Please be aware that the cPanel Executive Team is monitoring this thread and does appreciate your responses to date. We are also available if you would rather discuss any of your concerns and answer questions you might have with us directly by phone.
To help clarify cPanel's position on all of this and clear up some of the misconceptions raised, I'd like to go back over some of the key points of our overall strategy here if I could.
Attracta integration with cPanel was originally announced last year at the cPanel Conference 2011 in Austin, Texas. Our goal in announcing this new Feature here in advance of it being deployed to EDGE tier, shortly, was to get a wider variety of feedback from the cPanel Community at large as it rolls out. This serves multiple purposes; we are able to get more information out to those already patiently waiting for this, and allows those users who are just now finding out that this is on the way, to know more about it in general.
cPanel has been actively researching the usefulness and benefits of Attracta with some of our larger Partners who currently do use, or intend on taking advantage of Attracta in the future for some time now. We came to the conclusion from that internal research that this product has many positive advantages that we feel the entire cPanel Community, Hosting Providers and their Clients could make good use of and benefit from.
Until now, adding Attracta SEO Tools took some time and effort to install on your servers. Until now, the question of "is my site being indexed by the top search engines that I want to be seen on" was a grey area that could be confusing to new users. Until now, making sure your website was SEO compatible was most often put into the hands of paid professionals, or, if a user wanted to go it alone, a huge task to take in and digest all of the existing data that's available to accomplish what Attracta can do for them with a few clicks, properly.
Fully integrating this software with cPanel makes sense, due to the nature of what these SEO tools provide your clients. Along with the many other Features already in cPanel we all know about and love, Attracta becomes one more tool in your Clients arsenal for making Website SEO Management, easier.
Proper integration of the plugin, dependencies and updates to Attracta will all now be taken care of for you with cPanel updates. With so many of the Top Hosting Providers using this Attracta integration already, we saw a need to support this on a larger scale. Our motivation is as it always has been at cPanel in that we strive to provide you with the best set of Server Management and Website Account management tools available. cPanel does not take integrating 3rd party software lightly. Anything we bundle with the core product must be able to meet or exceed in our expectations as to it's usefulness for our user base. We believe that Attracta meets these expectations.
Over the years as cPanel has grown and new Features have been introduced, there has always been some apprehension and concern about new Features being enabled by default. We understand this of course and strive be sure that anything added in and enabled by default, serves some valued purpose. Attracta in this case, is no different in that regard. There are no fees involved or credit card deposits required by Hosting Providers nor their Clients for the basic set of tools provided with this integration. This is important to understand. cPanel, Inc. nor Attracta are charging your Client any fees to use these very popular services. Services that can bring your Clients more traffic and help them succeed and make money with their websites.
What's new and different here in this case though is, for this service to be of any use to Hosting Providers and your Clients, you will need to opt-in / sign up which connects your Clients to Attracta's system. That system is where the magic happens. Attracta's crawlers visits your site and find all of its pages and then compiles a report and an XML site map for you, with a few clicks. The Attracta system will even submit your newly created sitemap to the major search engines for you. The Attracta system can report broken links you might not be aware of, missing error pages and can help you find and fix other miscellaneous common SEO problems the new user would have no idea might exist. That's all done for free, no charge. Keep in mind there is also no overhead on the Hosting Providers servers resources, either.
There is some concern about this new feature being enabled by default. This is true. That does not mean that you can't disable it if you use some other comparable plugin or offer this sort of paid-for-service in house, nor does this mean that cPanel is forcing anyone to use it. To the contrary, the idea is to make taking advantage of this new Feature, easier to get busy using. We feel that in time as this becomes more widely adopted that you'll come to appreciate the power these new Features brings to the Hosting Packages you offer.
There have also been several comments about the financial incentives here where cPanel is concerned. cPanel's motivation here is to continue to be your Leading Control Panel Software Company. We want you to have every opportunity and tools available to succeed. That said, it is still important we feel, to point out that the financial incentives that do exist here, benefit you the Hosting Providers. Your Clients never have to spend a dime with Attracta, ever. This is clearly stated on the Attracta website. If your Clients find that they are benefiting from the free, basic services Attracta provides, then they can if they wish to, upgrade and expand the tools offered, for a fee. This is no different from many other software models we all know about currently. These fees to expand services all the way up to Enterprise level for the largest of sites in this case though, are shared back with the Hosting Providers that offer Attracta services.
Many Top Hosting Companies that are currently using Attracta are already making money due to this incentive. Our internal research over the past year has shown us conclusively that these value added services offered, benefits those Clients who want their sites to have more traffic. You want your business to succeed and to do that, you need your customers business to succeed. cPanel wants to make sure you both have what you need to get there.
With all that in mind, cPanel is a company, not unlike yours in that what we do, we do to make money. In order to offer this unique service and bundle it in with the cPanel Product as we are now doing, takes resources.
Answering the question then; “Is there financial incentive for cPanel, Inc. to offer the Attracta product like this?” The answer of course is, yes! We have gone to great lengths to make this happen as it just makes sense to have this sort of Feature available. But, we did not want to take anything away from the profit incentive component Attracta currently offers. In the end we were able meet our desired goals here with Attracta and Hosting Providers will get the full 10%, recurring, sharing the profit of any additional services purchased.
To be clear: Clients get easy-to-use tools to generate site maps which can bring them more traffic and hopefully, additional revenue. Hosting Providers who offer these services need not do anything here aside from registering an account via WHM to register the server properly. Once thats done leave it enabled to be used by their Clients. If those Clients wish to upgrade to expand their services, we think many will, Hosting Providers will make 10% of every upgrade purchased. No work involved there, sans the occasional ticket asking about how it all works. Attracta does come with a full section of documentation your Clients can read right from within their cPanel interface. cPanel makes sure this all operates as expected on our end, Hosting Providers with additional questions or issues are fully supported as always as only cPanel Support can do, and Attracta compensates the company for this inclusion of the Attracta software with cPanel.
Finally, what's missing here in this thread I think, are links to the Attracta website that explains more about the system itself in clear terms.
Attracta Overview - How it Works
Attracta - Partner Program Kit
Introduction to Attracta's SEO Tools Video
[video=youtube;4eZ9p4uW0lU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eZ9p4uW0lU[/video]
