to 100 accounts | Cloud/VPS & Dedicated |
| WP Squared | $84.99/month | 10 WordPress sites | Cloud/VPS & Dedicated |
Need more than 100 accounts on the Premier plan? That’s an additional $0.49 per account per month on top of the $69.99.
These prices are for the cPanel license alone. They don’t include your server, bandwidth, storage, or any other hosting costs.
The math for hosting providers
Let’s put this in perspective. If you’re a hosting provider running a dedicated server with 200 cPanel accounts:
- Before 2019: ~$20/month
- 2026 (Premier + 100 extra accounts): $69.99 + (100 × $0.49) = $118.99/month
That’s roughly a 495% increase from the pre-acquisition pricing. And the product hasn’t improved by anywhere near that factor.
For a reseller hosting 500 accounts:
- Before 2019: ~$20/month
- 2026: $69.99 + (400 × $0.49) = $265.99/month
That’s over 1,200% more than what it used to cost.
The pattern: constant price increases
What’s particularly frustrating is that the increases haven’t been a one-time adjustment. They’ve been gradual, happening year after year:
- 2019: Pricing model switch from flat rate to per-account
- 2020: Further price adjustments upward
- 2021-2022: More increases, tiers restructured
- 2023-2024: Solo plan introduced at $29.99 for just 1 account
- 2025-2026: Prices continue climbing, WP Squared tier added at $84.99
Each increase is small enough that it doesn’t trigger mass migration, but large enough that the cumulative effect is devastating to margins.
Why this matters for your business
If you rely on cPanel for your hosting business, you have no control over one of your largest recurring costs. At any time, WebPros can:
- Raise prices again
- Change the tier structure
- Add account limits
- Remove features from lower tiers
- Introduce new required add-ons
And since they own Plesk too, you can’t simply switch to “the other option.” Both products follow the same corporate pricing strategy.
The alternatives
The good news is that the cPanel price increases have driven innovation. Several alternatives have emerged:
Free and open-source panels
- CyberPanel - Free, powered by OpenLiteSpeed, includes email and WordPress management
- Coolify - Free, self-hosted PaaS for deploying applications
- CloudPanel - Free, lightweight panel for PHP and Node.js sites
- HestiaCP - Free, community-driven fork of VestaCP
Server management platforms
- RunCloud - From $8/month, manages your VPS without the bloat
- Ploi - Affordable server management for PHP apps
- ServerAvatar - Budget-friendly multi-site management
Build your own
At ServerPoint, we chose a different path entirely. We built our own web hosting platform because we didn’t want to be at the mercy of a company whose interests don’t align with ours or our customers’.
We still offer cPanel if you want it
Despite everything above, we understand that some businesses need cPanel. If you have existing workflows, client expectations, or migration concerns that require cPanel, we’ve got you covered:
- One-click cPanel installation when deploying a new VPS through ServerPoint’s Client Portal
- VPS hosting starting at prices that make the cPanel license cost less painful
- Dedicated servers for hosting providers who need Premier-level licensing
You can deploy a ColossusCloud VPS with cPanel pre-installed in under a minute from our Client Portal.
A note on our cPanel pricing
Unfortunately, as cPanel continues to raise their licensing fees, we have no choice but to pass those increases on to our customers. We don’t mark up cPanel licenses to make a profit on them - we’d rather you didn’t need one at all. But when our cost goes up, yours does too.
This is exactly why we encourage customers to explore free alternatives like CyberPanel whenever possible. Every dollar you don’t send to WebPros is a dollar you keep in your business.
The bottom line
cPanel built its dominance by being affordable and reliable. Under private equity ownership, the affordability is gone - and with both cPanel and Plesk under one roof, there’s no competitive pressure to bring it back.
If you’re starting fresh, seriously consider the free alternatives. If you’re already locked into cPanel, at least make sure you’re running it on infrastructure that gives you the best value for your money.
Running cPanel on a VPS? See our VPS plans across multiple data center locations. Need the panel but not the price? Check out CyberPanel as a free alternative.