cPanel Price Increases, What Does This Mean to You?

In late June, cPanel, the most popular hosting control panel for Linux servers, announced a price increase to their clients which has caused a great deal of conversation in the industry. The majority of our customers, as well as employees, use cPanel, so this pricing change has certainly been the talk around the water cooler and with our Liquid Web leadership. 

A quick explanation of the situation:  Currently, cPanel is licensed per server.  With the new pricing structure, cPanel will license per cPanel account and per server, which results in a significant price increase, not only for us but for our customers. 

cPanel’s announcement came as a shock to us, and this dramatic change has caught the entire hosting industry by surprise. While incremental price increases are expected from providers from time to time, this sudden and dramatic pricing increase has put businesses of all sizes in a difficult position.

The rates mentioned in the cPanel blog post are cost for providers like Liquid Web and on average represent a 40% increase.  While the cPanel 2019 pricing varies by server type,  customers will expect to see a 25%-50% increase on average, and in cases where customers have >100 accounts, it could be a 100+% price increase. 

cPanel price changes for Liquid Web customers due to this vendor rate increase will be effective on January 1, 2020. 

We are pleased to announce that Liquid Web owns a competing control panel, Interworx, that will allow our customers to avoid the price increase altogether.  And, because of the uncertainty that cPanel’s pricing has introduced into the control panel market, Liquid Web will be providing a price lock guarantee that ensures that the Interworx price will not increase for 3 years from January 1, 2020. 

On the market for nearly 20 years, the Interworx Hosting control panel is feature-rich like cPanel and has an intuitive user interface for managing servers and for end users to oversee the operations of their websites.  InterWorx has thousands of licenses in production and we expect to add thousands of additional production licenses in the upcoming months. 

What happens next:

For Liquid Web customers who want to avoid a price increase of any kind, we will be working with you to migrate to the Interworx control panel.  Migrations to InterWorx will happen over the next several months and you will be given ample notice and more details on what to expect in the upcoming weeks.  We are working hard on the process and automation to reduce customer impact.  

Of course, should you wish to remain on cPanel, you can certainly do so.  Your current pricing on existing servers will remain unchanged until 1/1/2020 when the new cPanel pricing tiers will go into effect at Liquid Web.  Should cPanel raise their pricing in future years, you should expect that Liquid Web will be forced to pass on those increases as well. 

If you are a WordPress or WooCommerce user, this may be the time for you to check out Liquid Web’s Managed WordPress and Managed WooCommerce solutions which provide simple management dashboards allowing customers to abstract themselves from server administration altogether.

We understand the impact that cPanel pricing changes could have to your business and that’s why we’re pleased to offer Interworx with a 3-year locked license price guarantee to any new or existing customer that adopts Interworx.  It is just one of the ways that we are working to be The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting®.

If you are not a Liquid Web customer yet and want to take advantage of any our Liquid Web options, we’d love to help you. Simply chat, call or fill out the form below to connect to a Hosting Advisor to discuss Liquid Web control panel options.  We have the expertise to help you choose. 

Contact us for more information about InterWorx at 1-800-580-4985.