TL;DR
cPanel was bought out and the new investment firm has the hosting world over a barrel and is hiking prices. Now we are forced to make adjustments.
The Long Story
cPanel, the software we use on our hosting accounts, has announced a major change in their licensing pricing and structure.
They made quite a few changes, here is a run-down of the changes that effect us:
cPanel was bought out and the new investment firm has the hosting world over a barrel and is hiking prices. Now we are forced to make adjustments.
The Long Story
cPanel, the software we use on our hosting accounts, has announced a major change in their licensing pricing and structure.
They made quite a few changes, here is a run-down of the changes that effect us:
- Basic license cost increase
- Introduction of a per user account structure that increases based on number of accounts
- Discontinuation of multiple license discounts
- Discontinuation of annual plans and annual discounts
The changes have forced us to increase the cost of our hosting plans. Starting September 20, 2019 the following increases will be applied:
- Shared Hosting plans will increase $2.00/month
- VPS accounts with 1-5 user accounts will increase $6.00/month
- VPS Hosting with 6-30 user accounts will increase $16.00/month
- VPS Hosting with 31-100 user accounts will increase $32.00/month
Note: User accounts are the number of cPanel user logins. Most of our clients only have 1 user per VPS. Some clients have multiple users because they are providing hosting service to their own clients. Not to be confused with email users which have no impact with these changes.
We provide hosting service almost at-cost simply because it makes it easier to get things done. It allows us to consolidate billing for many of our clients. It also allows us to tailor hosting enviroments specifically for Joomla or sites vs the typical One Size Fits All mentality that most hosting companies provide.
We spent a few weeks researching alternatives to cPanel. There is one that has comparative features/functions (Plesk) however it's owned by the same investment firm that recently bought the cPanel company and introduced the rate hikes. It's expected that the same changes will be made to Plesk in the near future. All of the other alternatives lack many of the basic functions that are necessary to manage a website or they are far more expensive.
We provide hosting service almost at-cost simply because it makes it easier to get things done. It allows us to consolidate billing for many of our clients. It also allows us to tailor hosting enviroments specifically for Joomla or sites vs the typical One Size Fits All mentality that most hosting companies provide.
We spent a few weeks researching alternatives to cPanel. There is one that has comparative features/functions (Plesk) however it's owned by the same investment firm that recently bought the cPanel company and introduced the rate hikes. It's expected that the same changes will be made to Plesk in the near future. All of the other alternatives lack many of the basic functions that are necessary to manage a website or they are far more expensive.
If you have any questions feel free to drop us a support ticket.