Consolidation of Cpanel Accounts

[slinky]

I just found out the hard way that Cpanel, the company, was purchased and pricing was substantially increased overnight. This is a server moving headache as you can't simply just move WHM to WHM any more if you'll need to consider consolidating a large number of domains to avoid the substantial licensing increase. I'm wondering if there is some add-on domain option to merge all of my accounts to fit into one domain. I'll explain:

Let's say I have 200 cpanel accounts on machine A but most are owned by the same person. I need to move them to machine B and 196 of them are owned under one account owner. Is there a way to create one cpanel account and then move 195 as add-on domains under one account?

I've read about how an announcement was made generally. Doesn't mean the rest of us know - my host honored my existing agreement (in spite of their costs.) But once i upgraded to a new server, I rudely found out that cpanel costs are dramatically higher. (At the moment I'm looking at the alternatives to also consider that once and for all the first time at the start of this move... especially given the uncertainty brought about by COVID-19.)

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[ZenHostingTravis]

Hi @slinky,

I'll leave it to the cPanel team to address your question but I'd just note it's not advisable to have a lot of addon domains in the one cPanel account because if there is a security issue with one of them, it will put the other websites on the same cPanel account at risk.

 

[hmaddy]

Its not advisable to add lot of addon domains in one cpanel. Its high risk and it will affects the performances also.

 

[slinky]

So what is advisable? A sudden 25%+ price hike that is passed on to the customer isn't going to work. Research seems to indicate the price hike is a "because we can and we warned you/your reseller", which isn't going to cut it, especially in the new economy. Seems like Plesk and WHMCS are owned by this same conglomerate.

I don't like to discuss these things here but other than considering alternatives which I can name or Google for webhosting control panels, there should be some mitigation offered. If it's just "pay the bill" I think you'll see webhosts closing up shop while the large ones develop their own solutions or offer the add-on domain solution, regardless of the risk and performance hits. Right now I've checked with some others and they advised the temporary consolidation above while investigating cpanel alternatives that will get the job done long run.

What's crazy is that, on some of my simplest setups, the cpanel cost, which isn't even used that much more than the basics most of these control panels do, will easily be a double digit percentage of the cost and that's just not a feasible business model. Any technical responses?

 

[slinky]

So there is a tutorial on how to merge multiple cPanel accounts into one that you can find easily in Google.

It seems there are no other solutions or pathways being offered to reasonably manage this substantial Cpanel pricing increase. This price hike is coming during the coronavirus pandemic, which couldn't be a worse time. For the moment, since most need minor management, we've consolidated their accounts to mitigate damages. I've inquired with others and have been told by a large player that they are looking at a cpanel alternative now and will let us know options.

As to what I tell clients, not sure. This reminds me of the Capital management company that raised the price of antiparasitic drug, Daraprim and people were left scrambling until eventually the government stepped in. It is what it is. As to the security issues this may cause, I guess the consultants will be busy with the repercussions of the unwary migrating many of their cpanel accounts into add-on domains.

 

[cPanelLauren]

The changes in our pricing came over a year ago @slinky, before anything related to the COVID-19 pandemic was even thought about. If your provider only just increased them you would need to discuss this with them further.

What we did was essentially change the pricing model, from a flat license fee to an account-based model. This was something that was in the works for a significant amount of time and didn't just happen overnight, furthermore prior to that we hadn't increased or changed our pricing model in over 13 years. We also changed our requirements for becoming a cPanel partner which made it much easier to do so. This provides a multitude of benefits including a discount on licensing.

 

[slinky]

The changes in our pricing came over a year ago @slinky, before anything related to the COVID-19 pandemic was even thought about. If your provider only just increased them you would need to discuss this with them further.

Thank you for your response. Our provider had an existing agreement with us that went into this year. On the renewal date the price suddenly jumped. Some industry news doesn't get passed down nearly as quickly as price increases get passed on to the customer, which is usually instantly.

What we did was essentially change the pricing model, from a flat license fee to an account-based model. This was something that was in the works for a significant amount of time and didn't just happen overnight, furthermore prior to that we hadn't increased or changed our pricing model in over 13 years. We also changed our requirements for becoming a cPanel partner which made it much easier to do so. This provides a multitude of benefits including a discount on licensing.

I appreciate what you're saying but the repercussions are there. Regardless of what was in the works for a decade, the result was an overnight change and the consequences to smaller business owners was foreseeable and calculable.

Others who may be looking for the same solution, there appears to be a post here on how to consolidate accounts into add-on domains for temporary relief: Tutorial - How To Manually Combine Two cPanel Accounts Into One

Unfortunately it is what it is. For a long time I used cpanel, whmcs and sometimes plesk. But when there is one major player who buys up all the major resources, there are concerns about a situation like this and those who seek to capitalize on them. I appreciate many of the good people I've had a pleasure of knowing while they worked here and were helpful to us over the years.