cPanel, Inc. earlier this year (late June) announced a dramatic price increase for the licensing of their very popular hosting control panel. This caused a huge controversy in the hosting industry, even among those companies that host hundreds of thousands of websites. We chose to go with cPanel over 15 years ago so this price increase impacted us as well. 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 for everyone. 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.
EMWD.com Will Stay With cPanel
As a result of this rate increase, some of the larger hosting companies are moving away from cPanel very quickly. From our research, these companies are moving to sub-par hosting control panels which we believe will negatively impact their customer’s ability to manage their hosting. cPanel has been the leader in the hosting control panel for over 20 years and there is a reason for that. Though we believe such a dramatic price increase was a terrible move by cPanel, EMWD.com has decided NOT to move from cPanel simply because cPanel is still a great product for our clients. For our shared hosting clients, we have decided to eat the cost of the price increase. This is not because our hosting prices are higher than other companies, because they are not. The reason is simple: we have never overloaded our cPanel servers. We have operated at a 100 account cap on a cPanel server for over 10 years. Even with our dramatic improvement of our hardware last year, we still keep to this cap. This has not been the case with many popular hosting companies. We have learned that many of these companies were regularly keeping over a 1000 accounts on a single server to reduce their hardware and software expenses. So with the move by cPanel, Inc. to charge on a per account basis along with a base license price, you can see the serious dilemma these hosting companies are in. For us however, this price increase does not dramatically impact us.
The Use of cPanel Will Decline
We expect a massive shift in the hosting industry as hosting clients think through their options as hosting companies everywhere deal with the cPanel price increase. Those hosting clients who want to stay with cPanel but can’t due to their hosting company discontinuing its use of cPanel or dramatically increasing their prices, we ask you to consider EMWD.com as your new hosting provider. We are even offering a coupon code: REFUGEE that will give you 10% off of our shared and WordPress hosting services for 1 year. We have been in business since 1998 and we efficiently run our servers and company so that we have been able to easily handle the tumultuous times of running a hosting company throughout the years and decades.
A Final Thought
One final thought. cPanel has always included Mailman as part of their control panel features. We know a number of these alternative hosting control panels that these hosting companies are moving to, does not include Mailman or any mailing list feature. Well this is great news for us and you. We have specialized in Mailman hosting for over 15 years and now include Mailman 3 and Discourse (as well as Mailman 2) as part of our list/forum hosting services. If you wish to stay with your current provider and their new hosting control panel but need a home for your mailing lists or forums, then consider EMWD.com.