The history of cPanel and the shift toward alternatives

The Monopoly and the Price Hikes

cPanel began in 1997 under CEO J. Nick Koston. The Houston-based company employs over 220 staff and serves customers in 70 countries. In 2018, Oakley Capital, a UK-based firm, reached an agreement to acquire cPanel through WebPros BV. This move followed the 2017 acquisition of Plesk and the 2018 acquisition of SolusVM. In 2019, the group also bought WHMCS. This consolidation means the same entity controls the primary North American panel, the leading European panel, and the main billing platform. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. Oakley plans to make a \$50 million investment into WebPros as part of this transaction. Nick Koston remains the owner of the parent company. I see the impact of this on pricing. A single server license cost roughly \$45 before the acquisition. Now, the pricing structure is account-based. The Solo plan for one account costs \$29.99 per month, while the Premier plan for 100 accounts costs \$69.99 per month. Additional accounts beyond the 100 included in the Premier plan cost \$0.49 each per month. These yearly increases are a regular occurrence for WebPros.

Resource Consumption and DirectAdmin

cPanel uses a lot of server resources. Background services like cPHulk and TailWatch use between 500MB and 1GB of RAM. This high baseline usage forces you to buy more expensive VPS plans. You should know that DirectAdmin uses only 80MB to 150MB of RAM. DirectAdmin is a lightweight alternative introduced in 2003. It manages domains, email, and databases through automation. It includes IP blocking, SSL support, and firewall management.

The acquisition of cPanel by a group led by Oakley Capital, which already owned Plesk and SolusVM, allows WebPros to control the major control panels and the billing infrastructure used by thousands of hosting businesses. I find the constant price increases from WebPros to be predatory. DirectAdmin provides all the functionality a user needs for a lower price. It has a clean interface and provides tools for managing email, including spam filtering and autoresponders. The Personal license for one server costs \$2 per month. The Personal Plus license for two accounts costs \$5 per month. The Lite license for three servers costs \$10 per month. The Standard license for unlimited servers costs \$29 per month. The Reseller license costs between \$15 and \$25 per month. Switching away from cPanel is difficult because the cost of retraining staff and migrating customers is high. Many users stay because of the integration with Softaculous and the familiarity of the WHM structure. I find the standard tax that cPanel charges to be an exploitation of this lock-in.

Version 138 and the Plesk Alternative

cPanel released version 138 on July 27, 2026. This update includes the Meridian interface as an opt-in alternative to the Jupiter interface. Meridian organizes tasks into six areas: Websites, Email, Files, Databases, Security, and Performance. The update includes Nova, which creates websites from plain-language descriptions. It also includes Nova for WordPress and an AI-native Node.js Toolkit that uses Podman. The cPanel AI Assistant helps diagnose issues like disk usage or SSL errors.

Plesk is the main choice for teams using Windows or Linux. Plesk includes the WordPress Toolkit for staging and cloning. It also includes native support for Git and Docker. Plesk announced a 26% price increase in January 2026. The pricing for Plesk scales based on the number of domains or servers. I find the resource consumption of cPanel to be its biggest flaw. Plesk is more flexible for agencies because it allows for easy client separation and branding. Plesk uses Apache with NGINX as a reverse proxy and PHP-FPM. For WordPress, I use the Plesk WordPress Toolkit to handle updates, staging, and security. Why do companies keep paying these high fees for bloated software?