Wow, this a long post. I understand your concerns and see how passionately you feel. I'm going to try to address all of your concerns here and offer to schedule a conference with you and Aaron and myself. Feel free to send us a PM if you wish to talk.This is decision is terrible and this is why people started to move out of Plesk.
First of all, you said its an addon, and cPanel has no financial incentive on this. So why is an addon from an external company turned by default to on? This is sending money to them, not to you our us, your clients.
Attract only works in English, What about your international cPanel customers? Do you think they will turn it on or use it for their customers that don´t speak English? Cpanel is multi language, Attract is not. So how can you even consider this.
Attract tools are terrible, nothing that a 10$ PHP script or even free you get on the Internet can´t do. Sending a XML sitemap to Google? Are you kidding me? Do you expect people to 50$ a month for that? Their very big and expensive prices are because they give a % to companies, hosting and now it seems also cPanel for every new signup. This is like an affiliated program and you call it a new feature? So cPanel is now adding Affiliate programs by default on our paid cPanel software? I expect this from a free control panel but honestly I feel insulted byt this because we are paying cPanel, its not free and you should not have control on what we show or send our customers. This is why people quit Plesk. They paid 1000$ a year and Parallels put banners advertising, by default on and yes you could remove them to, at first editing the code, then on complains they added a turn off button. And they do the same with allot of other services and icons in their panels.
I don´t have anything against Attract but they are an external company that want to sell their SEO services. Im sure other SEO companies are left out by this, and not to mention hosting companies here using cPanel which sell their own SEO services or are partnered with other SEO companies which are not Attracta.
I also don´t appreciate that cPanel sends our customers to other servers externally, did you even considered privacy laws for this? You are basically sending our customers automatically with their data to another company. And if servers are hacked from Attracta side someday who will we blame, cPanel or Attracta?
Does cPanel even read this forums because most people here have only complained about this. Instead of focusing on developing features which are good for us you waste time on this partnerships (affiliate programs). There are so many things to do in cPanel, I can even point my thread in the Cloud Linux section, where some people send me PM and said "thank you" for that which means that is what people are looking. DNS clustering is another, sync settings between WHM servers, another one. Clustered Win Servers with Linux servers, another one. I can go on and on, features that are important and people will appreciate. Stuff that is related to cPanel and the control panel instead of this things which bring nothing new. And honestly how can you even call this a feature?
Its just an icon in cPanel which anyone can add and automate the sign ups. Nothing more. If we where so in love with this, some companies would already done it. The reason some big hosting companies use them is because Attracta cut a % with them and they will not do the same for all of us. Even if they do im not interesting in sending my customers to them.
I agree with Glowhost, you cannot put every single offering and icon on a cPanel build. There are allot of options out. If this is an approach cPanel wants to do, then I would suggest adding a Marketplace icon on WHM (nothing turned on by default, nothing, all get the same fairness) and providers can choose, install and enable from there what they want as default. Allot of hosts are using for example Cloud Linux, does this mean cPanel has to kill their DNS feature and ship Cloud Linux turned on by default on each customer as well? No. Again no. Any provider or service should be optional, not turned on by default which gives the impression its a cPanel product and endorsed by cPanel.
Hostgator turned this by default on their VPS customers severs and you can bet their customers where not happy, allot of them complained about this.
Last on my rant 2.0. Is cPanel in financial troubles that they need to make money with this affiliate program? Because that is exactly what this is.
Every Host who offers Attracta gets rev share on upgrades by simply filling out a form in the WHM Attracta configuration plugin, and telling us where to send the check.
Attracta is in the processes of localizing its portal, so that by the time the cPanel integration is complete we will support all the local languages native to cPanel.
Many of Attracta's SEO tools are FREE and are actually very sophisticated. With over 1.7 million customer sites, Attracta is by far the most popular SEO tool. There's nothing comparable, certainly not a $10 php script. Attracta provides a FREE XML Sitemap creation and submission service. Attracta's most expensive package, Turbo Traffic 100, is affordably price at only $11.95 per month, not $50/mo.
The art of SEO is a very complex, and ever changing science. Many SEO companies use Attracta SEO Tools as a platform to help sell their professional services.
Attracta is SafeHarbor compliant and violates no privacy policies and requires users to opt-in.
GlowHost is actually an Attracta partner. Perhaps there's another reason he doesn't want cPanel to bundle Attracta...?
Hostgator installed Attracta on VPS servers without notifying customers. They made a mistake and apologized. There were a few complaints about the lack of notification. However, users groups are designed to encourage complaints. That's what they are here for. They don't capture or display the hundreds of thousands of happy customers. Hostgator has over 800,000 sites using Attracta. They have received less than a dozen complaints. While every customer counts and we want 100% customer satisfaction, .0015% is statistically insignificant.
cPanel learned from this and is providing plenty of advance notice to it's customers so we can get your feedback and address all the concerns ahead of time.
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